Ah, ’tis the season for family, friends, eggnog, chipmunks singing Christmas carols – and all-out, no-mercy, blow-’em-all-to-hell WAR. Not war like in Afghanistan. No, no – this is the far-right’s God-awful “War on the War on Christmas.” In this season of Peace on Earth, a delusional faction of rightist has cooked up a hokey “cultural […]
Common Sense
Posted inOpinion
Backscratching society
Timmy Geithner has landed. The Secretary of the Treasury in President Obama’s first term resigned early this year, and we lost track of him for months. But in November, Geithner reappeared, having spun himself through Washington’s revolving door – whoosh, whoosh, whoosh – and flung himself all the way up to Wall Street, landing softly […]
Posted inOpinion
Coke’s conspiracy against tap water
Coca-Cola is running a stealth advertising campaign. Stealth? Yes, it’s a nationwide product promotion that’s being run below the public radar! Why would a corporation as ad-dependent as Coke spend big bucks on advertising that it doesn’t want consumers to notice? Shhhh – because the campaign is a surreptitious ploy to enlist restaurants in a […]
Posted inOpinion
Billionaires reap a cornucopia of farm subsidy cash
December is a time of many holiday feasts – which makes it a good time to remember family farmers and the tremendous contributions they make to our country, culture, taste buds and tummies. But not all farmers contribute equally, which is why I’m sending out this special holiday sentiment to one group of unique agriculturalists: […]
Posted inOpinion
Celebrate agriCULTURE, not agriBUSINESS
In December 1972, I was part of a nationwide campaign that came tantalizingly close to getting the U.S. Senate to reject Earl Butz, Richard Nixon’s choice for secretary of agriculture. A coalition of grass-roots farmers, consumers and scrappy public interest organizations (like the Agribusiness Accountability Project that Susan DeMarco and I then headed) teamed up […]
Posted inOpinion
McDonald’s: Low-Paid Workers, High-Flying Execs
Sometimes it pays just to go away. You could ask Jim Skinner about that. He was CEO of the hamburger behemoth, McDonald’s, pulling down a hefty $8.8 million in pay. Last year, though, Skinner retired, and, rather than getting a gold watch, he was given a load of gold – so large that even a […]
Posted inOpinion
This year’s election circus
Election days can be dizzying – like trying to absorb a three-ring circus with all three acts going at once. In last week’s elections, the national media focused tightly on the center ring, where two gubernatorial contests and one mayoral race were spotlighted. The most interesting of these to me was the dazzling, out-of-nowhere, high-wire […]
Posted inOpinion
Can Wall Street buy redemption?
Goldman Sachs churns out enormous profits from its high-rolling, casino investment schemes, while also churning out fat paychecks for its top executives. They literally sack up the gold, even as their speculative gambles have wreaked havoc on our real economy. But, finally recognizing that their public approval rating has sunk lower than mad-cow disease, Goldman’s […]
Posted inOpinion
Say ‘no way’ to NSA
The very fine public servant, Russ Feingold, cautioned against the steady slippage of our democracy toward autocracy back in October 2001, when he stood tall as the only U.S. Senator to vote against the Patriot Act. Warning that its anti-democratic provisions would create a nation “where the government is entitled to open your mail, eavesdrop […]
Posted inOpinion
J.P. Morgan – The man and the bank
J.P. Morgan was recently socked in the wallet by financial regulators, who levied a fine of nearly a billion bucks against the Wall Street baron for massive illegalities. Well, not a fine against John Pierpont Morgan, the man. This 19th century robber baron was born to a great banking fortune and, by hook and crook, […]
Posted inOpinion
GOP unhinged by Obamacare: Laugh till it hurts
Whacking yourself on the head with a ball-peen hammer would be stupid. But doing it again and again – that’s insane. Welcome to your U.S. House of Representatives, presently led by a pack of tea party Republicans. They are so crazed by Obamacare that they repeatedly hammer themselves over the head with it, having voted […]
Posted inOpinion
Trans-Pacific Partnership: Aka corporate coup
What if our national leaders told us that communities across America had to eliminate such local programs as Buy Local, Buy American, Buy Green, etc. to allow foreign corporations to have the right to make the sale on any products purchased with our tax dollars? This nullification of our people’s right to direct expenditures is […]
