Jim Hightower PHOTO BY LARRY D. MOORE Carl Icahn, noted corporate predator and takeover specialist who made billions of dollars in corporate deals, has recently begun pushing a charitable cause involving a group of people who, through no fault of their own, are being forced out of America. Syrian migrants who’ve lost everything, you ask? […]
Congress
Posted inOpinion
Thieves get richer the old-fashioned way
Jim Hightower PHOTO BY LARRY D. MOORE With the 2016 presidential campaigns in full swing, the burdens of the working middle class have taken center stage. And believe it or not, there is bipartisan support from the front-runners on a key issue brought up over and over again. Donnie Trump is for it. Hillary Clinton […]
Posted inOpinion
How the grassroots derailed the TPP train
White House spokesperson Josh Earnest dismissed it as a procedural snafu, and it was – but not in the way he meant. The “it” was the stunning June 12 vote last week in the House of Representatives that wrecked that high-balling freight train called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. TPP is the global trade scam that was […]
Posted inNews
Crowdfunding for businesses
It’s usually associated with making movies, recording music or creating a new product, but the Internet phenomenon known as “crowdfunding” could soon apply to small business investments in Illinois. State lawmakers are considering a bill to allow small companies to informally issue stocks, following a bipartisan federal law that lifted a decades-old ban on such […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Public service powerhouse
Abner Mikva On Thursday, March 26, at 6:30 p.m., the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library plays host to Abner Mikva, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 for a career of service spanning all three branches of government. The Chicago resident served in Congress from 1969-73 and again from 1975-79. He then served […]
Posted inOpinion
A corporate coup d’etat
When I was a tyke, Momma warned me not to eat anything unless I knew where it came from. That advice is so sensible that even Congress acted on it in 2002, passing a straightforward law called Country of Origin Labeling. COOL requires meat marketers to tell us whether the meat they sell is a […]
Posted inOpinion
Citigroup becomes its own lawmaker
Congress, which has long been so tied up in a partisan knot by right-wing extremists that it has been unable to move, suddenly sprang loose at the end of the year and put on a phenomenal show of acrobatic lawmaking. In one big, bipartisan spending bill, our legislative gymnasts pulled off a breathtaking, flat-footed backflip […]
Posted inOpinion
GOP’s ‘hell no’ faction
Ah, August – that time of year when the going gets tough … and Congress gets going. On vacation that is. And, to be fair, maybe Congress needs a vacation. All the stress of not passing laws and constantly thwarting any attempt by President Obama to fix America’s problems seems to be straining their sanity. […]
Posted inOpinion
Do-nothing Congress takes a vacation
Gosh, has it already been three weeks since Congress took a vacation? Those poor stiffs must be pooped from trying to catch up on all the heavy lifting that piled up while they were away from their lawmaking duties. And – gosh, again – in just a few days, Congress will go back on vacation, […]
Posted inOpinion
Koch boys killing democracy
The Koch boys, Charles and David, live in their own little world. It’s a special world, enshrouded in a rarefied atmosphere created by the fumes emanating from their family’s enormous stockpiles of wealth. Thus, the two brothers have always felt very special, and they also expect those of us in the down-to-Earth world to treat […]
Posted inOpinion
Fixing Congress
These are hard times for Congress. Its approval ratings have seen a bump from their historic lows of a few months ago, but it’s a small one. Our representative democracy’s keystone political institution is widely derided as ineffective, unproductive, irrelevant and sadly out of touch. It is no coincidence that this comes while Congress has […]
Posted inNews
Davis roundtable criticizes ‘Obamacare’
Congressman Rodney Davis, R-Ill. (at right), opposes the federal health reforms known as “Obamacare.” Photo BY PATRICK YEAGLE Although the 2010 federal health insurance reforms have survived nearly 50 repeal attempts and a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, the law remains controversial. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains a variety of provisions […]
