America: Ground zero for a real “Contagion”
We haven’t even turned the page on the controversy over contraceptives, health care and religious freedom when another thorny one arises involving personal conscience and public health. A flurry of...
View ArticleWhat PBS owes the public
Neither of us is old enough to have been fooled by the Trojan Horse (see Wikipedia). But we each have been working in public television decades enough to remember the days when distribution was handled...
View ArticleWho’s buying your TV station?
Over the years we’ve been reporting on how power is monopolized by the powerful. How corporate lobbyists, for example, far outnumber members of Congress. And how the politicians are so eager to do the...
View ArticleThe Wall Street backlash
Here we go again. Another round of the game we call Congressional Creep. After months of haggling and debate, Congress finally passes reform legislation to fix a serious rupture in the body politic,...
View ArticleObama’s new Wall Street foes
Benjamin Franklin, who used his many talents to become a wealthy man, famously said that the only things certain in life are death and taxes. But if you’re a corporate CEO in America today, even they...
View ArticleSuper PACS hit “Sesame Street”
A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about how the media giants who own your local commercial television and radio stations have been striking like startled rattlesnakes at an FCC proposal that would shed a...
View ArticleJoseph McCarthy reborn
We’ve talked at times about George Orwell’s classic novel "1984," and the amnesia that sets in when we flush events down the memory hole, leaving us at the mercy of only what we know today. Sometimes,...
View ArticleMemorial for America’s conscience
Facing the truth is hard to do, especially the truth about ourselves. So Americans have been sorely pressed to come to terms with the fact that after 9/11 our government began to torture people, and...
View ArticleBill Moyers on the Disclose Act
In this Web-exclusive video essay, Bill Moyers addresses the failure of the Disclose Act and calls out politicians who fight tooth and nail to hide the truth about the wealthy few who purchase and...
View ArticleAmerica’s poor: Out of sight, out of mind
It’s just astonishing to us how long this campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people. Official Washington continues to see poverty with tunnel vision – “out of sight,...
View ArticleRalph Reed rises from the ashes
As the sun slowly sets over the Republican National Convention in Tampa, we settle back in the chairs that nice Mr. Eastwood just gave us and ponder some of the other oddities of the week. Like this...
View ArticleDemocracy for sale
Like everyone else, we watched the movie of the week – that clandestine video from Mitt Romney’s fundraiser in Florida. Thanks to that anonymous cameraperson, we now have a record of what our modern...
View ArticleHow many Americans need to die in Afghanistan?
Matt Sitton knew the war in Afghanistan was going badly. He knew it because he was fighting it. He could see for himself. Twenty-six years old, with a wife and child back home, Staff Sergeant Sitton...
View ArticleJustice to the highest bidder
When the National Football League ended its lockout of the professional referees and the refs returned to call the games, all across the country players, fans, sponsors and owners breathed a sigh of...
View ArticleWhen plutocrats bullied voters
The new Gilded Age is roaring down on us – an uncaged tiger on a rampage. Walk out to the street in front of our office here in Manhattan, look to the right and you can see the symbol of it: a fancy...
View ArticleAn FCC Christmas gift for Rupert Murdoch?
Until now, this hasn’t been the best year for media mogul Rupert Murdoch. For one, none of the Republicans who had been on the payroll of his Fox News Channel – not Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or...
View ArticleObamacare, brought to you by Johnson & Johnson
We’ve seen how Washington insiders write the rules of politics and the economy to protect powerful special interests, but now as we enter the holiday season, and a month or so after the election, we’re...
View ArticleAre lobbyists just well-paid politicians?
Last week, we talked about the infernal revolving door between government and big business and how one person in particular, Liz Fowler, has spun through it so many times she may need to take something...
View ArticleWe’d all be packing heat if the NRA had its way
We wrote and spoke about guns just a few days before Christmas, following the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. So did Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association. His now infamous, “no...
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