Before mountaintop coal removal and after.

Back in the 1960s, coal companies discovered they could get at coal seams more cheaply by blasting off the tops of mountains. This removes the land, or “over-burden” in coal company jargon.

It also removes all the trees and wildlife, pollu… Read full post »

In one short decade, home ownership has gone from being the Holy Grail of middle-class financial achievement — the biggest and most lucrative investment most of us would ever make, and the one most reliably likely to pay off — to a very risky financial ball-and-chain that more and… Read full post »

Imagine being yanked from your home and family for a year at a time, three, four, or even five times, shipped to a war zone where you never know who might be trying to kill you and having to kill other human beings just to stay alive. You watch friends die,… Read full post »

Members of the Class of 2012,

As a former secretary of labor and current professor, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the truth about the pieces of parchment you’re picking up today.

You’re fucked.

Well, not exactly. But you won’t have it easy.

First, you’re going to… Read full post »

Remember the heady days of the Arab spring? People in motion. Democracy breaking out all over. And right in the middle of everything … Facebook!

Activists in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, we marveled, were using Facebook and other social media tools to link and share and grow their move… Read full post »

Looking at photos of the demonstrations in Chicago reminds me a little of the Democratic National Convention in 1968. During that steamy summer, Chicago exploded as protesters gathered there to show solidarity against the war in Vietnam.

Once again, we the people are pissed off about our money… Read full post »

My first reaction to the now-famous Washington Post story of how an 18-year-old Mitt Romney bullied and assaulted a fellow student at the prestigious Cranbrook School was personal. The story is well known by now. Romney objected to John Lauber’s bleach blonde hair, draped over one eye,… Read full post »

This is what the extreme right wing wants for women.

On the last day of the legislative session, the Missouri legislature passed a bill allowing employers and health plan providers to opt out of covering contraception or abortion in health plans if such health services violate their religious… Read full post »

There is a news report that yet another right-wing billionaire is going to spend even more millions to run even more poisonous, divisive, racist, degrading, insulting, lying, character-assassination ads designed to turn people against government and democracy. And an added bonus (for Republicans) wil… Read full post »

There’s a number of reasons that we’re experiencing our current bout of right wing extremism taking over the Republican Party, causing them to primary anyone who is seen in public with a Democrat and pushing them to do things like, oh, side with people who think it’s just awful that… Read full post »

It’s time to retire the 99 percent.

Not the people, but the slogan that identifies the Occupy Movement.

“We’re the 99 percent†slogan focused upon two completely different groups of people.

The 99 percent are the masses, the impoverished, the disenfranchised, the middle class; the 1 pe… Read full post »

This week, a federal judge found indefinite detention to be unconstitutional, but this morning, the US House of Representatives voted to keep it anyway.

I mean, what’s a 200-year-old, dried up piece of parchment anyway when a terrorist might be able to light his exploding underpants on f… Read full post »

Told ya so. I said earlier that Newt Gingrich had pretty much written the script for atleast one Democratic television spot, with his double-barreled attack on Mitt Romney’s vulture capitalist career at the helm of Bain Capital. I just didn’t think I’d be saying “I told ya… Read full post »

By my friend and former colleague Matt Davies.

As a Supreme Court announcement on the Affordable Care Act nears, the volume on the rhetoric is rising almost to the pitch it was before President Obama signed the bill into law. House Speaker John Boehner is promising to eviscerate the law if… Read full post »

If, as George Lakoff says, we view politics through the metaphor of family, then Mother’s Day would have been a good time to ask the question: Where’s Mom in this picture? What are all those dirty socks and pizza boxes doing in the living room? Seriously: It looks like a frat… Read full post »

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the nation’s largest bank, whose chief executive, Jamie Dimon, has led Wall Street’s war against regulation, announced Thursday it had lost $2 billion in trades over the past six weeks and could face an additional $1 billion of losses, due to excessively risky… Read full post »

On every day of the year, save one, America’s corporate CEOs can confidently strut about and face no open, unscripted public challenge. That one: the day their annual corporate shareholders meeting takes place.

On that dicey day, in theory at least, America’s top corporate executives a… Read full post »

Progressives often marvel at how focused, coordinated and aggressive our conservative opposition is. They seem to fall into lockstep and march, building large organizations and executing complex strategies with an astonishing rate of success. We may be smarter, better educated and more realit… Read full post »

Amy and Lauren run Be Loved House, which ministers to homeless and poor people. They take no salary, but live on donations of food and clothing. They want the legal rights and protections that marriage offers. They were among the eight arrested Friday.

I cry at weddings. What can I say?… Read full post »

Muslim women break the fast of Ramadan. US soldiers have been taught by the military that civilian populations of Muslims are fair game for attack.

Future leaders in the United States armed services have been taught by the military that Muslims must be wiped out through “total war”… Read full post »

Back in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, a short story took the American reading public by storm. Edward Everett Hale’s “The Man Without a Country†told the tale of a poor treasonous soul sentenced to spend the rest of his life endlessly sailing the seven seas, in perpetual… Read full post »

Can I just say how much I love Joe Biden??? I love Joe Biden. I always have. I love that he will speak his mind, whether it is politically correct, or whether it’ll piss somebody off. I love that he speaks from the heart, whether it’s to say he supports… Read full post »

What’s end of the line for austerity? We’ve gone through despair, desperation, and indifference. The latter feeds the first two, creating what Robert Reich calls “a tinderbox society,” as “those collecting capital gains” demand austerity, resulting in “ris… Read full post »

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this frustrated.

A minority of North Carolina’s registered voters just robbed hundreds of thousand of people of their rights.

Our state constitution has been amended to discriminate against people who aren’t legally married all in t… Read full post »

What are the three demographic groups whose electoral impact is growing fastest? Hispanics, women, and young people. Who are Republicans pissing off the most? Latinos, women, and young people.

It’s almost as if the GOP can’t help itself.

Start with Hispanic voters, whose electoral heft kee… Read full post »