From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Nation in just two months November 2011Americans who flew bombing missions in World War II had a saying: “You know you’re on target when you start getting...
Citizens united against Citizens United: A grassroots campaign to restore democracy October 2011Thank you Mitt Romney! Thank you for standing tall, speaking so forthrightly, and rallying so many democracy-loving Americans to join together...
It’s time to name the tea party politicians (and their sponsors)–and call them out September 2011As he keeps demonstrating, President Obama is not exactly Mount Rushmore material. But — good God! — the petulant pettiness and...
Why are we letting corporate Supremists steal our democracy from us? August 2011Bill Watterson is Mark Twain–with a drawing pen. He is a master cartoonist, but also a sharp-witted observer of the...
Summertime Lowdown: A picnic basket of absurdities, oddities, and some sweet positives July 2011It’s frightening to watch the Texas legislature in action, but it can also be entertaining–in the same way a freak show...
Billionaires’ front groups attack workers, public schools, and young voters June 2011In January, a small group of Indiana schoolteachers encountered their governor, Mitch Daniels, in a hallway of the state capitol. They...
A battery of elected ideologues opens fire on those who serve the public May 2011You’re not likely to have known Robert Clark, Ruth West, Chet Newall, Webb Kamp, or Darrell Odom, but I wouldn’t be...
The Big Three secret funders of the $75 million campaign to trash Democratic candidates April 2011It’s unlikely that you have heard of a novel entitled Alpaca, but it was a remarkably portentous piece of political writing by...
Here’s who is buying America’s democracy March 2011In 1986, Richard Kimball, a Democratic state legislator in Arizona, was running for a US Senate seat. In a televised...
The top four victories handed to corporate America by today’s Supreme Court–so far February 2011One of the great works of American political literature is Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, first published in 1906. From A-Z, Bierce...
A new Wall Street sin tax could raise $100B a year to reinvest in Main Street America January 2011Lonnie Johnson was the early blues and jazz great who turned the guitar into a solo instrument. In the 1920s, he...
Postcards from the frontroads and backroads of the 2010 election campaigns December 2010The day before the election, I sensed a strange karma, as though some diabolical political force was settling across the...
Grassroots progressives give us real reasons to be grateful this Thanksgiving November 2010Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock form the Flatlanders, a powerhouse trio of Texas singer/ songwriters now based in...
In Iraq, Obama says it’s over but it’s not; In Afghanistan, who wants to die for Karzai? October 2010At long last, it’s over. In the pre-dawn hours of August 18–seven years, two months, and 18 days after George W...
Corporate kings grab our tax subsidies but create no new jobs. Obama fiddles. September 2010By gollies, when the economic going gets toughfor America’s workaday people, you can always count on our tough-minded political leaders...
Corporations scoff at workers’ rights–even the right to come home from work alive August 2010Their names probably won’t mean mean anything to you, but these people ought to have some modicum of personal recognition: Jason...
Big biz wants to own the information superhighway while We the People bump along the backroads July 2010In the 1970s, Lily Tomlin developed an iconic comic character she named Ernestine–a telephone clerk who took perverse pleasure from hectoring...
To put the progress back in “progressive,” we need a real populist movement June 2010If a political pollster came to my door and asked whether I consider myself a conservative or a liberal, I’d...
Facts–not myths–about our economy May 2010The Dow Jones Average is above 11,000!Corporate profits are up! Wall Street has paid back its bailout money! Executive pay...
300 ex-Congress critters are among the hired guns who kill progressive reforms April 2010Change. That’s what Americans want. We the People–a.k.a. the body politic, the majority, the great unwashed, the hoi polloi, “us”–have made...
Giving corporations more power to buy politicians of their choice March 2010“For too long,” wailed the senator in a heart-tugging cry for justice, “some in this country have been deprived of full...
How corporate money took over Washington–and created the mobs who rant against reform February 2010Despite a constant racket from the forces of the far-out right (Fox television’s yackety-yackers, just-say-no GOP know-nothings, tea-bag howlers, Sarah Palinistas,...
ACORN’s real “crime” is that it empowers the poor January 2010The name Felix Walker is not one you would recognize, but this 19th-century congressman inadvertently contributed a word to America’s political...
These folks aren’t waiting for change, they’re making it happen EMAIL TO A FRIEND PRINT THIS! DISCUSS THIS December 2009Having just graduated from the University of North Texas in June 1965, I headed east to Washington, D.C., for a few...
The “Drug War” is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will November 2009You might remember Robert McNamara’s stunning mea culpa, delivered a quarter century after his Vietnam War policies sent some 50,000...
