As we gape 24/7 at the amazing ridiculousness of The Donald, our pockets are being picked, not by scammers who are barely getting by themselves, but by wildly rich, greedy, and powerful corporations. Read more...
To the amazement of longtime locals in many parts of America, gentrification has surged in recent years, suddenly swamping whole communities in US urban centers, as well as in close-in suburbs and quaint small towns. The developers, bankers, and public officials pushing such incursions try to soften the destructive impacts of gentrification by cloaking the term with euphemisms like “revitalization” and “enrichment”–implying progress for all and a beautiful community uplift. In fact, though, it has nearly always been a code word for a particularly ugly form of class war. Read more...
Most voters want BIG populist changes in government policy that will lift up average Americans and hold down corporate greed and abuse. One major proposal to do just that is the 11-point Economic Agenda for America's Future drafted by a broad coalition of some 80 progressive thinkers and doers. This document is both a to-do list for restoring economic democracy and a rallying cry to move today's burgeoning democratic movement from mere resistance to insistence on a bold, percolate-up alternative to Republican/Democratic trickle-down economics. Read more...
The Lowdown’s report last month on the Koch Klan’s plutocratic coup against your and my democratic rights prompted a few... Read more...
Since the middle of the last century, greedy schemers have mounted a sneaky, slow motion coup of attrition, moving methodically from one political venue to another, donning multiple organizational guises to strike down a law here, reverse a public policy there, demonize "others," and ambush progressive groups all along the way. Its chief instigators are the multibillionaire Koch boys, Charles and David, who've been consistently financing and implementing this ongoing assault since the 1960s. Read more...
As the winter solstice nears, people around the world are celebrating end-of-the-year holidays that, while widely diverse, share the ideal... Read more...
This treacherous corporate scheme doesn't merely gouge buyers. Using both legal ruses and digital lockdowns, major manufacturers are quietly attempting to outlaw the natural instinct of us humanoids to fiddle with and improve the material things we own. Read more...
Bezos constantly claims that his relentless push for an Amazonian remake of our economy and culture is all about helping... Read more...
Amazon’s ruthless practices are crushing Main Street–and threatening the vitality of our communities
Even by the anything-goes ethical code of the corporate jungle, Amazon.com’s alpha male, Jeff Bezos, is considered a ruthless predator... Read more...
BEZOS’ COLD, MICROMANAGED, time-motion approach to the workplace is a direct descendant (and extreme extension) of a theory of “scientific management”... Read more...
LEGEND HAS IT that Amazon is a classic story of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. In 1994, a bright,... Read more...
Like Walmart, only with supercomputers and drones: At Amazon.com “cheap” comes at a very hefty price
IN HIS CLASSIC 1936 COMEDY, ModernTimes, silent filmmaker Charlie Chaplin depicted the trials and tribulations of a harried factory worker trying... Read more...
You might expect such liberal bastions as Boston, Madison, Boulder, and San Francisco to call for an end to corporate... Read more...
In order of the date of passage, here are the 16 states that have already petitioned Congress to let their... Read more...
So many absurdities abound in our lives that there’s a whole body of philosophical thought called “absurdism,” as well as... Read more...
Oklahomans have been socked with a surprise from their supposedly conservative state officials. Thousands of Sooners have put solar panels... Read more...
If a tree falls in the woods and NBC, ABC, and CBS aren’t there to cover the crash, does it... Read more...
Imagine my surprise when Robert Marcus, COO of Time Warner Cable, reached out to me in March. I don’t get... Read more...
While taking in the splendor of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, a tourist came across a monk and asked if... Read more...
Working. Poor. In our US of A, those words ought never be juxtaposed. The very concept of paying poverty wages in... Read more...
Until her death last summer, Margaret Mary Vojtkotaught French for 25 years at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, earning high marks from... Read more...
Several pro football franchises have chosen chest-pounding team names meant to symbolize how big, powerful, ferocious, and scary they are–names... Read more...
By gollies, McDonald’s cares. Despite being a corporate behemoth (more than 14,000 stores in the US, $27 billion a year... Read more...
Beginning in elementary school, we’re taught a fictionalized “Great Man” version of our history. Generals, presidents, industrialists! All are romanticized, sanctified,... Read more...
Some of you might remember “CREEP” from 1972’s Nixon-McGovern matchup. It could’ve been an apt code name for Tricky Dick himself,... Read more...