ArcaMax

Playing the billionaires' news game, mega-investor Warren Buffett once held a portfolio of 31 dailies and 49 weeklies, including such major city papers as the Buffalo News and the Omaha World Herald. He specialized in squeezing out competitors. His scheme was to create monopoly papers and then chop staff and news content, letting him glean ...Read more

"Summertime, and the living is easy, fish are jumping, and ..." Wait a minute, what the hell is this?

A summer camp for kids -- but with a disturbing corporate twist. Some outlets of Chick-fil-A, the fast-food chicken chain, are promoting a summer camp where children as young as 5 can learn "how to be a Chick-fil-A worker."

Isn't this fun? ...Read more

What is a SCOTUS? Sounds like a prehistoric critter scuttling along some seabed. But, no, it is the acronym for our Supreme Court of the United States.

SCOTUS is meant to be the impartial arbiter of legal disputes over what our laws mean. Yet, who are these arbiters, how are they elected, why don't we even know their names, and if they go ...Read more

For us Texans, there's nothing new about Bible-thumping politicians bedeviling us with the foolishness of their dogmatic Christian piety. A century ago, for example, a proposal was made to offer bilingual education to Spanish-speaking school kids. But it was quashed by the governor, who solemnly declared: "If English was good enough for Jesus ...Read more

Here's a member of Congress with too much time on his hands ... and way too little of anything on his mind.

Rep. Greg Steube of Florida is a run-of-the-mill, extremist Republican specializing in such partisan slapstick as trying to nullify Joe Biden's election and install GOP loser, Donald Trump, as president.

But Steube went full-tilt ...Read more

Excellent news, people: Republican officials are mounting an all-out political push for a massive cut in our taxes next year!

Well ... by "our taxes," they don't mean yours. Rather, here they come with another absurd sob story about giant corporations and the super-wealthy suffering unbearably from excessive taxation. Claiming to feel the ...Read more

Sam Alito is so ugly that he can't even see his ugliness.

I don't mean looks, but the deep inner ugliness of character that keeps oozing from this so-called "supreme" judge. Start with the unabashed lies he told senators to win his lifetime appointment to America's powerfully undemocratic judicial branch. Lie No. 1 was his promise not to mess...Read more

One group of oppressed Americans has become especially outspoken this election year, contending that top government officials (Democrats in particular) are ignoring their community's basic needs and stifling their pursuit of economic advancement.

I speak, of course, about the tragic plight of our nation's downtrodden multibillionaire class. ...Read more

A Republican senator once tried excusing the egomaniacal right-wing nastiness of his colleague, Ted Cruz, declaring, "Sometimes Ted is his own worst enemy." I said to myself: "Not while I'm alive he's not."

But now, I'm reassessing, because Cruz keeps descending deeper into self-pity and self-destruction. For example, he's recently been ...Read more

Let me be clear that I mean no disrespect to reptiles when I note that Jonathan Mitchell is a snake.

An extremist right-wing Texas lawyer, Mitchell is actually creepier and altogether more diabolical that your average serpent could think of being. Mitchell slithers around the country as a self-appointed anti-abortion vigilante, terrorizing ...Read more

Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity's Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order, "above and before every other duty."

Really -- even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America's corporate-care system...Read more

Woe is us (the American people) for having our jewel of a national Postal Service saddled with a corporate-minded postmaster general, Louis DeJoy. Formerly CEO of a private shipping contractor, DeJoy's chief qualification for running this invaluable public service is that he's been a major donor to Republican politicians -- including Donald ...Read more

A farmer friend of mine once bemoaned the fact that the Democrat we'd both supported for president, Bill Clinton, was hugging up Wall Street and stiffing family farmers. "I don't mind losing when we lose," my friend said, "but I hate losing when we win."

Agreed. Yet, losing in politics is sometimes a prelude to winning, calling not for ...Read more