ArcaMax

In constitutional terms, America must be educated as broadly as possible "In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice ... (and) promote the general welfare." While a high-school diploma once was enough to do that, providing a ticket out of unskilled drudge work, that diploma now needs an upgrade if people are to escape a life of low...Read more

President Joe Biden recently flew off to Taiwan to assure our allies there that he will fight for them. And a couple of weeks later he was winging off to Saudi Arabia, intending to "repair ties" with that repressive monarchy.

In terms of international realpolitik, this flurry of foreign travel might be strategically important, but there's a ...Read more

Usurping the fundamental rights of women to control their own bodies.

Authorizing corporate giants to buy our elections.

Nullifying the right of organizers to talk to workers about unionizing.

Who is rigging America's legal system against workaday people? The Supreme Court's right-wing extremists, that's who. Just a handful of aloof, ...Read more

Today's six-member supermajority on the Supreme Court has surrendered all claim to being an impartial moral force for blind justice. Instead, the GOP's small network of corporate and right-wing operatives has painstakingly fabricated and weaponized the court as its own political oligarchy. In only a couple of decades, backed by a few ...Read more

Public opinion of the Supreme Court's job performance is plummeting: Only 40% of Americans give the current court a passing grade, down 18 points (!) from just a couple of years ago, and the six members of the court's right-wing majority claim to be baffled by the plunge. To understand why their reputations are crashing, the Alito-Barrett-...Read more

When Supreme Court member Justice Samuel Alito's secret plan for canceling the constitutional right of women to end their pregnancies leaked out to the public, Republican politicos went ballistic! Over the leak, that is.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the perpetually sour old goose who heads the Senate Republican caucus, had a hissy fit when the news ...Read more

The most aggressive and virulent right-wing attacks on women today involve eliminating women's reproductive rights. Again and again, we're seeing small, pious, tightly organized, male-dominated groups in our society insisting that they are the chosen ones, the autocrats ordained to rule over all women on the deeply personal, intrinsically ...Read more

The problem with our so-called "free market" is that it's not free for you and me. It's largely controlled by monopolies, which are free to inflate prices just because they can, without worrying that consumers will be able to flee to cheaper sellers. In turn, this market punch lets the noncompetitive gougers gleefully extract unwarranted ...Read more

It's not widely discussed, but market concentration is a devastating double-edged sword, cutting deeply not only into household budgets, but also into the financial heart of small businesses.

The same monopoly pricing power that abuses consumers can simultaneously exert "monopsony" power. While monopoly refers to a market with very few sellers,...Read more

For years, as ever-bigger corporate combines grabbed ever-bigger chunks of market power, America's political, media and academic establishment scoffed at critics, drowning them out with jolly rounds of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah." But the concentration of corporate power can no longer be dismissed, for it's all too real. It wreaks real havoc on entire ...Read more

I think we can now say the obvious: The Republican Party has gone bull-goose bonkers. Its leaders have turned the once-proud GOP brand into an unprincipled gaggle of corporate profiteers, hatemongers and screwball conspiracy theorists. They're so far-out that the Hubble Space Telescope can't find them!

But where is my Democratic Party? Here's a...Read more

Barry Goldwater, considered a right-wing extremist and fringe candidate in 1964, won the 1964 Republican presidential nomination by declaring that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice!" But the GOP is now way beyond the fringe, declaring that nuttiness in defense of extremism is no vice.

Consider Ginni Thomas. Her recent far-out...Read more

The recent traffic-clogging protests in Canada, Washington, D.C., Europe and elsewhere by long- and short-haul truck drivers were about them being angry over having to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates -- right?

Uh... no. That's the line being put out by right-wing extremists trying to use the legitimate gripes of truckers for their own ...Read more