ArcaMax

In high school, I had a girlfriend who was involved in student government and all sorts of good works. While she paid attention to all that was happening in those years of the early '60s, she essentially was a moderate -- certainly not some movement rebel. Or so we thought ... until one lazy Sunday afternoon. As we aimlessly "cruised the drag" ...Read more

Making real democratic change is messy, inherently anti-establishment and fundamentally about choosing sides. Throughout our history, we have periodically needed large, disruptive political shake-ups to assure the survival and expansion of the democratic ideals that make America's social cohesion possible. Those shake-ups have not come from the ...Read more

Wartime profiteering is an especially vile form of corporate greed, yet it has been as common in our country as war itself.

Indeed, during the American Revolution, assorted corrupt merchants and traders lined their pockets by controlling the supply and jacking up the prices of various goods they sold to the Continental Army and the general ...Read more

Just when you thought this political year couldn't get any weirder, along comes the entire Democratic Party establishment rushing en masse to the cliff's edge, hurling itself headfirst into the presidential contest. What has spurred this gaggle of political operatives, fat-cat donors and former presidential hopefuls is a collective impulse to ...Read more

It's over. Donald the Dealmaker says that he has ended America's long nightmare in Afghanistan, finally terminating 18-plus years of grinding war (the longest in U.S. history). After more than 2,400 Americans killed (another 20,000 wounded), more than 100,000 Afghan citizens killed (countless more maimed) and roughly $2 trillion wasted, Trump is...Read more

Big, high walls can be troublesome. Ask Humpty Dumpty. Or consider the Canaanite city of Jericho: According to a Biblical tale, its walls came tumbling down when Joshua and the Israelites encircled it and blew their horns.

However, for a real-life, epic story about wall troubles, ponder the trials and tribulations of our very own president. He ...Read more

When grassroots groups rise up against the corporate establishment trying to win some specific progressive change for the common good, the odds against them can seem daunting. As an old saying puts it: Where there's a will ... there are 1,000 won'ts.

Those won'ts tend to be moneyed powers making a killing from the status quo, so they're dead ...Read more

With dozens of Democratic candidates having entered the presidential race (some dropping out before you were aware they'd dropped in), with the main contenders herded into seven (and counting) televised debates stretching back to June, and with swarms of reporters and pundits descending on the tiniest blip in polls and on every candidate's minor...Read more

As we hurtle into the 2020s, the future of our food economy (and food itself) remains a fiercely contested competition between diametrically opposed visions: a negative pole consisting of the concentrated forces of corporate agriBusiness, which view the dinner plate strictly in terms of their own profit margins, and a positive polarity of ...Read more

Sen. Russell Long, the powerful Senate Finance Committee chair from 1966 to 1981 from the great state of Louisiana, liked to recite a little jingle highlighting the thorny political process of tax reform: "Don't tax you. Don't tax me. Tax that man behind the tree."

Yes, let's do just that! Today, our nominee for "that man behind the tree" is ...Read more