ArcaMax

There's a new political army on the march in America, moving forcibly into the 2020 presidential campaign. Tromp, tromp, tromp they come -- it's the Billionaire Brigade!

It's actually a very small army -- only 749 Americans rank as billionaires -- but they have lots of firepower. Collectively, they've amassed some $4 trillion in personal wealth...Read more

It's time to talk turkey!

No, not the Butterball sitting in the Oval Office. I'm talking about the real thing, the big bird, 46 million of which we Americans will devour on this Thanksgiving Day.

It was the Aztecs who first domesticated the gallopavo , but leave it to the Spanish explorers to "foul up" the bird's origins. They declared...Read more

Years ago, a Texas legislator who was occasionally known to take lobbyists' cash in exchange for a vote, explained his ethical framework as opportunistic: "I seen my chances, and I took 'em."

Likewise, such hustlers as Dan Gilbert (the billionaire founder of Quicken Loans), Michael Milken (the disgraced Wall Street finagler), Stephen Ross (a ...Read more

I should start this homily on inequality by distinguishing income from wealth. Income is your annual wages or salary, as well as your earnings from a business, pension or government benefits such as Social Security, etc.

As the average U.S. worker's real wages have stagnated for more than a decade, income disparity has become enormous. The ...Read more

I love nature shows on TV. They take you into the jungles, the ocean depths, the deserts, the frozen poles and our own backyards to probe the behavior and intellects of our fellow creatures and the cosmic forces that shape them.

However, there's one exotic creature the shows have ignored, and it is crying out for scientific analysis: Humanoid ...Read more

When you're undergoing a dental procedure, there's one thing you never want to hear you dentist say: "Oops!"

It's also alarming to hear that from a former senator 25 years after he passed a temporary subsidy for Big Oil. With world petroleum prices low at the time, Sen. J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana pushed through a special break in 1995, ...Read more

Government by the rich is called plutocracy. Government by police power is autocracy. Government by thieves is kleptocracy. Government by Trump and the gang, however, is all of the above, which adds up to something called kakistocracy: government by the very worst people in our society.

Forget Trump himself for a moment and look at the ...Read more

When Jesse Jackson ran a strong populist campaign for president in 1988, advocating bold new policies and programs to address inequality, establishment skeptics scoffed, "Where ya gonna get the money?" Jackson answered directly: "Get it from where it went."

He meant from corporations and the rich, which had been rigging the economic system and ...Read more

Here's a recipe for you: Chop up 6 Oscar Meyer wieners, stir in 1 cup of Heinz ketchup, blend with 1/2 cup each of Cool Whip and Maxwell House Coffee, sprinkle a 1/2 cup of Planters peanuts over the mixture, add 3 spoonfuls of A.1. Steak Sauce and then top it off with a jar of Cheez Whiz and blast it in the microwave.

Sound like a gloppy mess...Read more

Do you shop at a Kroger supermarket? Or maybe at Ralphs, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Fry's, City Market, Pick 'n Save or ... well, never mind. All of these and more are part of the vast Kroger fiefdom of 2,759 grocery stores spanning the U.S. It also owns 38 food processing plants, 44 distribution centers, 1,556 gas stations and 251 jewelry stores...Read more

As British playwright and political rabble-rouser George Bernard Shaw noted, "You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself."

That certainly has been true of progressives in our country. We've never been able to advance our people's little-D democratic goals by idly ...Read more

For millions of people around the globe -- especially young people -- the pressing issue of our time is this: The world is on fire! On fire with climate change, creating a new and intensifying norm of deadly weather extremes that make a dystopian future a distinct possibility -- constant wildfires, rising seas, desertification, global crop ...Read more