ArcaMax

"Somebody better investigate soon."

That's a lyric in Bob Dylan's "Oxford Town," a 1962 song deploring the relentless murdering of Black people and civil rights activists in the Deep South. The line mocks the refusal of racist officials to punish the white murderers, instead cynically covering up atrocities by promising do-nothing "...Read more

Free market ideologues fabricate some of the most preposterous yarns trying to justify their assertion of corporate greed over public need.

Consider their far-fetched of laissez-fairyland tale that by allowing corporate giants to dodge the billions of tax dollars they owe to our country, the top executives of those corporations will plow that...Read more

When a fox attacks a hen house, is it uncivil for the hens to raise a ruckus?

Two Supreme Court justices say it is. Elevating collegiality above social justice, right-wing extremist Amy Coney Barrett and progressive jurist Sonia Sotomayor have jointly been hailing America's top court as a model of genteel political discourse, claiming that ...Read more

Poor Katie Britt, the Republican senator from Alabama. She was set up by her party's operatives to do the GOP's televised response to Joe Biden's State of the Union speech.

Sadly, her moment in the national limelight was widely panned, even by Republicans, for her presentation was overwrought and -- well, cringey. But the visuals pale to ...Read more

In my view, the greatest of America's "Founding Fathers" was not George Washington or Thomas Jefferson -- nor, technically, he wasn't even an American. Rather, he was a British immigrant and itinerate agitator for real democracy, enlightenment and universal human rights.

He was Thomas Paine, a prolific, profound, persuasive and widely popular...Read more

Although the sun is an essential life force, we need to protect ourselves from its relentless glare.

Sunglasses? Check. Beach umbrella? Check. Tinted car windows? Check. A huge, multitrillion-dollar parasol floating in outer space to reduce global warming? Uh ... huh?

Ready or not, here come the corporate hucksters and techno-fantasists with...Read more

"Corporate crises consultants" (yes, there are such creatures) have patented a formula allowing their wrongdoing clients to champion reform while simultaneously killing it.

A classic case is now unfolding around last year's derailment of a 2-mile-long Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio. The community's air, soil, water and...Read more

Here's our big word of the day: Extraterritoriality.

It expresses a sketchy legal theory asserting that rulers in one state have a right to enforce their laws in another state. The most prominent use of it was in the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, requiring officials in Northern anti-slave states to capture and return escaped slaves to ...Read more

Bruce King, former governor of New Mexico, often baffled people with his convoluted use of words. Like the time he vetoed a loan shark bill he'd previously agreed to sign. "But, Governor," squealed the lenders' lobbyists, "we had your commitment!" Unfazed, King said, "Now, boys, we all know that a commitment is not a promise."

In this case, ...Read more

This plotline could have come from one of Charles Dickens' novels about upper-class depravity: "Miserly governors refuse to provide gruel for poverty-stricken ragamuffins."

Unfortunately, this is not a novel, but modern-day reality taking place in 15 states, where right-wing officeholders have scorned a federal program to provide food this ...Read more

In the 1980s, many Texans were alarmed that hordes of immigrants were fleeing Rust Belt states and pouring across the Red River to take our jobs. So, my friend Steve Fromholz recommended a big beautiful wall across our northern border to keep them out.

But Fromholz -- a popular singer-songwriter and renown political sprite -- was ahead of his...Read more

In cities all across America, an infiltration of wealthy investors, developers and bankers is driving poor and middle-class families out of their own towns.

What's at work here is the relentless financial shove of high-dollar gentrification. House by house, block by block, moneyed interests suddenly (and often secretly) buy up properties, ...Read more