How do you spell "hypocrisy"?
Thirty-four years ago this month the young James Fallows published (in the Washington Monthly) what still remains a definitive article about the class divide in times of war—“What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?” I still have a yellowed original copy somewhere. Fallows was writing about the sickening reality that as a Harvard student he, like so many other Ivy Leaguers, could quite easily avoid fighting in Vietnam. They had the ways and means to avoid military service: exemptions, deferments, lawyers, connections.
Just before the Senate Finance Committee wrapped up debate
over its Sen. Max Baucus-designed health care bill, its members
debated one of Sen. Jon Kyl's amendments, which would have cut
language defining which benefits employers are required to
cover.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., argued that insurers must be
required to cover basic maternity care. (In several states there
are no such requirements.)
The "battle of the sexes is over" claims the
much-heralded Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything on
American work and family life. Go ahead, take a victory lap.
Unless, of course, you're among the millions of women who
still earn 23 percent less on average in wages, pay 38 percent more for
gender-rated health insurance or fear losing their jobs while trying to juggle
disproportionate family responsibilities without flexible work schedules and
reasonable family-leave policies.
The U.S. economy is has diverged: Wall Street is living high on the hog, while everyone else is struggling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average eclipsed 10,000 for the first time since last October this week, even as unemployment continues to spiral out of control. And while President Barack Obama has taken some very real steps to help ordinary people, his administration’s efforts to save Wall Street have far outstripped their support of workers.
Some people were outraged last week by a report that a member of the kitchen staff of bailed-out Wall Street firm AIG had received a $7,700 bonus.
Surely that was far less outrageous than the million-dollar bonuses paid to others at AIG who actually carried out the firm's financial business.
After all, the kitchen helper produced something that at least could be eaten. Apart from perhaps overcooking the Chateaubriand or leaving spots on the champagne glasses, what harm could the kitchen helper have done – compared to driving the world economy over a cliff?
WASHINGTON — The nation's foreclosure crisis
has swamped lawyers for the poor, leaving thousands of low-income
homeowners across the country without legal assistance that could save
their homes.
Legal offices providing help to the poor are
turning away many who have been hit hard by the economy, according to
lawyers in cities across the country who were interviewed by USA TODAY.
My favorite moment so far in the health care debate was when Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona argued against mandating maternity benefits as part of a basic insurance coverage. “I don’t need maternity care,’’ he blurted out. At which point, Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow quipped, “I think your mom probably did.’’
For that matter, so did his wife and daughter. But never mind. We had one brief glimpse into the mind of a politician who doesn’t quite see women’s health concerns as equal to his own.
What if the Russians invaded?
It's not so far-fetched an idea, you know. We spent half a century and trillions of dollars to make sure that it would never happen, so it's really not such a strange notion.
So what if the Russians invaded?
What if they came and stole all of our money?
What if the Russians invaded and enslaved our children as cheap worker bee drones locked in dismal dead-end jobs?
What if the Russians invaded and excavated all of our natural resources, leaving only mountains of toxic debris in their wake?
The
global discussion on climate change has quickly degenerated into a north-south confrontation, for perhaps obvious reasons. On average, carbon emissions per capita in the developed world are about five times those in developing countries.
