The proper reaction to this disgusting move — remember, we’re talking about a for-profit corporate sector that rakes in billions of dollars a month and pays its CEOs millions of dollars a year — is to line up the executives responsible against a wall and shoot them full of holes, then deny the healthcare claims of any who survive just because, as the rest of us routinely experience.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Welcome to the Machine, President Sanders
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“Welcome to the White House, Mr. President-Elec…I’m sorry—Mr. President. Hard habit to break. This way, sir — this is the Oval Office. If there’s anything you need, just let me know, sir.”
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Are Millennials the Most Ageist Generation Ever?
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Those 30-year-old gatekeepers in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who think that everyone over 35 has nothing to contribute are screwing themselves too, and leaving money on the table.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: If Rachel Dolezal is a Liar, What is Barack Obama?
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Rachel Dolezal, the former Spokane leader of the NAACP who was born white but pretends to be (or “identifies as”) black, is widely assumed to be a lying con artist, suffering from psychological problems, or both. Many Americans, especially blacks who suffer at the hands of systemic racial discrimination, were furious at what they saw as Dolezal’s lack of — forgive me — skin in the game. Unlike dark-skinned African-Americans pulled over by racist policemen for a broken taillight, she could opt out any time. Indeed, she did exactly that when she sued her alma mater, the historically black Howard University, for race discrimination — because she was white. Dolezel has stepped down from her unpaid post where, by all accounts, she did a magnificent job. But what about another case of racial slumming that is not dissimilar from Dolezal’s, but far more prominent? I speak here — though few others dare — of President Obama. Obama, as everyone knows,…
Read MoreSYNDICATED COLUMN: Digging Your Own Grave: Evil Employers Can Lay You Off, But You Don’t Have To Go Quietly
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You’ve seen it in movies: gangsters are going to kill a guy. But before they do, they force him to dig his own grave. Who would go along with that? What are these doomed souls thinking? Why, during their final moments alive, doesn’t the victim avail himself of the chance to die defiantly, with dignity, going to his death with the small pleasure of knowing that his assassin will at least be inconvenienced by the disposal of his body? That was the question running through my head as I read a story that made my blood boil: Disney World in Orlando, Florida recently laid off 250 tech workers and had an Indian outsourcing company supply their lower salary replacements with foreign recipients of H-1B visas. This disgusting practice, which is becoming increasingly common and is the subject of a congressional investigation and at least one lawsuit, is illegal. H-1B visas are only supposed to go to highly educated foreign workers…
Read MoreSYNDICATED COLUMN: Empty Symbolism – Why the Freedom Act Sucks
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Even as symbolic reform of the NSA, the new USA Freedom Act falls woefully short of what is needed. Unfortunately, many Americans will settle for this and move on to another issue.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Military Service is for Suckers
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Monday was Memorial Day, when Americans are supposed to remember military veterans, particularly those who made sacrifices — lives, limbs, sanity — fighting our wars. As usual, rhetoric was abundant. People hung flags. Some placed flowers on military graves. There were parades, including one in which a reporter got hit by a drone. President Obama added an oddly pacifist twist to his annual speech, noting that it was “the first Memorial Day in 14 years that the United States is not engaged in a major ground war.” Excuse me while I puke. Talk is nice, but veterans need action. Disgusting but true: when it comes to actual help —spending enough money to make sure they can live with dignity — talk is all the U.S. has to offer. It isn’t just last year’s scandal at the Veterans Administration, which made vets wait for ages to see a doctor, then faked the books to make itself look responsive — and where…
Read MoreSYNDICATED COLUMN: Hillary Clinton’s Life of Crime
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Bill and Hillary Clinton “earned” — can a mortal earn such stratospheric sums? — “at least $30 million over the last 16 months, mainly from giving paid speeches to corporations, banks and other organizations,” The New York Times reports. “They have now earned more than $125 million on the [lecture] circuit since leaving the White House in 2001.” This is an important issue. But the big story has little to with what actually matters. Coverage of the Clintons’ spectacularly lucrative speaking career has focused on how it affects Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign — specifically the political damage caused by the public’s growing perception that Hillary is out of touch with the common man and woman. It is a promising line of inquiry for her detractors (myself included). Hillary is out of touch. She hasn’t been behind the wheel of an automobile for nearly 20 years, is a multi-multi-millionaire who nevertheless considered herself “dead broke” and still believes that she and…
Read MoreSYNDICATED COLUMN: “Our Hearts and Prayers Go Out…”
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When Did Post-Disaster News Conferences Become Long-Winded Oscar Acceptance Speeches? This is for you older readers: when did news conferences become long-winded acceptance speeches? I’m too young to remember for sure, but There must have been a time when, after a train derailment or a tornado or a flood or a race riot or whatever, public officials stepped up to the microphones to deliver a status update (“as soon as we learn more, we’ll let you know”), and perhaps some advice to the public (“avoid downed live wires, especially the ones that are sparking, like in that movie The Ice Storm”), answered reporters’ questions and left the stage. Today’s news conferences are a dreary, undignified mélange of pro forma acknowledgements and sentimental pabulum. A news conference following this week’s fatal high-speed derailment of an Amtrak passenger train in Philadelphia was a typical example: SENATOR PAT TOOMEY (R-PA): The scene is a horrific and heartbreaking scene. My prayers go out…
Read MoreSYNDICATED COLUMN: The NSA Loses in Court, but the Police State Rolls On
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Edward Snowden has been vindicated. This week marks the first time that a court – a real court, not a sick joke of a kangaroo tribunal like the FISA court, which approves every government request and never hears from opponents – has ruled on the legality of one of the NSA’s spying programs against the American people. Verdict: privacy 1, police state 0. Yet the police state goes on. Which is what happens in, you know, a police state. The pigs always win. A unanimous three-judge ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, states unequivocally that the Obama Administration’s interpretation of the USA Patriot Act is fatally flawed. Specifically, it says, Congress never intended for Section 215 to authorize the bulk interception and storage of telephony metadata of domestic phone calls: the calling number, the number called, the length of the call, the locations of both parties, and so on. In fact, the…
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