How the Cliven Bundy saga exposes America’s most enduring myth When the anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy stepped before the cameras to “tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he also stepped into far-reaching and noxious American historical myths about self-sufficiency, race, and rugged individualism. Bundy’s actual words—delivered in a Western drawl by…
New type of poverty: How the iPhone became a placebo for the poor The face of poverty in America has changed dramatically from what Walker Evans and James Agee indelibly captured in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, their book documenting the lives of our nation’s poverty-stricken tenant farmers during the Great Depression. Now, an American family…
LIAR: Rand Paul says 40 times more Kentuckians have had health insurance canceled than have signed up for Obamacare A reader sent us a newsletter to constituents released by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a critic of the law and a potential presidential candidate in 2016. The claim that leapt out at us was, “For every Kentuckian that…
Why is Sakuma using guest workers as strikebreakers? By law, a company can’t hire H-2A guest workers if it is in a labor dispute with its US workforce. But that is exactly what this Washington State berry grower is trying to do. This year Sakuma Farms, in Skagit County, applied for H-2A work visas for 438…
Inequality has been going on forever, but that doesn’t mean it’s inevitable We have been living with rising income inequality for so long—in good times and bad, under Republican presidents and Democratic ones—that it has come to seem inevitable. It is no longer news that the affluent did better than everyone else during the booms…
How the Democrats can avoid going down this November: The new science of Democratic survival In one very measurable and consequential sense, there are two Americas. There is the America that votes in presidential elections, which has helped Democrats win the popular vote in five out of the last six cycles and supports the view that…
Fleetwood plans to challenge Ericksen for state Senate Former Bellingham City Council and Whatcom County Council member Seth Fleetwood has announced plans to run against Republican state Sen. Doug Ericksen for the 42nd District seat, setting up a lively race between two well-known political figures. Fleetwood, an attorney, served on the Whatcom County Council for eight…
In victory for Obama, justices back rule limiting coal pollution In a major victory for the Obama administration, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the smog from coal plants that drifts across state lines from 28 Midwestern and Appalachian states to the East Coast. The 6-2 ruling bolsters the…
Wall Street Republicans’ dark secret: Hillary Clinton 2016 The biggest parlor game on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms these days is guessing whether former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will run for president and save the GOP’s old establishment base from its rising populist wing. The second most popular game is guessing what happens if Jeb…
GOP: At sea in Bellevue without Rodney Tom? With Rodney Tom out of the running, the 48th Legislative District is gearing up for a good ol’-fashioned red-on-blue rumble. That’s bad news for the Republicans in a district where they’ve suffered a 20-year bleed of support. Everything changed in the swing district with the announcement by incumbent Sen….