Social Security and its future have been in the news recently as the DOGE guys have been looking at its innards. Yet, it’s not called the third rail of American politics for nothing. Over 70 million Americans rely on it for much, if not all, of their retirement income. Like Medicare, Social Security can be …
The pen is mightier than the sword and the ability to read opens up an entirely new world to someone who lacked that ability before. That’s why the issue of Black literacy in the South has such an important history. For Black citizens, it was a weapon of empowerment and rebellion, while for whites, it …
Years of low unemployment, record stock market gains and a slowing of the rate of inflation under President Jow Biden have given way to an economic muddle in the present under Donald Trump. Are we putting tariffs on allies or are we not? How long can this uncertainty go on without roiling markets and causing …
Whether it was Agent Orange in the Vietnam era, burn pits in Iraq, contaminated water at many bases across the country or 9-11 first responders, why do we, as a nation, make it so hard for these heroes to collect just compensation when we have subjected veterans and first responders to risks unimaginable to …
The Red Scare, after World War II, gave birth to the New Right in America and what we see today in the second Administration of Donald Trump. That, according to historian and New York Times editor, Clay Risen, the author of “Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America.” In his account of …
Back in 2021, then FBI Director, Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, said that white supremacy is a “persistent, evolving threat” and the “biggest chunk” of racially motivated violent extremism in the U.S. To Mike German who served sixteen years as an FBI special agent and the author of “Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within”, that’s …
Choice dominates every sphere of modern life, almost to a point where it becomes overwhelming. Which type of jelly should I buy? Which insurance policy is right? What should I watch on my 5 streaming services? And yet in the political realm often we have two choices and our understanding of what they offer may …
“We the People” is the opening salvo of the Constitution. However, the definition of the people was very limited at the time. And women, among others, were not part of the equation. The Constitution was aspirational and later amended to include the previously excluded and while women fought, alongside many men, to take their rightful …
The last time we discussed this topic a few years back with our guest, the military, at least most branches, was struggling to meet its recruitment targets. And for an all-volunteer force deployed around the globe, that is not a good thing. The picture was a bit better in 2024, but the seismic changes at …
Robert Kaplan’s erudite take on the world’s geopolitical situation can be summed up in the manner described in our headline, but there is so much more nuance in his book “Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis” that you must read it for yourself to grasp the complexities of our fast-changing world in these illegible …