Category Archives: Economy

A Few Crumbs

I was helping the teenager prepare for her English final last week, reviewing with her Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir “Night,” which she read this semester. (I’d never read the book, a gap in my own education.)
I came across this passage:
“Dozens of starving men fought each other to death for a few crumbs (thrown [...]

Burned by Water

The northeast coast of Japan was shaken by another earthquake today – 7.4 on the Richter scale this time. In Washington, Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) is arguing with bureaucrats at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about whether fuel in one of Fukushima’s reactors has breached the containment vessel. Just another day in the [...]

Romantic Poetry

BILOXI, MS – It’s five in the morning, St. Patrick’s Day 2011; I’m in a cheap motel 75 yards from the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve opened the door to let in cool pre-dawn air. I hoped to hear the surf but it’s drowned out by the hum of electric lights outside and the [...]

Gumbo? Again?

WINTER PARK, FL – Last week’s helping of gumbo was favorably received and since I’m supposed to be on vacation this week and because there’s still dozens of issues popping up – more gumbo.
The venom I received from the bees last week was not, in the longer view, as effective as I’d hoped it would [...]

You Can’t Lose Them All

Michael Ruppert came through town last May. Not familiar with him? Mr. Ruppert is a former Los Angeles police detective, who in 1996 famously confronted then-CIA Director John Deutch with allegations that the CIA was heavily involved in drug trafficking in the United States.
From there he became something of a prophet. He [...]

The Wrong Direction

I’m back in Washington, DC this week; Tuesday evening I flipped on the radio to listen to President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan. Clearly, there are no good options available, but the choice Mr. Obama’s made seems worse than it needs to be.
The Afghan war is an oil war. The connection is not as [...]

On New Hampshire

I’m in Washington, DC this week. It’s warmer here than in Vermont, I feel overdressed. It’s autumnal, but in a mid-Atlantic kind of way.
Monday evening I walked northwest on New Hampshire Avenue. The evening was balmy; the leaves were piled thick and dry along the gutters and across the sidewalks. The [...]