One of the Obama administration’s core competencies is suspending pipeline projects with no cause. It will leave office with another notch in its belt, now that the Army Corps of Engineers has acted to block a final piece of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The 1,200-mile pipeline is designed to move oil from North Dakota to […]
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America’s real productivity problem
WASHINGTON — The U.S. faces a productivity crisis. Gains in productivity have slowed to a crawl or stagnated. Unless they revive, prospects for higher living standards will fade or vanish. But according to a new economic report, we’re ignoring the real productivity problem. A huge part of the productivity slowdown, says economist Jonathan Rothwell, author […]
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Journalists will continue to bring you the real news
If you’re stressing over what to give friends and loved ones during this holiday season, I’m here to help. Consider giving them print or digital subscriptions — or both — to news organizations you regularly count on to provide strong journalism. That includes national newspapers and magazines, as well as regional papers that anchor your […]
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Trump executes his own ‘pivot to Asia’
A month after the presidential election, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has executed his own political “pivot to Asia.” Trump’s pivot consisted of two phone calls, one with Taiwan’s president and the other with the president of the Philippines. The explicit topics discussed matter, but the critical fact is that Trump spoke with the Asian leaders. […]
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Trump likes to be around the money makers
Donald Trump has long sold himself to a credulous public as a business genius worth many billions. So it was something of an inconvenience when New York Times reporter Timothy O’Brien put Trump’s holdings at barely a quarter of the way to one billion. Trump sued O’Brien for libel (and lost). There’s nothing shabby about […]
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Tired of hammering at America’s ideals
“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. “Make me want to holler, way they do my life.” — Marvin Gaye I find myself burdened by the faith of my elders. They were generations of cooks and farmers, poets and laborers, of porters and housekeepers, soldiers […]
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Book features veteran of Pearl Harbor attack
Only five of the 335 men who survived the unprovoked attack that sunk the USS Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941 remain alive. Donald Stratton, 94, is one of them. He has added to the historical knowledge of that day and the beginning of America’s entry into World War II in a new book, “All the […]
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Trump would redefine America’s role
“For the first time since the end of the Second World War, the future relationship of America to the world is not fully settled.” — Henry Kissinger, in an interview with The Atlantic in its December issue. WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is an avowed economic nationalist. He promises to put American interests “first” in fashioning […]
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No real way to clean out the ‘swamp’
It wasn’t quite “build the wall” or “lock her up,” but “drain the swamp” was a signature Donald Trump slogan. It evoked visions of pinstripe-suit-wearing influence peddlers getting pulled from their Georgetown cocktail parties en masse and tossed into the Potomac River, as Washington returned to the once-sleepy burg it was 100 years ago, a […]
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A thank-you for the hard work done by reporters
This has probably not, in fact, been the worst year in the history of American journalism. But you’ll forgive me if it feels that way just the same. It was, after all, a year in which the country firmly entered the post-factual era, led by an incoming president who has no time for intelligence reports, […]