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Two recent news items about the voracious drug industry should call for a supine Congress to arouse itself and initiate investigations about the pay-or-die drug prices that are far too common. The first item—a page one story in the New York Times—was about the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Foundation, which fifteen years ago invested $150 million…
The courageous journey of seriously wounded Iraq War veteran, Tomas Young, ended this past Monday, nearly eleven years after he was ambushed in a wholly exposed military truck. He passed away in Seattle while being lovingly cared for by his wife Claudia. Tomas did not go quietly, despite his being paralyzed from the chest down,…
Did the Republicans win these mid-term elections? Or did the Democrats lose? The numbers show that in contested Senate races, where the Republicans picked up seven seats and will probably gain two more to take control of the Senate, voters did not support those Democrats who were the most wishy-washy. In their campaigns, the defeated…
The ruling dogma of our political economy is corporatism. Corporatism claims to draw legitimacy from the free market theory that all vendors who do not meet market demands will go under. Corporatism uses this illusion to exert power over all aspects of our political economy. Free markets, corporatists believe, are the best mechanism to allocate…
This weekend, October 25 and 26, I will be joining leading critics, from the United States and abroad, of corporate-controlled technologies, who are also proponents of appropriate technologies for the people (Vandana Shiva, Anuradha Mittal, Helen Caldicott, Wes Jackson, Bill McKibben), convening at the historic Cooper Union Great Hall on “Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of…
Ebola! Ebola! Ebola! The word is everywhere—the name of the deadly virus from West Africa with a seventy percent fatality rate. A sense of dread and dismay is beginning to spread through our country. Asking vital questions will shed light on how to stop the spread of the current outbreak as well as prevent future…
The 25th anniversary of the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, presented annually by my sister, Dr. Claire Nader, is an occasion for thinking about our culture’s choices for heroic achievements. In most societies, the heroic designation is given to people who rescue others in serious peril such as a fire, flood, accident or…
How do corporate attorneys sleep at night considering that with the power of their large corporate clients, they often crush the freedoms of workers, consumers and small communities who are trying to break out of a complex web of shackles? These highly paid power lawyers expertly weave an intricate system of controls into one-sided contracts…
September 22, 2014 Dear Speaker Boehner, While millions of hardworking Americans are working more and more for less and less, you and your House of Representatives seem to have no problem working less and less for more and more. If a mother of one in Butler County, Ohio — your home county — working at…
If there is one person in the world most suited to govern the turbulent land of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani would be, by knowledge, temperament and sense of democratic justice, that person. Lo and behold, he was just elected president of Afghanistan! Ashraf Ghani is a former professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, as well…