Last year, the top 10 percent of American earners took home more than half of the country’s total income. The top 1 percent took home a fifth. That’s the greatest income disparity ever recorded, and it’s getting worse. Indeed, the income of the wealthiest has grown dramatically during the recession More
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks begin this week, and it’s fair to say that attitudes range from guardedly hopeful to sneeringly cynical. After all, this conflict has been going on since the mid-20th century, with a lot of dashed promises along the way. It was just a year ago that missiles from More
I live in Maryland, where we have been suffering through an unrelenting heat wave all summer, and I confess I have cranked up the AC on the worst days. But I always feel guilty about it when I do, and I turn it off whenever the air dips back into More
When I was in middle school, one of the assigned readings was a story called “The Man Without a Country.” It was written by Edward Everett Hale in 1863, and told the story of a young American army lieutenant, Philip Nolan, who is tried for treason along with Aaron Burr. More
A new Gallup poll shows that Americans’ confidence in the Congress is at an all-time low. A measly 10 percent of citizens express confidence in lawmakers, and most say they have little or no confidence. That is the worst rating of any American institution—including the military, HMOs and labor unions—since More
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial ban on large, sugary drinks was slated to go into effect today, but a state judge struck it down at the last minute. Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling invalidated the proposed regulations—approved by the city board of health in September—that would have prohibited More
