ArcaMax

This holiday season got me to thinking about America's spirit of giving, and I don't mean this overdone business of Christmas, Hanukkah and other holiday gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving -- giving of ourselves.

Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there's also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We're a people...Read more

America has endured a long panorama of corporate greed -- from the East India Trading Company to the Robber Barons, Gordon Gecko Wall Streeters to Elon Musk. But down at the bottom of raw greediness today, you'll find the insatiable profiteers of the private nursing home industry.

Of course, many providers deliver honest, truly caring service...Read more

Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King was renowned for his frequent malapropisms and contorted logic.

For example, he once refused to back a bill pushed by loan-shark lobbyists -- but he pledged that it if the legislature passed the thing, he would sign it. Well, the bill did pass ... but Bruce vetoed it! The lobbyists swarmed him, crying that he...Read more

Social media has been lighting up like fireworks, with myriad Trump voters exclaiming, "I didn't know he meant me!" For example, many MAGA cheerleaders are now shocked to learn that his rallying cry to eliminate "Obamacare" means killing the popular Affordable Care Act that provides their health coverage!

Perhaps the most stunned, though, are...Read more

Howard Lutnick wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Then, he intends to eat your cake. Lutnick is another billionaire corporate huckster who was a campaign bagman for Trump, and now he's to become the commerce secretary. But first, he's been tasked with picking hordes of corporate loyalists to be placed in Trump's government as ...Read more

Wow! Who says election promises don't produce real change?

Candidate Donald Trump had loudly proclaimed that he'd force U.S. corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all the made-in-China products they sell to us.

Even he must have been surprised, though, when one major ...Read more

Even in a barrelful of rotten apples, you might think there'd still be a few good ones.

But don't get your hopes up looking into barrels labeled "private equity investors." These esoteric, multibillion-dollar Wall Street schemes rig the marketplace so "high-net-worth individuals" can grab fat profits and special tax breaks to buy up doctors' ...Read more

Many people feel that America's political campaigns have become vapid PR hustles with little connection to the real-life concerns of workaday people. Luckily, Adam Swart says he has the fix for such voter malaise: Just add a more professional level of vapidity to the process, he says, and you can reduce the need for having actual voters ...Read more

Woody Guthrie satirized Depression-era bankers who routinely gouged farmers and poor people. "I'm a jolly banker, jolly banker am I," Woody sang about the joyful lenders who profiteered on people's misery.

Woody's song could be sung today by Bharat Masrani, CEO of the TD Bank empire. Investigative digger Judd Legum reports that Masrani has ...Read more

Forget the cartoonish "Great Man" version of American history. Nearly all social progress in our country has been spurred by unheralded "nobodies" who felt a sting of injustice and resolved to right the wrong.

Lilly Ledbetter, who recently died at 86, was one such trailblazing rebel. It's worth remembering her gutsy stand for "paycheck ...Read more

Sadism and masochism (abbreviated as S&M) are generally frowned on in polite society as perverse acts of sexual gratification. But what should we make of M&As?

This is Wall Street's abbreviation of mergers and acquisitions, which are acts of self-gratification practiced by top corporate executives. Such financial couplings can also be judged ...Read more

In high school, my friend Charlie and I once poked into an abandoned Victorian house in our hometown. Up in the attic, we found a secret door to a space containing several boxes of books.

One held 50 copies of "The Age of Reason," Thomas Paine's treatise ridiculing the myths of Christian theology and the Bible. Hot, forbidden stuff! In Paine'...Read more

Perhaps you've noticed from the shrinkage (or total elimination) of your local newspaper that this source of hometown journalism has become monopolized, nationalized and trivialized by conglomerate owners.

How uplifting, then, to see a national consortium of saviors rallying to reestablish a "thriving news media" for our democracy. How? Well,...Read more