‘Guest column’ Archives
The Great American Awakening
By Robert C. Koehler Old wounds break open. Deep, encrusted wrongs are suddenly visible. The streets flow with anger and solidarity. The past and the future meet. The news is All Trump, All the Time, but what’s really happening is only minimally about Donald Trump, even though his outrageous actions and bizarre alliances are the trigger. “As the nightmare reality of Donald Trump sinks in, we need to put our resistance in a larger perspective,” Bob Fitrakis and ... Full Story
Ethics: Trump already sees himself above law
by Lawrence M. Hinman Ethics is about flourishing, about developing both the personal characteristics and the social conditions that allow individuals to live full, satisfying lives together. When it functions at its best, ethics is largely invisible: individuals live good lives together, trusting one another and cooperating in ways that would be impossible without such internalized social norms. Ideally, individuals impose ethical restraints on themselves first and foremost, and only in ... Full Story
Social Security Continues to Innovate with New
By Josh Weller Social Security Public Affairs Specialist Social Security is always innovating and improving our technology to better serve you. In an effort to meet our goal to deliver innovative, quality services, we are improving how you can check the status of your Social Security benefit application online. Placing the “Application Status” feature behind our my Social Security portal provides a secure service delivery channel that will allow the ... Full Story
Harness The Power Of Our Top Ten Blog Posts
By Josh Weller Social Security Public Affairs Specialist At Social Security, we’re always looking for ways to improve how we communicate with you. It’s been a year-and-a-half since we joined the blogosphere, and we couldn’t be happier with the content we’ve been able to provide. This blog is exactly what we envisioned: an honest conversation with you about our programs, the topics that matter to you, and how our agency can better serve you. On our blog, ... Full Story
Tomgram: How to Hijack an Election
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch. In case you hadn’t noticed, someone recently loosed a satirist in American politics. Let me give you an example. You remember FBI Director James Comey, who gained a certain notoriety by stepping into the limelight 11 days before the recent presidential election via a very publicly dispatched letter to the Congressional leadership. It focused on an FBI investigation into emails from Hillary Clinton believed to be ... Full Story
Healthcare is a basic human right not a political
By Wim Laven On May 4, 2013, I delivered the eulogy for my 33-year-old brother. I’m not sure that our political representatives understand what this feels like when they make decisions to take healthcare away from people. When innocent civilians are killed for political reasons we usually consider it an act of terrorism or a crime against humanity, but, inexplicably, when political leaders make decisions that only happen to cause those deaths why is it so easy to look away? This ... Full Story
What is a Country For?
At the height of the George W. Bush years, a bit of a TomDispatch piece would sometimes be reposted at a right-wing website with a disparaging comment, and I’d suddenly be deluged with abusive emails (many homophobic) that regularly advised me to take my whatever and get out of Dodge. Though I was born in New York City, as was my father (my mother’s hometown was Chicago), the phrase invariably brought to bear was “go back to...” and the only question was where. There were small ... Full Story
A Fulfilling New Year’s Resolution: Retirement
By Josh Weller Social Security Public Affairs Specialist It’s 2017, and that means you might be one more year closer to retirement. Whether you’re at your very first job or wrapping up a successful career, there are always new things to learn about when it comes to saving for the future. So why not make retirement planning part of your New Year’s resolution! Putting money in a high yield savings account (if you can find one) is always smart, but you can do even more. The U.S. ... Full Story
Family Life Under the Stigma of Undocumented
by 'Rebecca Schneider “You have reached the voicemail box of...” “You have reached the voicemail box of…” “You have reached the voicemail box of…” Panic set in. I was supposed to get dinner with him at Chili’s, my pregnancy cravings running wild for those honey chipotle chicken crispers. We had just talked about it on the phone less than an hour before. After a few minutes of waiting in the car, his family saw me, came outside and said, ... Full Story
Tweeting while the world comes to its senses
By John LaForge When Donald Trump Tweeted something about nuclear weapons Dec. 23, I thought he must be deliberately trivializing the Bomb to make it appear small, the way he makes light of sexual assault, punching critics, deporting millions, torturing suspects, and assassinating women and children. About the Bomb, the world’s most famous Tweeter offered, “The US must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses ... Full Story
