Journalism Archives

Chip Lord and Doug Michels, founders of the Ant Farm collective (1968-78), buried 10 Cadillacs to show the evolution of the Cadillac tail fins from 1949 to 1963. It was intended as a counter-cultural sculpture but became interactive art when visitors began to spray-paint the cars.

Sy Hersh, a legendary reporter who paid homage to Dan Ellsberg in his last days, said:  “More than fifty years later, he was still pondering the war as a whole, and I was still trying to understand the My Lai massacre.”

Today, I boarded an American Airline plane in San Francisco for the cross-country flight to Indianapolis –  and in spite of the hundreds of  times that I’ve flown on a plane, I felt again that special thrill when I stepped toward the airplane door, glancing down at that crack of space opening up below my legs, between the edge of the fuselage and the movable entrance ramp, a crack that will become 35,000 feet deep when we are airborne.

It's early morning in the heart of Oakland's Skid Row, and Steve F. is coming toward us, me and Artie G., from across the street, bouncing from leg to leg, waving at us with one hand and balancing a styrofoam plate with a few pancakes in the other hand, grinning his maniac drug grin.

The roots of American Fascism were apparent 20 years ago. "U.C. Berkeley's Professor Torture" John Yoo argued for legalizing torture under George W. Bush, then misinterpreted the U.S. Constitution to make the presidency into a  "unitary executive" -- now expanded by the Roberts' Supreme Court to install the irrational dictatorship of Donald Trump.

Try this Financial Worksheet!  1. Add up your total assets. 2. Add up your total assets a month later. 3. Calculate the change: 2-1 = 3. Is #3 positive? You’ve saved money, and your income is greater than your expenses. If #3 negative, you’re in the hole and sliding down the rabbit hole of debt and illusion. All the rest is details.

Many readers responded to my original essay on our debt-driven way of living in “Going Broke on $44,500 a Year,” published in the San Jose Mercury News. Here are some of the suggestions that they offered to solve the middle class debt crisis.

Are you careful with money, yet still sinking into debt?  The decline of the middle class began in the 1980s, when social values eroded and warnings against debt were cast aside.