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A lecture on reconciliation | ‘Wall Street’s excesses caused more deaths among children than the tsunami four years ago’ COMMENTARY| November 328, 2009 Economist Richard Parker: ‘Perhaps the greatest challenge to liberal democracy in the 21st century lies in using the skills of reconciliation to re-appropriate from the economic not simply the means but the purpose of being human.’ 
It’s not 1997 any more | Why does the FCC keep using old data? COMMENTARY There aren’t many ‘small’ or ‘very small’ Internet service providers. But you can’t tell that from data the broadband and Internet regulators use to make decisions that benefit the big telecoms.
Reporting the Collapse | How much have today’s wars weakened the economy? COMMENTARY Jobs programs of the 1930s cut deeply into Depression unemployment and World War II then put almost everybody to work, often at more than one job. Not so with today’s wars. Only the oil companies and military and security contractors have made real gains from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, says Harvard economist Linda Bilmes.
Reporting the Collapse | Wars may end but spending on them doesn’t COMMENTARY There are fundamental flaws in the way the press deals with the costs of war, says Linda Bilmes. She, along with her colleague Joseph Stiglitz, put the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan at more than $3 trillion — an enormous drag on the economy — in addition to the personal loss to families and communities of injured and dead troops.
Reporting the Collapse | A need to 'dig beneath the corporate surface' COMMENTARY Simon Johnson of MIT says reporting like Ida Tarbell's of 100 years ago is badly needed today. One suggestion: the press should take on the financial institutions that helped cause the financial collapse, and are even benefiting from it.
Digging In | The Pentagon's building boom in Afghanistan indicates a long war ahead COMMENTARY The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in Afghanistan, writes Nick Turse.
Reporting the Collapse | The case for taxing the very rich COMMENTARY There's no real economic recovery while so many Americans remain jobless. A new stimulus could bring about full employment, write Martin Lobel and Lee Ellen Helfrich, but it would be expensive. One way to fund it would be to increase taxes on the very rich, and cut their tax loopholes.
Twisting the news | A history of failed press coverage of Afghanistan COMMENTARY For decades, the American news media by and large have been simplistic and misleading in reporting U.S. relations toward Afghanistan, write Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould. From 1981 on, they say, the press has kept vital information away from the American people.
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