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Jay Ambrose: The threat of unions to workers
Sitting far away in the White House, President Joe Biden recently cheered for a union to be formed at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama. By a two-to-one vote, workers said no thanks, that they weren’t all that upset by this whiz of a company and would rather work out any differences without another organization in their face. As quoted by The New York Times, a couple of them said paying dues for fewer results did not appeal to them. Despite this setback in trying to help union campaign contributors, however, Biden still embraces a really, truly bold idea of how to strengthen them while depriving ...
Tribune News Service
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John M. Crisp: Unfortunately, trains will be a hard sell in the US
Full disclosure: I like trains. In fact, I wouldn’t have minded if America had not taken such a sharp turn in the mid-20th century away from public transportation — such as trains and buses — toward the private ownership of automobiles. It was a national choice. Eventually nearly everyone was on board. In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower advocated for an extensive interstate highway system. Congress agreed. Gas was cheap and seemingly inexhaustible. Soon every family had a car; some even had two. As private automobiles became essential to Americans’ lives, they began to reshape Americans...
Tribune News Service
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Commentary: It’s time to build a third party
An ongoing crisis at the border, a health care system in shambles, and endless wars – Democrats and Republicans both struggle with finding solutions to these real, pressing problems. Maybe it’s time to seriously consider building a third party, an organization with a fresh perspective that could break the stranglehold that our two dominant parties have on our country’s politics. This is precisely what the Movement for a People’s Party is trying to do. Started in 2018 by former supporters of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, the MPP is a nationwide organization creating coalitions among wo...
Tribune News Service
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Dahleen Glanton: When police kill a child like Adam Toledo, all of us bear the shame and the blame
CHICAGO – We have seen police needlessly kill people before — but rarely a child. I don’t know what anyone else sees when they watch the video of a Chicago police officer shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo in the chest. But when I look at it, I see a brown baby who will never have the chance to grow up and become a man. I mourn for him and all that he lost. Every child deserves the opportunity to pass from one phase of life to another. They should be allowed to make all kinds of mistakes and given the chance to learn from them. They should be nurtured, protected, loved and understood. They shoul...
Chicago Tribune
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Editorial: Consequences, finally: Biden steps up to punish Russia for meddling in US affairs
After the prior administration got itself in hot borscht for, even before taking office, all but assuring Russia that there would be no lasting penalties for 2016 election interference, Joe Biden is setting a better precedent and imposing harsh sanctions. It’s good that Vladimir Putin’s government will finally pay a steep economic price for cyberattacks on America, but don’t expect the penalties to change the Kremlin’s behavior one bit. Via executive order issued Thursday, Biden is imposing fresh sanctions on Moscow: prohibiting U.S. institutions from buying bonds from Russia’s Central Bank, f...
New York Daily News
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Editorial: Nine is fine: Democrats should forget about packing the Supreme Court
Having won the greatest landslide before or since (98.5% of the electoral votes, all but Vermont’s and Maine’s) and carried the biggest congressional majorities ever, Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 proposed a possible expansion of the U.S. Supreme Court, whose rulings had been frustrating parts of his New Deal. Even though the GOP had shriveled down to just 88 of the House’s 435 members and but 16 of 96 senators, the court plan still fizzled out. So any prospect of Joe Biden packing a court tilted right by Mitch McConnell’s galling political deviousness — he was dead wrong to refuse to even hold a...
New York Daily News
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Martin Schram: Wanted: A presidential mission accomplished
Americans have learned the hard way that we must be wary when our presidents deliver feel-good messages about what has been accomplished in a war-torn region. Too often, our presidents have proclaimed a “mission accomplished,” but then take actions that diminish what they accomplished and inadvertently turn the final result into a mission decomplished. (Yes, quibblers, it’s a non-word. But it says best a reality the world has witnessed for decades. So it stays invented.) President Joe Biden chose his words carefully Wednesday in announcing he will withdraw all official U.S. military from Afgha...
Tribune News Service
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Commentary: State legislatures are on the cusp of ruining smartphones for the whole world
In the United States, state legislatures are now at risk of ruining smartphones the way Europe ruined the web. Bills in at least Rhode Island, North Carolina and Florida would force companies like Apple to allow every developer on their platform to use any payment system they want to collect funds from users. Apps, in other words, could circumvent the App Store payment system as well as the guidelines and practices that Apple enforces to make the whole experience a good one for consumers. Get ready to enter your credit card number, a lot. Under current App Store rules, users pay Apple and Appl...
Tribune News Service
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Editorial: When it comes to helping us recover from COVID, DeSantis gives with one hand, slaps with the other
Good people can have an honest disagreement over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to leave the state open for much of the COVID-19 pandemic. It certainly helped some businesses stay afloat, even if it dismayed residents looking for stricter lockdown measures to contain the virus that has killed more than 34,000 Floridians. It’s easy to understand DeSantis’ motivation to stave off an economic disaster. If you look at the pandemic from that prism, he has succeeded. At 4.7%, the state’s unemployment rate falls below the national average of 6.2%. We can’t complain about that. But what’s mystify...
Miami Herald
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Editorial: The unbearable tragedy of Adam Toledo
Nothing we do or say or write or advocate will bring back Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old kid shot by a Chicago police officer on March 29. Our agony, our tears, our careful study of the videos released Thursday won’t bring him back. He is a boy running from police in the middle of the night, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and a baseball cap, his feet pounding the pavement as he outpaces the officer in a Little Village alley. He stops near a fence. He turns toward the officer and a shot rings out. He crumples to the ground, blood on his face and hands, as panicked voices soon surround him, his body...
Chicago Tribune
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