Columnists

ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Cupcakes

Jack Bragen
Friday March 04, 2016 - 04:56:00 PM

People who supervise mental health consumers often lack understanding of what we are up against, and usually presume that we are no more than ignorant people of less ability than they. Not all mentally ill people are the unaware, unconscious, and childlike people that mental health treatment practitioners assume us to be. We go through very rough times, and the abuses as well as the absurdly bad circumstances and experiences we have to go through often go unacknowledged. Or, we might get cutified. -more-


Who Sired Trump? Ronald Reagan

Friday March 04, 2016 - 01:17:00 PM

In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks blasted Donald Trump and “the rise of a group of [Americans] who are against politics.” Regrettably, Brooks failed to acknowledge that Trump is the direct descendant of Ronald Reagan. -more-


DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE:Irish Shillelagh Austerity*

Conn Hallinan
Friday March 04, 2016 - 04:28:00 PM

If there is one thing clear after Ireland’s recent election, it is that people no longer buy the myth that austerity is the path to economic salvation. It is the same message that Greeks, Portuguese and Spaniards delivered to their elites over the past year: the prophets of tough love, regressive taxes, and massive social services cutbacks should update their resumes and consider a different profession than politics.

Ireland is a small country but the Feb. 26 election drove a big spike into the policies of the “troika”—the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund—that have blitzed economies across the continent and made chronic unemployment and growing economic inequality a continuing source of malaise. -more-