Dollars & Sense articles from January 2002

Dollars & Sense archives from January 2002

Even better than the real thing. (Technology).(model railroads)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... Model railroaders are moving into the cyber age. With tiny microprocessors built into new model trains, hobbyists can now run multiple trains on a single railroad, sending coded packets of information along the track itself by remote control....

We don't need no thought control. (Free Speech I).(suspension of Katie Sierra for wearing political t-shirt)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... It looks like you can add T-shirt-wearing high-school students to the targets in the "war on terrorism." Fifteen-year-old Katie Sierra is a self-described anarchist, an opponent of war and violence, and, now, a free-speech martyr. When...

The truth hurts. (Free Speech II).(censoring "Boondocks" comic strip)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... By now, it's hardly a secret that, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration bankrolled the Afghan resistance, right? And that the CIA played no small role in strengthening international "Islamist" militants, like...

Gonna make you sweat. (Institutions).(environmental effects of projected funded by the World Bank)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... You may already think that the World Bank, which claims that it's trying to bring development and prosperity to the impoverished countries of the world, is full of hot air. Well, it turns out, you may be more right about that than you imagined....

A little knowledge. (The Right).(Harvard Living Wage Campaign)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... Get a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead into the hands of a Harvard undergraduate, and you have a combustible mix. The right-wing novelist's philosophy of "Objectivism" has often offered comfort and aid to those seeking to justify...

Pill profiteers. (Health).(Bayer AG's contract with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... As a result of the current anthrax scare, demand for ciprofloxacin, the main antibiotic used to treat the infection, has skyrocketed. Much of the new demand has come from the U.S. government, which has ordered 100 million tablets from the...

A real American hero. (Products).(GI Joe from Hasbro)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... You can tell a lot about the United States over the last 40 years or so (especially about shifting public sentiments on war and violence) from the fortunes of its first "action figure"--GI Joe. Introduced by Hasbro in 1964, the 101/2-inch tall...

Letters.
January 1, 2002... To the Editor: How do we ever reach utopia (Jeremy Smith, "A World, Not a Nation," September/October 2001)? Once we agree on the rules, who enforces them? Will they enforce them fairly? On a world of all scientists and engineers, who...

Buy Nothing Day: in the face of "the official "Shop while the bombs drop' rhetoric," Adbusters criticizes the environmental, social, and psychological costs of the corporate consumer culture. (Active Culture).(Adbusters Media Foundation/Culture Jammers Network)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... Even in an ordinary year, "shopping season" ad campaigns, holiday catalogs, and end-of-year sales create an almost unbearable pressure to overconsume. This year, in the wake of the September 11 attacks and in the midst of recession, government...

On the brink of famine: the United States has worsened an already-severe hunger crisis in Afghanistan. (Comment).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... On September 19, Dominic Nutt, emergency officer for the relief organization Christian Aid, told London's Guardian newspaper, "It's as if a mass grave has been dug behind millions of people [in Afghanistan]. We can drag them back from it or...

Recession for the holidays: the official news was late in coming; now, how much longer will the downturn drag on? (Making Sense).(Statistical Data Included)
January 1, 2002... Talk about a lump of coal in your stocking. Late in November, just as the holiday season was taking hold, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)--the nation's official arbiter of the business cycle--declared the economic slowdown that...

Safety for sale: the scramble to commercialize leaves postal workers vulnerable. (Making Sense).
January 1, 2002... Late last October, after anthrax killed two U.S. postal workers and made eight others sick, the Postal Service offered hundreds of thousands of employees protective masks and gloves. One of those employees was Frank Annunziato, a 24-year...

On a fast track to "free trade" hell. (Making Sense).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... What's the solution to the problem of terrorism? According to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, more "free trade" agreements and more executive power to negotiate them. Congress "needs to send an unmistakable signal to the world,"...

Dockworkers stand up to racism, repression, and corporate globalization--and win! (Labor Beat).(International Longshoremen's Association members right to picket)
January 1, 2002... For nearly two years, the most crucial fight in the U.S. labor movement has been the struggle to defend the "Charleston Five"--members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) who faced felony charges after police attacked their...

Return of the Iron Triangle: the new military buildup.
January 1, 2002... The U.S. government's Commission on National Security/21st Century, convened in October 1998, was a who's who of industry, government, military--that is, of the country's power elite. Former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman chaired the...

Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie...strike! in a time of crisis, Minnesota state employees stand up for their rights while the governor sits down on the job.
January 1, 2002... Jesse Ventura did not approve. But unfortunately for Minnesota's infamous governor, the situation was out of his control. After months of negotiations, 27,000 state workers could not accept a union contract that increased health-care costs...

The mercurial economics of the phantom Palestinian state.
January 1, 2002... If by some miracle of history and politics an independent Palestinian state were created alongside Israel, what would its economy be like? As many former colonies well know, an autonomous political entity, no matter how small, must have control...

Between the devil and the deep blue sea: feminist thoughts on globalization.(The Invisible Heart: Economics of Family Values )
January 1, 2002... Nancy Folbre is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She graciously allowed Dollars & Sense to run an excerpt from her timely new book, The Invisible Heart: Economics of Family Values (The New Press, 2001). We...

Testing ... testing ... one, two, three: the commercial side of the standardized-testing boom.
January 1, 2002... Quick: Name a standardized testing company. Unless you are a teacher, principal, or state education official, chances are the one name you'll come up with is the Educational Testing Service (ETS), purveryor of the SAT, the GRE, and an alphabet...

Poverty: a national emergency. (In Review).
January 1, 2002... Two recent books tackle the United States' growing income disparity: its causes, its effects, and possible responses to it. Barbara Ehrenreich, NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA (Henry Halt & Company, 2001) Holly Sklar,...

Ask Dr. Dollar.
January 1, 2002... Dear Dr. Dollar, I am trying to figure out what propels corporations toward a compulsive expansion. I can think of the following: 1) Competition with domestic and foreign rivals; 2) need for markets; 3) need for raw materials; and 4)...

The "race to the bottom" in imported clothes: worldwide, apparel production has been shifting dramatically to low-wage countries in recent years. (Economy in Numbers).
January 1, 2002... Unions and labor-rights activists have long argued that investors and corporations seek out the places where unions are weakest, labor protections are least enforced, workers are most repressed and, as a consequence, labor is cheapest....

D&S demographics.
January 1, 2002... The D&S baby boom continued with the birth of August Nell Kilburn Baxandall on November 12, 2001. An impressive 8 pounds and 20 inches at birth, August "sleeps a lot while making guinea pig noises" according to her proud parents, D&S collective...