Google the phrase “education crisis” and you’ll be hit with a glut of articles, blog posts and think tank reports claiming the entire American school system is facing an emergency. Much of this agitprop additionally asserts that teachers unions are the primary cause of the alleged problem. Not surprisingly, the fabulists pushing these narratives are […]

Whenever scandal arises in Washington, D.C., the fight between the two parties typically ends up being a competition to identify a concise message in the chaos — or, as scientists might say, a signal in all the noise. The past week confirmed that truism, as glitches plagued the new Obamacare website and as insurance companies […]

As state legislatures prepare for their upcoming sessions, you will no doubt hear a lot about public pensions. More specifically, you will hear allegations that states are going bankrupt because of their pension obligations to public employees. These claims will inevitably be used to argue that states must renege on their pension promises to retirees. […]

Sports metaphors are the world’s universal vernacular because the games we play can be such easy-to-understand symbols of society’s larger conflicts. In sports-obsessed America, our football cliches are particularly sacrosanct — we use them to describe everything from rhetorical fights in politics to physical fights in wars. So it is quite convenient that professional football […]

Two months before my Colorado community was overwhelmed by epic rains, our state’s chief oil and gas regulator, Matt Lepore, berated citizens concerned about the ecological impact of hydraulic fracturing and unbridled drilling. During his speech, Lepore insinuated that those advocating a first-do-no-harm posture toward fossil fuel development are mostly affluent and are therefore unconcerned […]

The day after last week’s elections, the National Rifle Association got exactly what it wanted: a front-page New York Times story about Colorado results that supposedly sent “lawmakers across the country a warning about the political risks of voting for tougher gun laws.” That article, and many others like it, came after the gun lobby […]

You know the boilerplate argument against higher wages in America, because you’ve heard it so many times from Fox News and CNBC pundits. But as service industry workers now mount protests against poverty-level pay and as the Associated Press reports that “four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare,” […]