Bloated defense budget harms national security — In his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961 President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the increasing influence of the military-industrial complex and counseled US citizens to monitor it vigilantly. …

Still so white and male — Inclusion — mostly lack of inclusion— in film has become a flash point in recent years. As USC Annenberg puts it: While some of our greatest national challenges arise from a population that continues to diversify across every dimension, popular movies paint a distressing portrait that perpetuates a version of…

The Lancet calls for an end to infant formula marketing — On February 7, 2023, the Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal founded in England in 1823, published a three-paper series on the predatory tactics of the commercial infant formula industry. The Lancet is to be commended for recommending an end to the marketing of infant formula. For decades, the commercial milk…

34 alternatives to spanking your child — I started out hitting my kids. I would lose my temper when their behavior got out of my control, and I would hit. I never felt good about it, but I didn’t know what else to do. I thought it was effective because afterward I had regained control of the…

CEO pay and corporate profits come first It’s been holiday vacation time for most US schools and millions of children were home for two weeks. How did parents who do not make a living wage manage this? …

Yet Congress will not extend it. By almost any measure, the 2021 refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) was an overwhelming success. It drove the largest-ever decline in child poverty in a single year — in 2021, child poverty fell to 5.2%, the lowest rate on record. Making the credit fully…

Formula marketing and biased media undermine public health — Recent media coverage of the infant formula shortage and of new breastfeeding guidelines by the American Academy of Pediatrics have undermined public health. Coverage of the infant formula crisis has largely focused on mothers shaming one another because of their feeding choices, rather than on criticism of formula manufacturers for…

US has highest maternal mortality among developed nations — For over 100 years, maternal mortality (the rate of women dying during childbirth or within 42 days afterwards) has steadily declined in the US. It dropped from 607.9 deaths per 100,000 in 1915 to 7.1 deaths per 100,000 in 1998. …

70% favor new gun control laws — When we talk about gun safety legislation in the US, we do so in the context of the second amendment of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution, which reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to…