For factory workers in America, especially those 45 and older, job security is a dying dream. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. SALLY AND FRANKIE STEWART FELT COMFORTABLE and fulfilled in their work as machine operators for Visteon, an auto-parts maker created by Ford Motor Company. The plant in Bedford, Indiana, was clean and well lit, and […]
R.I.P. Off
A funeral-industry scandal that’s fleecing thousands of Americans. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. IN 1975 AUDREY AND CARL BREWER PURCHASED what they thought was peace of mind—both for themselves and their family—when they bought two pre-paid funeral plans from Forest Hill South, a mortuary and cemetery in Memphis. Their plans cost them a total of $1,298, […]
The Wal-Mart Effect
By stocking its shelves with inexpensive organic foods, the world’s largest retailer is about to prove that what’s good for the company is good for the planet and consumers. Or is it? Originally published in Audubon. SEVERAL TIMES A WEEK, A BLUE TRUCK with a stainless steel collection tank drives up a newly blacktopped road in Guilford, […]
Putting Science in the Dock
In an effort to exclude dubious experts, judges have assumed unprecedented power—and tilted the system against injured consumers. Originally published in The Nation. ON A CHILLY MORNING IN NOVEMBER 2001, David Healy stood in a witness box in Kansas City, Kansas, and received a sobering lesson on the U.S. legal system. A professor of psychological medicine at Cardiff University […]
When Is a Corporation Like a Freed Slave?
In rural Pennsylvania, township supervisors battling sewage sludge and hog manure stumble up against one of the biggest mysteries in constitutional law. Originally published in Mother Jones. LICKING TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA, IS A ROLLING SWATH of soybean fields and pastures in Clarion County, two hours northeast of Pittsburgh, with 500 residents and quite a few more cattle. Drive […]
Sudden Debt
Overdrawn by $5? Need a loan until payday? Hidden bank fees and usurious storefront lenders plunge millions of Americans into downward financial spirals. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. FOR MARK KEIL, 45, THE SPIRAL began with some smokes. It was April 2004 when Mark stopped by his favorite convenience store in Dayton, Ohio, and spent $19.45 […]
Whose House Is It Anyway?
A city’s quest for renewal can mean the death of an old neighborhood. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. WILHELMINA DREY HAS LIVED HER ENTIRE 87 YEARS in a blue sea captain’s house near the banks of Connecticut’s Thames River. From the ground floor, her family ran a grocery where the neighborhood’s Italian women congregated Saturday mornings, […]
Less Sleep, More Energy?
New drugs promise to keep us sharp even when we need shuteye—but at a cost. A different version of this article was published in Reader’s Digest. IN AN ANTISEPTIC ANIMAL LABORATORY in Worcester, Mass., 160 rodents in oversized cages are hooked up, via thirty miles of wire, to a bank of computers that continuously record their vital […]
Airline Insecurity
Federal regulators have known for years that the nation’s system of airport security was “seriously flawed.” But the FAA repeatedly placed politics and profits above the public’s safety. Originally published in Mother Jones. THE BUZZER SOUNDED AT AN AWKWARD MOMENT for Rep. Don Young. The Alaska Republican was halfway through a press conference on October 17, explaining […]
Subsidies at Sea
A private shipbuilder received millions in ‘location incentives’ to save an abandoned naval yard in South Philadelphia. What did the city get in return? Originally published in Mother Jones. PHIL ROWAN WAS CALLED OFF his construction site one crisp October afternoon and told to get himself down to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. It was an invitation to […]
