The Highroad
Tilling our public treasury
Some aspects of American agriculture are quite odd. For example, to meet a farmer these days, there’s no need for you to venture out to the hinterland — because thousands of them actually are city slickers...
The real Halloween scaries of 2014
If you want a real Halloween fright, don’t look for it among the trick-ortreaters coming to your door— just check out the Republican spooks tying to peddle panic in this political year...
AgriCulture outsiders tackle powerful agriBusiness
In the 1980s, when I was Texas Ag commissioner, my staff and I proposed a comprehensive set of state rules to protect farmworkers, public...
NSA and DHS defend us against sinister website
It’s a scary world out there, with global terrorists plotting to kill us...
Why would you let Jeff Bezos inside your home?
Would you give your house key to a complete stranger, letting that person (whose name you don’t even know) walk right into your home...
Why we should reach across borders, not close them
A nation’s border is nothing in and of itself. It’s just an inanimate line that has no philosophy, personality, feelings or meaning — beyond what...
Daddy’s philosophy
This special day got me to thinking about America’s spirit of giving, and I don’t mean this overdone business of Christmas gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving — giving of ourselves...
Burger King pulls a Whopper on us
Burger King, the fast food giant, bills itself as “Home of the Whopper,” a name intended to convey to burger eaters that this one is jumbo, chockfull and a whale of a deal. But “whopper” also means a prevarication, a crock, flim flam, a tall tale — ie, hogwash...
Can sanity finally conquer reefer madness?
Besides being founders of our Republic, what did Thomas Jefferson and George Washington have in common? Answer: Hemp...
Big Beer deceivers and bullies
It’s bad enough that the goliaths of Big Beer are consuming each other in a new round of mega-mergers, meaning fewer choices and higher prices for consumers — but the really bad news is that they’re also going after the one bright spot on tap in bars all across the ...
Should the rich get a special express lane onto the internet...
Last year, America’s largest internet provider, Comcast, took over the second-largest, Time Warner. So Comcast is now a coast-to-coast beast, running its proprietary lines...
Amazon buys out Whole Foods: What’s it to us?
Wall Street analysts tell us that Amazon’s $14 billion buy-out of Whole Foods Market is not only a win-win for both of them —...