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The rebirth of industrial democracy

The shutdown is over for now, but for five weeks 800,000 federal employees and 1.5 million federal contract workers were pawns in Trump’s game of brinksmanship, and they may be so again. Trump has also frozen federal workers’ pay for 2019, stopping the automatic 2.1 percent cost-of-living increase all civilian workers would have received under federal pay laws. It’s hardly the first time American workers have been pawns in larger power games. It happens all the time in the private sector. A private-equity firm gains control and eliminates a sizable portion of a company’s ...

Finally jumping into the dating game

Dear Annie: I’m a 74-year-old single man who has never been in circulation. I have relatives, friends and others who keep asking me, “When are you getting married?” I don’t even know where to start with dating. I don’t know what it is these days or whether it even exists for me. Should I have announcements printed to let people know I’m looking to date? Should I run a notice in the newspaper? Or should I simply tell people at a family dinner? We have a family dinner coming up on Valentine’s Day, so I thought then might be a good time to do it. It needs to be known that ...

Response to the State of the Union

My fellow Americans. Given that the Democratic Party chose to select a recently defeated political candidate to give a response to the president’s State of the Union address because she is black and a woman, I feel I should also step up and give my response. Although I have not recently lost a governor’s contest, I am black and I am a woman. Democrats want Americans, particularly minority Americans, to believe that a left-wing agenda is what they need and what will define America’s future. I am here to say today that the agenda of the left is the problem, not the ...

Living among boxes

Dear Annie: I moved four months ago, and there are still boxes and bags waiting to be unpacked. I hate looking at the piles. I want to clean up, I really do, but when I get home from work during the week, I am too exhausted to tackle the mess. And on the weekends, I savor my time to do nothing, and I want to avoid sullying that time with un-fun cleaning up. I seem to only find motivation to organize way late at night, when I should be getting into bed. How can I motivate myself to tidy up when I have time to do it? When I look at the mess, I feel so overwhelmed! — Cleaning Up the ...

The Senate Finance Committee is now steered by a tractor driver from Iowa

WASHINGTON — His tractor is so noisy that, when driving it, the man who calls himself “just a farmer from Butler County” puts his cellphone under his cap, set on vibrate. Charles Grassley, 85, who has served in the Senate longer than all but 11 of the 1,983 other senators — and who still runs 3 miles four mornings a week — does not have ample time for farming because he has visited all of Iowa’s 99 counties every year for 38 years, and last missed a Senate vote 8,300 votes ago, when Iowa was flooded in 1993. He is a non-lawyer who just left the chairmanship of the ...

Is a little wine every night harmful?

Dear Annie: I’m writing to you about something that I’m not sure is a problem. Really, I think it’s just a habit. But my husband told me I should ask you for your thoughts on this. Every night when I get home from work, I have two glasses of red wine. I drink one with dinner and one while I watch TV or read a book. I never feel drunk, just slightly more carefree. It helps me wind down so I can fall asleep at night, something I’ve had trouble with all my life. If I am driving home and know we are almost out of wine, I’ll stop at the store and get some. I can tell that my ...