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Steve Hochstadt

Steve Hochstadt is a writer and an emeritus professor of history at Illinois College.

  • May 24, 2016

    What Does Retirement Mean?

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Our most eloquent revolutionary, Thomas Paine, was a “forerunner of modern social insurance”, as the Social Security Administration calls him. In 1796, he advocated a 10% tax on the inheritance of property to create a fund which would pay a yearly pension to everyone over 50, “to enable them to live in Old Age without Wretchedness, and go decently out of the World.”

  • Apr 26, 2016

    Women in the Boston Marathon

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Women were banned from the Boston Marathon. Into the 1960s, athletic authorities claimed women were incapable of running that distance. The longest AAU-sanctioned race for women was 1.5 miles. Women could not compete further than 800 meters in the Olympics.
  • Apr 13, 2016

    To White Men Who Like Trump

    by Steve Hochstadt

    The economic program Republicans have offered to the American middle class has been remarkably consistent: give more money to the richest Americans by radically cutting their taxes. Trump has shown not the slightest sign that he cares about or will do anything for Americans who are struggling.

  • Apr 5, 2016

    Donald Trump Is Done

    by Steve Hochstadt

    I think Trump is done. Or as my mother-in-law would say, “Done is for meat. Trump is finished.” Everyone who said that before was wrong. But now his run is over.

  • Mar 29, 2016

    Can We Be a Better Neighbor?

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Long after the juvenile Republican presidential campaigns and campaigners of 2016 are forgotten, President Barack Obama’s movement toward normalization of relations with Cuba will still be talked about. Ending the Cuban embargo is one necessary step in creating a real “good neighbor policy”.

  • Mar 15, 2016

    Why Are Some Americans So Angry?

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Trump the birther gave birth to Trump the candidate. Outrageous racist attacks on a black President provided a base of support: two-thirds of Trump supporters still believe that Obama is a Muslim born outside of the US.
  • Mar 8, 2016

    Donald Trump, the He-Man

    by Steve Hochstadt

    One could suspect that a man who can’t stop touting his masculinity might be less certain than he proclaims.

  • Feb 16, 2016

    The Republican Assault on Higher Education

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Republican politicians are angry about public higher education in America. The ideas they and their conservative supporters cherish are repeatedly demonstrated by academic experts to be false.

  • Jan 26, 2016

    Western Stand-Off

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Economists might applaud their tactics. If I wave the Bible and the Constitution and my gun and my cowboy hat enough, we won’t have to pay what we owe.
  • Jan 19, 2016

    Watergate was a Big Deal

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Every political scandal gets compared to Watergate. But no political scandal since then can compare with a President authorizing burglaries by White House staff in order to win re-election, then lying about his administration’s cover-up.

  • Jan 12, 2016

    Teaching Hate, Learning Hate

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Hatred and anger are powerful political emotions. Republican candidates believe they can employ the politics of hate to win elections and then later control the hatred they encourage.
  • Dec 22, 2015

    It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's Superman!

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Superman was the great savior during my childhood, along with a few other heros with seemingly superhuman abilities to dodge bullets and fight evil, like Wyatt Earp and Matt Dillon. It’s thrilling to know that a real, live Superman now flies among us, fighting evil and saving America. Of course, I mean Donald Trump.
  • Nov 24, 2015

    Cops Out of Control

    by Steve Hochstadt

    If we can watch a new video every month of groups of police brutalizing unarmed citizens, then we have a police problem.
  • Nov 11, 2015

    Science, Large and Small

    by Steve Hochstadt

    My dogs would make poor scientists, because they can be individual learners at best, unable to profit from the knowledge gained by other members of their species. But they are better scientists than Republican know-nothings, because they learn from the world around them without political filters and ideological blinders.
  • Oct 28, 2015

    The Great Myth of the Free Market

    by Steve Hochstadt

    We can joke about the conservative effort to deregulate our economy. “How many conservatives does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Answer: “None. If the government would just leave it alone, it would screw itself in.” But saving lives is no joke.

  • Oct 20, 2015

    A Speaker Who Speaks for a Few

    by Steve Hochstadt

    The so-called House Freedom Caucus, representing the people who made his job so impossible that Speaker John Boehner announced that he was quitting Congress, are demanding a Speaker for themselves.
  • Oct 15, 2015

    It Can Take A Long Time

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Some men want to physically engage every woman they see who fits their image of sexy. They interrupt everything, get too close, use their hands, and won’t take “no” for an answer. When it doesn’t work, they try it again with another woman. Over and over again they manhandle women, because they think about them as the dog thinks of the squirrel, as lesser but attractive beings who must be chased. There used to be lots of guys like that.
  • Oct 7, 2015

    Bugs in the Volkswagen System

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Cheating on an unprecedented scale was a simple business decision. Volkswagen executives had spent billions to develop a new diesel engine, but executives realized it could not meet the pollution standards of many nations, including the US and Germany. They could have scrapped the new model. Instead they put a software “bug” into the cars’ computers.

  • Sep 29, 2015

    Ben Carson’s Religious Tests for Candidates

    by Steve Hochstadt

    Carson applies his tests of religious suitability only to Islam. He does not advocate that a Christian specifically renounce the Biblical passages which violate our Constitution, such as approving discussions of slavery and of stoning women accused of adultery.