Dave Zweifel

1 week ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

Because of it's location next to several military bases, Fredericksburg, Virginia, is home to tens of thousands of veterans and active-duty personnel. The city and its surrounding communities also have resettled more Afghan refugees per capita than any other state. These are the refugees who risked their lives fighting alongside U.S. troops against the Taliban. Many were whisked out of the country just as the U.S. ended its involvement in that 10-year war.

1 week ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

The New York Times ran an op-ed by book author Dan Richards last week under the headline: "Europe Built Trains. The U.S. Built Highways."But as U.S. cities, even mid-sized ones like Madison, and the highways and interstates that connect them become more clogged with cars and speeding trucks, we're not backing down. "Rather than invest in ways to help people leave their cars at home, America’s typical response to congestion has been to build more lanes and highways.

2 weeks ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

Do you ever wonder if Donald Trump has a clue that millions of Americans are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, and millions more have trouble finding an affordable place to live? His comment the other day that, come next Christmas, “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally” offered some insight into who he knows.

3 weeks ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

The Nation magazine's publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel never misses an opportunity to champion the nation's public libraries. Want to defend democracy? she frequently asks, then start with your public library. They are vital democratic institutions that should be supported, she points out. "Public libraries provide information in an era of misinformation," she wrote back in 2018. "They offer facts and nuance. They offer the opportunity for enlightenment.

3 weeks ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

One of the several revelations about George Floyd in the book about his troubled life was that his great-great-grandfather in North Carolina had been able to amass 500 acres of farmland in the roughly 30 years after being freed as a slave following the Civil War. He and his large family's hard work had yielded tidy profits from their crops and they invested them in land near the few acres the government had allocated them at the end of the war.