How did Donald Trump, a self-serving promoter who lost billions of dollars for his investors, convince the world that he is a financial genius? It wasn’t just by fabricating tales of his success. It was also by bullying and silencing people who could have stopped those deceits — particularly reporters and Wall Street analysts — forcing all but a very few into a conspiracy of silence. These tactics, which form...

I hope that Nancy Pelosi realizes very soon that to stop the most dangerous autocrat in our nation’s history from stealing the next election, Democrats need to begin impeachment hearings now. Here are three essential reasons why: Democrats Must Own the Investigation Narrative or They Will Lose it to Trump’s Diabolical Plan to Prosecute His Investigators. During his Pennsylvania rally on May 20, Trump expanded his “witch-hunt” narrative and gave...

My article last year in the Washington Post about Donald Trump lying his way onto the first Forbes 400, accompanied by a 1984 audio recording of Trump pretending to be the fictitious John Baron, provided a timely springboard for commentators to offer valuable insights into the career and character of the President of the United States. This month's New York Times bombshell that Trump reported more gargantuan losses to the...

(This article first appeared in the Washington Post here on February 22, 2019. It was the most read feature on the Post in the days that followed)   Nearly four decades ago, Donald Trump deceived me into including him on the first Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. He claimed a net worth of $100 million but was actually worth less than a tenth of that. Last week, President Trump declared a national state...

(first published here in the Washington Post April 20, 2018) In May 1984, an official from the Trump Organization called to tell me how rich Donald J. Trump was. I was reporting for the Forbes 400, the magazine’s annual ranking of America’s richest people, for the third year. In the previous edition, we’d valued Trump’s holdings at $200 million, only one-fifth of what he claimed to own in our interviews....

For generations, the myth that what was good for the Alexander & Baldwin corporation was good for the residents of Maui allowed Hawaii’s largest plantation and land development corporation to justify its legally questionable, ecologically destructive diversion of most of the fertile island’s largest streams. During the late 19th century, after a handful of powerful oligarchs like Alexander and Baldwin seized power from the Hawaiian monarchy through the “Bayonet Constitution,”...

(This July, 2016 column won First Place in the Greater Bay Journalism Awards for political columnists). Hillary Clinton’s decision to pass over populist Democrat Elizabeth Warren to name Virginia Governor Tim Kaine  (dubbed “Vanilla Nice” by Politico), as her Vice Presidential running mate, makes it more likely that the dreadful Donald Trump becomes our next President. Clinton’s decision is a carefully calculated risk for the Democratic nominee: that the 12 million primary voters who...

In the spring of 2016, Progressive Source was hired to build a public awareness campaign to support a grassroots coalition of Native Hawaiians, environmentalists, parents and farmers in their historic struggle to challenge three Hawaii federal district court rulings on appeal. These troubling rulings ruling invalidated common sense public safety laws in Maui, Hawaii and Kauai counties that were passed to regulate experimental test farms that spray massive amount...

Bernie Sanders has run the most successful grassroots campaign in American history, and his second American revolution provides the first real opportunity that We, the People, have had to overthrow our corporate-corrupted government and replace it with a system that benefits the public interest, our shared ecology, and a peaceful future. There is simply no downside to voting for Sanders during this month’s final Democratic primaries. Bernie may still be...

SHOCKER: Bernie scored four major wins by large margins in Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Vermont during the March 1 Super Tuesday contest, doing far better than expected, despite what the corporate media reported. I listened to National Public Radio on the morning following the Democratic Party Fix...I mean..Primary, and the pro-Clinton propaganda was shocking. NPR reported that Hillary was the big winner Tuesday--and that the Sanders effort was coming to a...

Last weekend, the SF Peninsula Press Club announced the annual winners of its 2015 Greater Bay Journalism Award contest for work published last year. The investigative series by this reporter about the closing of Palm Drive Hospital won the first place award for “Digital Media: Columns-News/Political.” It also won third place for “Continuing Coverage.” The largest exposé in the series, "How A Bondholder-Friendly Shutdown Playbook Secretly Sunk Palm Drive Hospital,"...

Last week, in the middle of a record hot summer, and for the first time in California history, all the public showers at 44 state-run beach parks across the state were shut down. “California is facing extremely severe drought conditions,” announced California State Parks Director Lisa Mangat. “It is important for all Californians to conserve water at home, at work and even when recreating outdoors.” Without a public hearing, and...