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Articles by Broke-Ass Grouch

Susan Gregory Thomas (a.k.a. Broke-Ass Grouch) is a journalist and the author of Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds, and the upcoming memoir In Spite of Everything, to be published by Random House in July 2011. Formerly a senior editor at U.S. News & World Report and co-host of public television's Digital Duo, she has also written for Time, The Washington Post, Glamour, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

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Long may it wave.Photo: Luigi AnzivinoOh, say — can you see, by the dawn’s early light? Broke-Ass can, though when her electricity gets turned off tomorrow, that’s about the only light by which Broke-Ass and the crew at the Rancho will be seeing anything. God Bless America!

Yet, in spite of the blunt reality that she is flat-out cashless until her book comes out (July 12!) — and that she lives in a country in which corporate interests threaten to trump availability of safe drinking water; in which there is neither decent, affordable health nor child care; in which fair tax laws or a reasonable minimum wage do not exist — do you know the very first thing visitors see on the wall, upon crossing the threshold of the Rancho’s cramped entrance?

Old Glory, baby. Surprise: Broke-Ass loves, and has always loved, this crazy country.

You want to wear your burka to school? Go ahead. Want to be an asshole skinhead and march through Peoria? Go ahead. Want to work your ass off as a nurse and send money back home to the Philippines? Get political asylum and start a new life in Portland, Maine? Get rescued from Nazi invasions? Done and do... Read more

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