Archive
Struggling Workers Assess The "American Dream": It's Still Economic Winter
Diedre Melson says she had been working from the time she was 13 years old – until the Great Recession hit and she, as a mother with four children, was laid off from her job as a phlebotomist at the Alpha Plasma Center in Oregon, along with 1,500 other people. Today,...
Obama / Xi "Summit" -- Big, Big Issues
President Obama and Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping begin two days of "get to know you" meetings today near Palm Springs. Amidst talk of development of a new relationship, and "re-examining the premises" of our understandings,...
'No Change' Means No Relief From Our Jobs Emergency
The May jobs numbers – with a net growth of 175,000 jobs – shows an economy that is treading water. There is no change in the unemployment rate or number of unemployed, no change in number of long-term unemployed. Worse, there is no change in the employment-population...
Trash-Talking Economists
Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science.” Journalist A. J. Liebling called boxing “the sweet science.” To read the Internet lately you’d think they got the two professions mixed up. Economics is becoming a battle royale, a free-for-all. It’s a melee where...
Tell The Senate To Stop Filibustering Affordable College
The Senate on Thursday, in a real sense, filibustered the future. A Republican minority set themselves up as a roadblock against college students struggling to pay for their education and establish financial stability. A narrow, 51-vote majority in the Senate...
A Grand Exit From The Grand Bargain
The Center for American Progress, the most prominent left-leaning institution supportive of a "grand bargain" deficit reduction agreement that would include reducing Social Security benefits, today released a new report that effectively renounces that position. After...
Democracy Leaves The Room At Trade Rep Hearing
The nominee for US Trade Representative (USTR) has just promised Congress that he will push for "Fast Track" authority. Fast Track essentially removes democracy from the trade negotiating and agreement process.
Common Core Meets The Education Spring
With the 59th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education rapidly receding, it's important to remember that the original purpose of federal intervention in local education was to guarantee access and equity. Any Southerner on the front lines of that effort can attest...
Sequester Watch: Denying a Head Start in Washington State
Denying a Head Start in Washington State (via Moyers & Company) To get a sense of just how foolish and shortsighted the $85 billion across-the-board sequester cuts are you don’t have to look any further than Head Start. The federal government’s only pre-K program,...
Corporations Are Colonizing Us With Trade Deals – and Wall Street Wants In
After 237 years, we’re becoming a colony again. Our nation's losing the right to self-determination it fought so hard to win, and it’s happening on a scale unseen since the days of George III. As is so often the case these days, this wholesale loss of our rights is...
