Working Life

    Really. When I read The New York Times editorials about the economy, or the truly shallow reporting from most of the paper’s reporters, often I think: the people at The New York Times actually are dolts. They don’t understand economics–at all. But, more often, it’s worth considering–they actually believe what they write, even if [...]

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    Dear Ms. Warren: congratulations for jumping into the U.S. Senate race in your state. And good luck and be well–you will find that being a "candidate" offers challenges quite different from having to answer to discourteous, uninformed Republicans. Respectfully, I’d like to ask your position on a number of issues.    Quick context. There [...]

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   I hate to ruin a good party–or at least the world of the liberal bloviators who want everyone to stand in line and praise the president’s speech last night. Heck, I am glad he was there to push for something–ANYTHING–to be done to try to respond to the great crisis we have.    But, [...]

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    Not a day goes by when we don’t hear from the mouth of some talking head or read the words of a transcriber of press releases (formerly known as a "journalist") about the awful "partisanship" or bi-partisan "paralysis" and failure to "compromise". It’s now a macro embedded in the minds and computers of virtually [...]

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   It is a sign of how truly leaderless we are, from Congress to the White House, that people are slobbering over a billionaire’s declaration that the rich should pay more in taxes. Well, duh.    But, let me be one voice who cautions, at the sight of so many puppies rolling over in joy [...]

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    The anger against the president that has been rocketing around many circles of liberal/progressive politics is misplaced.     The crisis we face isn’t about what the president is doing, or failing to do.     We are under siege, fighting the greatest class warfare in perhaps 100 years. And we can expect very [...]

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   Those bills are also called the so-called "free trade" deals with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. The president is making a concerted push to get these bills rammed through Congress by August. Which just boggles the mind.    Let’s focus today mostly on Colombia, a place that is a dangerous place for trade unionists, [...]

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   Reaching back all the way to NAFTA (oh, so ancient history…1993), there has been a complete lie and sham underlying virtually every trade deal post-NAFTA–don’t worry, so-called "free trade" advocates tell us (including free trade zealots Bill Clinton and Robert Reich) about these deals…we will put in place "labor protections" to make sure workers [...]

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   Sigh. Dumb economics again–promoted by a whole lot of good Democrats who just cannot embrace the idea that you cannot fix so-called "free trade" deals by pretending to retrain people for new jobs. It’s a false, cruel promise. At first glance, it looks like a hard fight on behalf of workers: Forty-one Senate Democrats [...]

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   Guarantee you this won’t merit front-page news: Progress on a free trade deal with Colombia has cleared the way for the White House to seek Congressional approval of a package of trade agreements that includes pacts with South Korea and Panama, as Republicans have demanded. Obama administration officials said Wednesday that they expected technical [...]

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    Why doesn’t Bill Daley, the White House Chief of Staff, just come right out and say it: we’re going to ram through these so-called "free trade" deals because, dammit, we need that corporate cash for the re-election campaign? Just be honest. Stop coloring it in the phony Republican-corporate rhetoric of "job creation". Then, at [...]

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   Every so-called "free trade" deal that has shimmied its way through Congress has been greased with legalized bribery, starting with NAFTA in 1993, which was the king of all "what will buy your vote" deals. But, the biggest scam, in my opinion, is the "retraining" workers are offered in return for…sacrificing their middle-class livelihood [...]

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If you share the belief that the greatest economic challenge we face is stopping the stupefying global class warfare underway, then, we have to be quite clear about the tools that support the attack against decent living standards for people and a fair sharing of the wealth. So-called "free trade" is right up there on [...]

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   This should be an amusing sideshow: In the speech, Camp will describe Obama as a recent and largely disingenuous convert to a pro-trade agenda, according to excerpts of his remarks reviewed by POLITICO. “Under the Democrats’ control, we did not hold a single hearing on our pending trade agreements since they were signed three [...]

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I just got off the phone with a reporter who wanted my thoughts on the appointment of Bruce Reed as Joe Biden’s chief of staff. My first though, sarcastically, was that I wondered whether Bernie Madoff would now be brought in to oversee Consumer Protection…of course, an exaggerated observation but I wonder: Who will speak [...]

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The jobs crisis is really devastating. We all know the numbers on how many people are out of work. But, the truth is that just calling for more jobs is not enough–because what we lack in the country is GOOD-PAYING JOBS. And wages are not coming back.   The Wall Street Journal reports what many [...]

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