Working Life

   I’ve written extensively about greed and CEO pay, particularly in "The Audacity of Greed". So, I like to see the non-traditional press pick it up and stick with it. Here’s a piece by Michael Hiltzik in The Los Angeles Times, which is a follow up piece by him on Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum: […]

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The raid on our country’s treasury has been underway for 30 years (and more). The corporate leaders have successfully drained our common wealth, shifting money away from the community and, instead, diverting it into the hands of a few. And now the din is growing for another robbery of the people to the tune of […]

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   The AFL-CIO says it will make the difference in many races in two weeks. In my opinion, I think the tide is too strong. We’ll see after the election. Here’s the memo: To: Political Directors From: Karen Ackerman, AFL-CIO Political Director Re: ‘State of the Field’ – Two Weeks Out Date: Monday, October 18, […]

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   So, it’s probably a bad sign about my own priorities that I flip on C-SPAN at night and, having stumbled on the debate in the Senate Nevada race, I stuck with it–without running for a large glass of wine. Or maybe something stronger.    Oh my god.    It was a muddle. I can’t […]

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The secret money flowing into organizations trying to buy the November election for the Republican Party is motivated by a simple idea: greed. Sure, there is some rhetoric about "smaller government" and ranting about the evils of national health care. But, at the end of the day, it’s about extremely rich people never having enough. […]

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   There are so many things wrong about the story in today’s New York Times on New York state’s retiree health care costs that I don’t know where to begin. Here are the first three paragraphs: The cities, counties and authorities of New York have promised more than $200 billion worth of health benefits to […]

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I get why people are angry. Not the anger espoused by the racists, birthers and anti-government people. Across the political spectrum, wherever people place themselves, there is a unifying point that keeps coming up: we’ve been robbed by corporate powers. And the foolish, failed so-called "free trade" policies–pursued by Republicans and Democrats alike–is a place […]

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I mean, c’mon–is there no shame? Yes, that’s rhetorical. We have the greatest jobs crisis in decades, with close to one in five Americans not able to find decent, full-time paying work. The minimum wage is a poverty-level wage. But, all is well on Wall Street–as in $144 BILLION in pay.   This just up […]

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   I recently wrote about the revolt against poverty wages around the world. Some good news–which is so rare in international labor work–via our friends from the National Labor Committee: Mr. Montu Ghosh, an important progressive trade union leader and lawyer in Bangladesh was released an hour ago on bail, after having spent 73 days […]

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   I am continually amazed at the way people–or at least the brain-dead traditional media–express surprise when this happens: In the one-two punch many had long been fearing, hiring by businesses has slowed significantly while government jobs are disappearing at a record pace. Companies added 64,000 jobs last month, after having added 93,000 jobs in […]

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