Working Life

    Each year, on this day, I try to write something about the late Paul Wellstone who was one of the few elected politicians who really had a deep soul and compass when it came to representing the people. Nine years ago, Paul died in a plane crash, along with his wife, Sheila, daughter Marcia, […]

Read the full story

   People who live in New York City and don’t even own cars might shrug about this. But, in the car culture everywhere else, this is an interesting development: Workers at a Southern California car wash have organized and won a labor contract with their employers, making it what’s believed to be the only unionized […]

Read the full story

   Nah, not Mary and what’s his name’s father…there was one, right? Okay, couldn’t the resist the title for this story: The Transport Workers Union on Monday is slated to petition the government to call a representation election in which the union hopes to win the right to represent 650 flight attendants at discounter Virgin […]

Read the full story

   Jacqueline Siegel is the target audience Republicans–and too many Democrats–fear will be the awful victims of higher taxes on the wealthiest one percent. Join me as we shed tears together for the woes of the Siegels.  The ballroom: Jacqueline Siegel paces the floor of her unfinished 7,200-square-foot ballroom. The former beauty queen, with platinum-blond […]

Read the full story

    This is great news: Senate and House leaders are becoming more directly involved with the supercommittee responsible for delivering a sizable deficit-reduction plan by Thanksgiving, amid growing concern the panel’s members could be deadlocked. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has been meeting more frequently with Democratic members of the 12-member supercommittee, an […]

Read the full story

   Pardon me while I yawn. The measly fine that Citigroup is paying to settle civil complaints charging that the bank defrauded investors is really something else: it’s a stay-out-of-jail, keep-your-reputation card for Robert Rubin and a lot of other senior Citi officials, past and present. Instead, this deal–as was true with the miniscule fines […]

Read the full story

    You want a reason for the uprisings in Greece, where workers are on strike to protest the brutal austerity measures, or OccupyWallStreet or the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia fanned by the deep unemployment? Or are you looking for a reason people don’t believe the economy is getting better even when "growth" seems to […]

Read the full story

   Welcome to another edition in the economic philosophy of the Republican Party, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Today, courtesy of the Citizens for Tax Justice, it’s the Herman Cain Robin Hood-in-reverse plan. Courtesy of CTJ: If presidential candidate Herman Cain’s proposed “9-9-9 tax plan” was in effect today, then […]

Read the full story

    The people are there. Not surprisingly. If the politicians could get their hands out of the pockets of their contributors, we’d have some progress. All the way from the Financial Times: A poll released on Monday by Quinnipiac University found 61 per cent of registered New York City voters supported extending the state’s surcharge, […]

Read the full story

    To step back for a moment from the terrific on-the-ground accounts of this morning’s action to defend Liberty Square, I took a moment to think about what took place–and why this make me even more optimistic than I was even a week ago that we are building something. Lesson Number One: some things are […]

Read the full story