Working Life

   It is going to take the concerted effort of a lot of voices to overcome the noise being generated by the people who would like us to think that economic salvation is at hand. So, we need to keep pointing out some harsh realities facing real people. For example: The number of Americans filing […]

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The Republican world view of "national security" has been laid bare–ideology is more important than the security of the people. In my view, the fallout from the airplane terror plot makes this abundantly clear.   I start from my own touchstones about the definition of "national security": it is a measure of how the people […]

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    There was a bit of wisdom that one could gain from the airline terror plot that, in my view, says a lot about the Republican view of the world and our own definition of national security. Yesterday, to its credit, The New York Times had an editorial entitled "Senator DeMint’s Priorities," which made this […]

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   …is that one in four children in the United States of America–the wealthiest country in human history–are on food stamps.

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   A quick post today on the run…someone is going to have a nice holiday haul thanks to you (from The Wall Street Journal): American International Group Inc. is preparing to pay its outgoing general counsel Anastasia Kelly several million dollars in severance after she resigned over federal pay curbs, according to people familiar with […]

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   Merit is one of the enduring standards we are all taught from the moment we start school. If you get good grades, you advance. If you perform well, you advance. What, then, are we supposed to think about the young children or college-age students who read about this, courtesy of The Times Gretchen Morgenson […]

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   If we wonder why the average person thinks government is dysfunctional and too often doesn’t speak for the average person, here is another example (courtesy of The Wall Street Journal): The top regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is expected to announce millions of dollars in pay packages for top executives at the […]

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One of the biggest challenges that we face as a country is not that we lack money or wealth–we have plenty of money. Rather, we have a distorted set of priorities and an ideological frame that walls off many possibilities to create a decent society. For example: the belief in the so-called "free market" that […]

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   This is not a new phenomena but it must be underscored: unemployment hits blacks, especially men, much harder than the rest of the population, as the Fiscal Policy Institute found is the case in New York City: The FPI report found that the citywide unemployment rate in the third quarter was 15.7 percent for […]

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   Last week, I pointed out that the Senate health care bill was bad for many reasons including the provision that would actually encourages companies to hire people for less money. Seems like that was what people thought would fit right into the current trend sweeping the country: The hiring of temporary workers has surged, […]

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