Working Life

   This has been an on-going story. An update today via The NYTimes (quick post today, folks, because of work craziness): State labor investigators have identified 57 under-age workers who were employed at a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa and have asked the attorney general to bring criminal charges against the company for child […]

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   Now that the platform committee has met a  number of times, we should learn what the Democratic Party’s platform will say about trade. I’m told the language may be finalized today. In the meantime, consider a couple of nuggets of information:    The Citizens Trade Campaign came up with proposed language, which you can […]

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Just when you thought the greed and outrageous behavior of corporate America could get no worse, the leaders of companies have sunk to a new low: they are using workers’ pension money to fund CEO pensions. No this is not a joke.   The evidence is laid out today in The Wall Street Journal by […]

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   Where does a politician, or a political party, draw the line in the willingness to sacrifice principles for a few bucks? When we talk about the need to "change" the political environment and the culture of money and politics, isn’t there some place where you can say, "right here, this is the perfect example […]

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As if Bear Stearns ($50 billion in loans plus $29 billion in loss guarantees to JP Morgan) and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac ($4 trillion in liabilities dumped back on the government’s balance sheet) stories were not enough, investment bankers seem to have come up with a new scheme to loot those smallers banks that are about […]

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   You want contrast? I’ve got a doozy for you this morning. Check out these two contrasting developments. First, no surprise, the economy isn’t growing…duh: The economy grew less than expected from April to June, the government said on Thursday, and it shrank in the final months of 2007, dimming the outlook for a quick […]

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   With the backdrop of the collapse of the global trade talks (a good thing), here’s something to consider: the great, wonderful benefits of so-called "free trade" or "liberalization" have cost 2.3 million U.S. workers their jobs between 2001 and 2007, according to a very, detailed fact-based (as opposed to rhetorical promises from pro so-called […]

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   To the long list of examples of how business rips off the average person–from paying CEOs huge salaries while workers get pay and benefits cuts, to making people work harder and more productive than ever before yet refusing to pass on the fruits of that labor to workers, to lobbying against raising the scandalously […]

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   The world of the Beast of Bentonville is all abuzz with news of various kinds–not the kind of news that is fuzzy and warm to living creatures everywhere (a friend of mine says I should write more positive things…okay, I’ll try…he obviously didn’t read my recent baseball riff). So, where do we start? How […]

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   I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the ability of government statistics, economists and prognosticators–pretending to be in the last cateogry myself sometimes–to accurately portray what is actually happening to people. Government stats like Gross Domestic Product don’t tell you much other than stuff is being made–it doesn’t really give you a good picture […]

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