Working Life

I just spent a couple of days inside the Beltway at the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Summit. I’d guess there were 500 people there and there was a lot of enthusiasm and optimism because of the recent Congressional elections. John Edwards got an award Friday night and the crowd was chanting, “Run, John, Run.” A heavy emphasis […]

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Shows you how much I know…William “I Keep $90,000 In My Freezer” Jefferson easily won re-election yesterday in his runoff election in Lousiana’s 2nd District. He played his message well: I’m just an innocent guy being wrongly pursued by the federal government. Please. Do be clear: everyone deserves the presumption of innocence. But, in my […]

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Today, we will see if the voters of Louisiana send Rep. William “I Stored $90,000 In My Freezer” Jefferson into retirement. He faces state senator Karen Carter in a run-off; both are Democrats do this does not effect the balance of power in the House. It’s kind of amusing, but telling, that Jefferson is attacking […]

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More than a month ago, I posted a short item about the mad scrum that erupted in Times Square when a few thousands people lined up for 65 jobs–at M&M’s new store. Well, actually, it turns out I underestimated the insanity. According to the Daily News yesterday, 12,800 people filled out applications for the 198 […]

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Earlier this week, I wrote a piece that took the Democrats to task for having a wimpy economic plan. Some people took offense—but I don’t think I was tough enough. If you look just at the party’s plan for raising the minimum wage, you can only conclude this: the Democratic Party does not want to […]

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One issue that is on the radar screen–I’ve been getting a slew of emails on the subject–is the fight to get Congress to give paid sick days for workers. One bill proposed by Sen. Edward Kennedy–who will be the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the new Congress come January–would guarantee […]

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I have a new piece today at TomPaine called “Ask For Little, Get Nothing” (not my idea for a great title) which looks at the Democrats’ woeful economic agenda and proposes some alternatives that are more bold. This column revives my “Working in America” series, which I will continue as time allows. The upshot of […]

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A hopeful signal. In today’s Washington Post: Although given little public credit at the time, or since, many of the 126 House Democrats who spoke out and voted against the October 2002 resolution that gave President Bush authority to wage war against Iraq have turned out to be correct in their warnings about the problems […]

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Really worth reading…Rich on our president. Has He Started Talking to the Walls? IT turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the […]

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The other day, I wrote about recommendations made by a Bush Administration-appointed committee to ease up on regulations in capital markets. If you’re interested in reading the whole draft report, here it is–in its entire 152-page sleep-inducing form. A couple of other thoughts since my initial post. One of the he first point that leaps […]

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