Working Life

   I don’t write this to convince the people who are intentionally lying or have some ideological end-game here (as in, destroy unions and the middle class). I write this for those people who are still living on the planet Earth of reality. So, here it is: Wisconsin has a great, financially-sound public pension system. […]

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   Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amusing that the government is relying on Lloyd Blankfein to finger someone else for illegal behavior: As a witness for the government, Mr. Blankfein testified that Mr. Gupta violated Goldman policies when he allegedly gave Galleon Group hedge-fund founder Raj Rajaratnam information he learned […]

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   I’ve heard this talked about…well, as long as the grey cells can recall. But, this feels like it has some content to it: The United Auto Workers outlined a new push to recruit U.S. workers at one or more foreign auto makers and will bolster the effort by training and sending activists abroad to […]

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   Ask yourself this basic question: what would you say about the bombing of Libya if it had been ordered by George W. Bush or some other Republican? If your answer is that you would have the same position, ok–but there is a legitimate question to be asked here, as some members of Congress are […]

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Jan Schakowsky is really one of my favorite elected leaders. I wish she had run for the U.S. Illinois Senate seat in 2010 but she continues to carry the torch in the House. Yesterday, she unveiled a serious proposal to tax the richest people in the country–as a response to the rising rhetorical nonsense coming […]

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   In all the negative news out there, I found this encouraging: A group of more than 130 artists, including many prominent figures in the Middle Eastern art world, says it will boycott the $800 million Guggenheim museum being built in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, unless conditions for the foreign […]

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   This is a story that cannot be retold enough and updated enough because it highlights, as much as any trend, how nothing has changed. The people suffer–while CEO pay continues to go up. The robbery continues unabated.     Let’s start with the hospital sector. In New York, and I would suspect everywhere else […]

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   Aha…no matter that Social Security is full funded and solvent for the next 25 years. There are still people who want to promote the Social Security "crisis"…and they reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue where apparently a fight has broken out: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling and Sperling’s deputy, Jason […]

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   We’re back to a familiar problem–and that’s partly a result of the lack of leadership in the country on the issue of jobs. The jobs crisis is so acute and people feel that political leaders aren’t responding so we get this: The Obama administration’s environmental agenda, long a target of American business, is beginning […]

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  The tragedy in Japan is real and the loss of life truly sad. But, there is one other piece of knowledge to glean today that is a long-term keeper: how disasters are GOOD for the Gross Domestic Product, and what that tells us about how we think about "recovery" and "economic growth".     […]

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