Working Life

  Hear me out: this is an argument as much about the place of workers’ issues in the future Administration, as it is an argument for making John Edwards the next Labor Secretary.   When it comes to tackling the economic crisis, the president-elect has been pre-occupied, personnel-wise, with the question of who will be […]

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   It still seems astonishing to me that, despite the evidence that they simply can’t be trusted, the people who got us into the mess we are in–the rabid "free marketeers"–still seem to have jobs–and are being asked to continue to serve in our government and are sought after for advice. While certainly I am […]

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  This is a story that seems all too familiar, but it’s worth repeating each time it happens: trillions of dollars in retirement and savings are gone, millions of jobs will be lost, we’re facing a severe economic crisis that could go on for a number of years, and we could be in for a […]

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Yes, to begin, let’s posit that a president with the lowest approval rating in the history of polling has no credibility about any subject of importance–and, in fact, most of the country would like, as David Letterman joked, to let Barack Obama start his new job right away. But, the current president’s pronouncements that the […]

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   This is one of those moments when I feel like I live in la-la land. It’s possible that I am insane, stark-raving mad and delusional. Either that or there is a staggering moral obscenity underway in our country. We have plenty of money to fund what needs to be done–but our political leaders, on […]

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   If policy was constructed by the people, not the wishes of the lobbyists and corporate interests, we would never see a so-called "free trade" deal pass Congress again. That’s pretty much the upshot of the 2008 elections–though, believe me, this fight ain’t over yet.     I would argue that the issue of trade […]

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   I feel like I’m in the middle of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier movie. You know, when the entity masquerading as God talks a good game and is trying to seduce his listeners into believing that a wonderful future awaits–if only he can hitch a ride on the Enterprise. To which Capt. Kirk […]

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   Sounds like one of those spam emails you get, huh? Well, it feels like the members of Congress operate that way. People keep talking about stimulus as a way of stemming the financial global meltdown (um, it might be rough again today–foreign markets all plunged deeply and the Dow futures is showing a huge […]

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  The drumbeat has begun: we have to cut spending because there is no money left. You hear it at every level of the political debate, from candidates to pundits. But, it’s a lie. We have plenty of money if we have the political will, to paraphrase the legendary bank robber Willie Sutton, to go […]

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   We all know the rich get away with paying virtually no taxes. There is a key way they do that beyond the income tax: capital gains and dividends. As the folks from Citizens For Tax Justice point out: The biggest and most unjustified of these subsidies is the special low tax rate on capital […]

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