Working Life

   My head hurts every time I read about the phony crisis about the debt and the deficit–whether it be the idiotic headlines bowing down to the rating agencies’ hand-wringing (the same bozos who did such a good job blessing the financial instrument trash churned out by Wall Street) or the daily headlines about a […]

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   It is really sad that our country has gotten to this set of choices: Senate Democratic leaders again rejected calls by House Republicans to wield a "meat ax" in proposing cuts to the federal budget, saying they supported President Barack Obama’s strategy of freezing current spending for five years.[emphasis added]    One side, the […]

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   This should be an amusing sideshow: In the speech, Camp will describe Obama as a recent and largely disingenuous convert to a pro-trade agenda, according to excerpts of his remarks reviewed by POLITICO. “Under the Democrats’ control, we did not hold a single hearing on our pending trade agreements since they were signed three […]

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The political adage is correct: elections have consequences. We know about the takeover of the House by Republicans and the hit Democrats will take in the reapportionment process. But, the greatest threat to the American Dream is going to come from a determined assault on the labor movement.   The New York Times has this […]

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   Much of the debate about the deal cut between the White House and Republicans is focused on what could or could not get done, and the notion that the president got the best deal he could get given the circumstances. I think there is still a legitimate point to be made that even given […]

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   Trying to advance the theme a bit here–since there are enough people correctly taking the White House to task for capitulating to the Republicans on the tax cuts for the very rich–I’d like to raise our eyes up a bit eyer to two years out.    The president just said, at a news conference, […]

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   For those of you who might remember the days of the Carter Administration when the U.S. embassy workers in Teheran were held under lock and key for a very long time–"Nightline" got its ratings boost, and made its name, from the nightly graphic trumpeting how many days America had been "held hostage". Well, we […]

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Yesterday, I wrote about the disastrous state of labor in the wake of the elections. Suffering from either a lack of sleep or simple brain lock, I neglected to include one of the most dangerous coming debacles: we have lost much of the ground built opposing so-called "free trade" agreements, which have played a central […]

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There isn’t any other way of putting it: last night was a disaster for the labor movement and for its members and all working people. When the working class "hero" John Boehner choked up in recounting his humble roots, I said aloud, "will you remember that when you unleash Big Business to press its boot […]

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   A lot of the voices on our side repeat the absolute truth: the Republican Party is simply not telling the truth about the seeds of the economic disaster we are dealing with and that it is in fact the government–our government–that prevented things from getting a lot worse AND we would be in much […]

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