By Staff, Minority News | Black Radio Network. A USDA report shows that “food insecurity” (hunger) is high for households near or below the poverty line ($22,350 for a family of four) — typically households with children headed by a single woman or man, and black and Hispanic households.
Continue reading →By Dick Meister, Truthout | Brock Haussamen blog | US Dept of Labor. When the minimum wage is adjusted for inflation, one can see that its real value has dropped since 1978. So these increases in the minimum wage are overdue. Unlike the rich, minimum-wage workers spend virtually all that they earn on necessities. So when the minimum wage is increased, this raises the demand for goods and services and leads to job creation.
Continue reading →By Deena Stryker, Daily Kos. In Iceland the financial crisis resulted in people recovering their sovereign rights through a new approach to direct participatory democracy that led to a new Constitution. (English | French | Portuguese | Spanish)
Continue reading →By Staff, BBC | WSWS. Last month, cash-strapped Portugal, which had been ordered by the IMF to privatize, went to sell shares in its state-owned companies to Angola, a former colony that became independent in 1975. To put this story in perspective: 50 years ago, to conclude 450 years of Portuguese control of the trading cities on the Arabian Sea, India had to expel Portugal forcibly from Goa. Western progressives and conservatives alike find these role reversals hard to swallow.
Continue reading →By Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
Continue reading →By William Lee Adams, Global Spin. An estimated 1,000 demonstrations by public sector workers are taking place throughout the U.K. Union leaders say the Prime Minister was asking for it.
Continue reading →By David Moberg, In These Times. The push for taxing financial transactions gains steam in Europe.
Continue reading →By Move to Amend. Beware of the decoy 28th amendments that are being proposed in congress. The most serious version of the 28th is one from the grassroots; the text from Move to Amend is reproduced here.
Continue reading →By Heather Digby Parton, Al Jazeera | Editorial note by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The U.S. has been militarizing its police agencies throughout decades of government-abetted theft of public coffers, anticipating a popular dissent that has been slow to come.
Continue reading →By Jim Siegel and Joe Vardon, Columbus Dispatch. Voters defeated Senate Bill 5 — Issue 2 — which would have limited collective bargaining by the Ohio public sector, this U.S. state’s biggest employer of people of color.
Continue reading →By Jill Tucker, Carolyn Jones, Will Kane, SF Gate. Thousands of workers and students took to Oakland’s downtown streets today as part of a daylong general strike called by Occupy Oakland organizers to protest economic inequity and corporate greed.
Continue reading →By Evan Rohar, Labor Notes. An attempt by a big grain exporter to operate a new state-of-the art facility without longshore union labor has met stiff resistance from the rank and file in the Pacific Northwest.
Continue reading →By Evan Rohar, Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes | Mischa Gaus, Labor Notes. Confrontations have exploded between West Coast longshore workers and anti-union exporters.
Continue reading →By Jordan Shilton WSWS Last month, former Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde became the first leading political figure to be charged for his part in the 2008 economic collapse, which hit Iceland with particular severity. In a charge filed at … Continue reading →
