Archive
Healing our Health Care System
The vast scale of America’s health care system is daunting. Maternity wards, emergency rooms, and other facilities operate around the clock at most of the nation’s 4,000 hospitals. Registered nurses form the backbone of this system, providing triage and treatment.
Rooting out Fake Job Creators
Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney, recently declared on Face the Nation that that President Barack Obama “is hostile to job creators,” reciting a standard Republican canard.
A Bold New Call for a ‘Maximum Wage’
How about taking a moment this Labor Day to reflect about those Americans who earn the least for their labor?
Percolate-Up Economics
Washington keeps handing massive bailouts to Wall Street giants and multibillion-dollar annual subsidies to Big Oil. Those giveaways certainly boost the 1-percenters’ bottom lines, but they do nothing to perk up America’s grassroots economy. And that’s not only where the rest of us live and work, it’s the only place that can generate real national prosperity.
Hellish Working Conditions
The Race to the Bottom
Is the love of money the root of all evil? OK, so Jesus may have played down bigotry and megalomania when he said that, but overall his observation holds true 2,000 years later.
The Lineup: Week of August 20-26, 2012
Fix the Minimum Wage
In most states, working full-time in a minimum-wage job pays $7.25 per hour. That’s just $15,000 a year for full-time work. It’s not enough to live on. In fact, a breadwinner for a family of four earning the minimum wage would be a full $7,000 below the federal poverty line.
Washington, Are You Listening?
Patrick Pylvainen grew up in a small town outside Minneapolis. The Minnesotan college student has seven siblings, so he borrows money for his tuition — Stafford loans from the federal government, plus loans from private banks that require interest payments while he’s still in school. Now, those more affordable federal loans are in jeopardy.
Avoiding a 21st-Century Dust Bowl
Mother Nature found a cruel way to demonstrate the difference between political rhetoric and reality when this summer’s record-breaking drought coincided with the writing of a new U.S. Farm Bill.
