Economy and Business
Enough Free Trade Nonsense
Does it matter that no cell phones are made in America? Or scarcely any solar panels? Or that 91 percent of Walmart’s goods come from China? Should we care that our sundry free trade agreements have caused so many of those spiffy products on our shelves to be produced in the world’s grimmest sweatshops?
The New Caregiving Movement
We’ll hold our first national Care Congress in Washington, DC, on July 12, where we will be joined by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and other government and elected officials. Regional care congresses, in Seattle, San Antonio and other cities will follow so that communities can grow and develop grassroots campaigns that address local needs within the larger national vision.
Money for Nothing
When Enron collapsed, electricity markets were prone to gaming and corruption. And, it turns out, they still are. Shrewd energy traders are still at it, discovering and exploiting flaws and loopholes, often at the general public’s expense.
This Recession Isn’t Temporary
I love economists — they’re so optimistic. They’re no used car salesmen, but they’re never as gloomy as the data they traffic in. The reason for all this sunshine is plain enough — it’s what they’re paid for. With few exceptions, the only economists we hear from work for Wall Street, Congress, the White House, big media, or other groups with a public axe to grind.
Three Strikes against Apple
Apple, like most other electronics companies, makes liberal use of an ore called columbite-tantalite — widely known as coltan — whose electrical retention properties improve the battery lives of electronic devices. While Australia is the world’s largest coltan producer, suppliers for Apple and its competitors often prefer to buy their coltan at lower cost from mining operations in war-ravaged eastern Congo.
Tell the People about the People’s Budget
If you listen to the pundits and TV commentators, the federal budget problem has a simple solution: cuts, cuts, and more cuts. They cheer politicians for making “tough choices,” which usually entails taking money away from schools, stiffing public workers, and telling the poor and the elderly they need to make do with even less. Tough choices, indeed — but for whom?
Think Indifferent
Paving the Road to a Hungrier, Unhealthier, and Less-Educated Nation
The number of poor children had already grown by 2.1 million in 2009, over pre-recession levels, with continuing high joblessness among parents raising concerns that poverty will continue to worsen for some time. Since kids who spend more than half their childhood in poverty earn on average 39 percent less than median income as adults, we can expect lasting costs that will hurt the nation’s future economic growth.
And yet, a majority of House lawmakers want to narrow the deficit by making things worse for today’s kids.
Separate but Unequal Borrowers
Home ownership as we know it could be a thing of the past if a proposed Qualified Residential Mortgage Rule (QRM) takes effect. The proposed rule would be especially damaging to the homeowner aspirations of minority and working class citizens, as I recently explained in a letter to the heads of the six federal agencies charged with developing risk retention regulations under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. Here’s why.
Global Victory for Domestic Workers
The ILO voted by a whopping 396 to 16 margin to adopt a “historic set of international standards” known as the Convention on Domestic Workers.
