When a kid snatches an old lady’s purse, it’s punished as a crime. But when a corporation manipulates bankruptcy law to deny thousands of retired coal miners benefits they labored their entire lives to earn, it’s endorsed by federal court. Late last month, a bankruptcy judge sanctioned a scheme in which corporations create shill companies [...]
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Marcus Hedger was wrongly fired. That’s what the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined. Despite that, Mr. Hedger lost his Antioch, Ill., home. His case got mired in allegations that the board that heard it was illegitimate. Similarly, West Virginia’s Cannelton miners wrongly lost their jobs. The NLRB said so twice. But quarrels over NLRB [...]
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You and I, we’re the same. Live and die, we’re the same. Hear my voice, know my name, you and I, we’re the same. ~ Avett Brothers, Live and Die Although Gap, the world’s third largest apparel company, used that Avett Brothers song in commercials last fall, the corporation does not believe we’re really the [...]
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The IRS, always friendless, now is a pariah. Republicans can’t stop condemning it. Democrats can’t stop agreeing. Targeting Tea Party groups for scrutiny, even if through incompetence, not intention, turned the IRS into a nasty carbuncle on the governing body. Carbuncles are never good. Strength-sapping, painful, ugly, they’re to be avoided. Here’s the thing, though: [...]
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President Obama went to Austin, Texas, last week in pursuit of an industrial and employment revival. He wants to launch manufacturing institutes to foster American innovation and job creation. Republicans responded by ridiculing the President, in the same arrogant way that the blooded aristocrats on the British television series “Downton Abbey” scorned a chauffeur who [...]
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A century ago, workers were a lot more “flexible” than they are now. Veritable Gumbies in the mills and mines and factories they were, distorting their lives to slog 10 or 12 hours a day, six – even seven – days a week. Then came the 40-hour week. And weekends. And eventually sick days. And [...]
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You are not safe. Not at work. Not at home in your bed. The biggest threat is not terrorism. It’s corporate negligence leading to a blast or collapse or release of toxic chemicals. Terrorism killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11. But in the dozen years since then, terrorists on American soil have taken the lives of [...]
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Iciness is the defining feature of Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s first and only female prime minister, who died last week. She was the cold-as-steel Iron Lady. President Obama, warm, friendly, shaking hands, hugging the bereft, is the opposite. It’s the same with their philosophies. President Obama, who worked as a community organizer, believes in [...]
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As the U.S. Commerce Department released a report late last month showing corporate profits at a 60-year high, suddenly the big news was about how cheating surely must be rampant in social security disability. Wait, what? Also late last month, a Washington Post investigation showed that the 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones [...]
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Republicans are suffering grievously from the syndrome that singer Joni Mitchell memorialized in the hit “Big Yellow Taxi” in 1970. The chorus says it all: Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s gone They paved paradise And put up a parking lot Republicans bellyached for years that [...]
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