This report by the Kaiser Family Foundation about elder poverty is shocking. I don’t think people realize just how many millions of people are barely subsisting in their old age, but it’s many more than the government likes to admit to. Just as with the Chained-CPI, we’re dealing with how they are accounted for rather than the actual numbers these people are forced to live on.

Did you know that Washington, DC is the 9th most expensive American city to live in? Did you also know that thousands of private sector workers whose jobs are supported by taxpayer dollars don’t earn enough to live in the city where they work? Tomorrow, those workers are rallying for livable wages, in America’s 9th [...]

… because if he were we could dismiss him as a typical stupid hippie to whom nobody should ever pay attention (particularly when sharp analysts like Newt Gingrich and George Will exist.) But now that people who the mainstream media can respect, like Tim Kaine, are saying it, now it’s respectable:

What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be an American corporation? An article in the Wall Street Journal the other day should trigger questions like these. WSJ: Domestic-Based Multinationals Hiring Overseas, Multinational companies based in the U.S. boosted their global work forces in 2011 almost entirely by hiring workers [...]

Where does the Republican Party put its energy? On anything that furthers the interests of the wealthiest. Tax cuts and kicking government are right at the top of that list*. Also near the top comes blocking minimum wage increases, blocking workplace safety rules and keeping lots of people unemployed so they are desperate to take [...]

It’s hard to imagine a more relevant moment for the National Urban League to release its State of Black America 2013 report. This year, after all, marks the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation — two historical events of enormous importance to African Americans. It [...]

Republicans criticize government spending when it is about making our lives better. Of course, by definition all government spending is done to make our lives better. (In a democracy government spending is We, the People deciding how and where to spend the money. Would we decide to spend money to make our lives worse?) In [...]

It would seem so: Speaking to Megyn Kelly about the Supreme Court’s hearing on Proposition 8, O’Reilly–who has previously compared gay marriage to bestiality–appeared to have “evolved” on the subject. He said he didn’t “feel that strongly” about gay marriage “one way or another” and thought the decision should be left to individual states. “I [...]

As the US kicked off the Iraq War on the evening of March 19, 2003, with the infamous “shock and awe” bombardment of Baghdad, I huddled into a small high school classroom for an antiwar gathering organized by several faculty members. Little did I know at the time that, ten years later, the Iraq War [...]

It’s somewhat fitting that a 30-foot geyser erupted from a broken water main practically around the corner from my home the night before the the American Society of Civil Engineers gave America a D+ on its 2013 infrastructure report card, and on the eve of a congressional vote on the only budget that includes the [...]