To Whom It May Concern at the White House: I have three little words for you: Pay Your Interns. It is unconscionable for the White House — as for so many other “public” sector organizations — to engage in a practice that structurally reinforces privilege, closing off access to careers along the corridors of power [...]
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Conservatives keep claiming liberals want a “cradle-to-grave nanny state.” That rhetoric has distracted us from the real social re-engineering taking place all around us. The right, along with its “centrist” collaborators, is transforming our nation into a bloodless and soulless Randian State. Their decades-long assault on our core social values is on the verge of [...]
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Congress Turns Its Back on Rural America (via Moyers & Company) For fifteen years in Neodesha, Kansas (population 2,486) there were only two options for early childhood education services in town: a program for at-risk 4-year-olds operated by the school district, and a Head Start Center for children ages 0 through 5 run by the [...]
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Today I had the honor of being one of few men to join the panel on WETA’s “To The Contrary,” with Bonnie Erbe, for a Father’s Day edition of the normally all-female news analysis program. (The show will air later this evening, and the video will be available online here.) I was on board for [...]
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Have you heard that China is sending people into space? Have you heard about China’s high-speed rail lines linking their major cities? Have you heard that China has built the fastest supercompouter in the world? These are results of the dreaded “government spending” that Republicans say is such a bad thing. They’re doing it, we [...]
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“The appeal for each Moral Monday has been the same: urging legislators to govern for the good of the whole, rather than for the wealthy.” — Rev. William Barber. Since April, North Carolina citizens have been gathering at the state capital in Raleigh for “Moral Monday” rallies and acts of civil disobedience to protest the [...]
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Starting today, Massachusetts Rep. James McGovern is joining the state’s Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz and other Massachusetts officials in the “SNAP challenge.” For the next seven days, they are going to be living off a food budget of $31.50, the average weekly benefit received by an individual in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance [...]
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The IMF has “acknowledged major mistakes” in Greece’s bailout, and admitted to seriously underestimating the severity of Greece’s downturn. Yet the Greek government continues with draconian spending cuts, in order to comply with the austerity measures based upon those ”major mistakes.” In response, Greeks have again take to the streets, this time to protest an austerity [...]
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