Portside

More than medical care, it can open the door to the democratic empowerment of millions of poor Americans.

For all its vaunted efficiency, capitalism has foisted wasteful inequality and environmental ruin on us. There is an alternative.

Growth of Radical Right Wing Groups * Getting Rid of Lifeline "Obama Phones"? * Class Issues in Honey Boo Boo * Tech Companies Support Gay Marriage * Disney Video Game Shows Girls How to Climb the NYC Social Ladder * Father Hacks 'Donkey Kong' for Daughter * New Building Design for New Uses at Public Libraries * The Rise of `The American Conservative' * Surprising New Immigrant Geography * The `Harlem Shake' and Class Politics

The spread of "Right-to-work" legislation is damaging to union membership and especially dues collection, and therefore has long been a strategy of the bosses. However, some left union activists have argued that automatic dues collection and membership is anti-democratic and the unions would be stronger if dues were "hand collected." But is this the best way to communicate with workers? Or are there other ways to strengthen unions and union democracy?

When an important leader of the political opposition hints that a military coup might be preferable to the current chaos, and when a major financial organization proposes an economic program certain to spark a social explosion, something is afoot. Is Egypt being primed for a coup?

This is as noted by the New York Times, "a golden age for corporate profits." Corporations have simply stopped paying their taxes. Pay Up Now just completed a compilation of corporate tax payments over the past five years, using SEC data as reported by the companies themselves. The firms chosen are top-earners who have filed 10-K reports through 2012. Their US Tax figures represent the five-year total of "current" payments.

The fact that employers have stopped providing good health insurance or good retirement benefits also has nothing to with technology or globalization or any of the other alibis. In a reasonable society, health insurance and decent retirement would be tax-supported and part of the basic package for everyone. The great hidden injustice in our society is the set of lead weights being placed on the feet of young adults. Your generation should be in the streets.

What legislative goal might inspire all workers—union and non-union alike? Due process rights at work could be the answer. The United States is alone among industrialized countries in allowing at-will employees (i.e. most of the 88.7 % without a union contract) to be terminated for arbitrary reasons. As a result of past labor movement lobbying, Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and South Africa all require employers to demonstrate they have “just cause”

In the end, 50 years after one of the most glorious chapters in the history of the Supreme Court, we tell ourselves that we are a nation of laws, and we praise ourselves for rulings like Gideon, and we extol the virtues of the Constitution in theory, but the truth is we are just lying to ourselves and each other when we pretend that there is equal justice in America.

The idea that America is in the middle of a “cyber war” isn't just lazy and wrong. It's dangerous. The war analogy implies the requirement for military response to cyber intrusions. America genuinely needs effective civilian government cyber defense organizations with strong relationships with the private sector and the active engagement of an informed general public. Creating and even promoting the fear of “cyber war” makes that more difficult.