Portside

The for-profit health-insurance industry in the United States is profoundly inefficient and costly, and a sane and sustainable alternative exists—single-payer, otherwise known as expanded and improved Medicare for all. Just change the age of eligibility from 65 to zero.

Congress, Imminent Domain, Social Security, New York, Medicare

After decades of exclusion, home care workers are finally covered by federal minimum wage laws. Anyone who works for social change can learn from how they did it.

Why can’t my biography of Shel Silverstein quote the works of Shel Silverstein? His censorious estate.

The Nobel Prize has had its controversies, and its combination of science and politics can create unusual relationships.

The official unemployment rate drastically understates the weakness of job opportunities due to the existence of a large pool of “missing workers”

Shutdown: 'Not Some Damn Game'. Robert Johnson -- Crossroad. Our Story in Two Minutes. Pete Peterson's 'Grand Bargain' Hoax. Flashmob in Madrid Unemployment Office. Movie: Let the Fire Burn.

We will, no doubt, be needing roads - urban, local and interstate - for the foreseeable future, despite their negative effects. The good news is that we are now heading toward a transportation ecosystem that is far more varied and useful. Rather than encouraging more cars, more trucks, more pollution, less interpersonal connection and more privatized space, people throughout the country are radically changing travel and interpersonal connection.

Definitely go out and buy Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Americas Public Schools by Diane Ravitch. Reign of Error lays out step by step the relentless thirty year drive to either centralize the education of the young - on one hand - or divest it entirely into privatized hands on the other. Finally, the two sides have joined forces on a strategy that simultaneously does both. (Deborah Meier)

"It's really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day,Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 when I've worked for McDonald's for ten years?" (Nancy Salgado addressing McDonald's USA President Jeff Stratton's speech at the Union League Club of Chicago.)