Portside

Progressives supported Prop 30 to send more money to schools but now the funds are headed to prisons. How could this happen - and can it be stopped?

The red-green coalition government in Norway, whose political platform when it took power in 2005 was called the most progressive in Europe, experienced a bitter defeat in the country's parliamentary election on 9 September. A coalition of four centre-right and right-wing parties, including a right-wing populist party, gained a solid majority and are now negotiating the political platform for a new government.

In signing a bill that will raise California's minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016, Gov. Jerry brown said it was his “moral responsibility” to give Californians a chance to earn a living wage.

While the "net neutrality" debate may seem like a jargon-filled conversation between technologists and free speech advocates, it's really about you and your ability to read what others are writing and write so that others may read it.

Nobody wants there to be trouble, “but sometimes something has to be stirred up and this is something that needs immediate attention.”: Lillian Jones of Fargo

Overall, American families are paying an annual $6,000 subsidy to corporations that have doubled their profits and cut their taxes in half in ten years while cutting 2.9 million jobs in the U.S. and adding almost as many jobs overseas.

The right to be left alone; Verizon's plans for the Internet; The rise of social commerce; Journalistic ethics?; Internet mavens talk money & politics, Culture, commerce, online shopping, politics, money, corruption

Yes, Angela Merkel wins. Her 42 percent vote, impressive as it was with many parties contesting, left her with the biggest bloc of 311 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag, but five seats short of a needed majority. So instead of the previous more-or-less like-minded partner, further to the right on most issues, she must try to forge an alliance with her main election opponents, the Social Democrats.

Bangladesh swept by a third day of protests that leaves nearly 150 injured.

Tomgram: As Christopher Calabrese and Matthew Harwood indicate today, however, gigantic as the NSA’s intrusions on privacy might be, they are only part of an uncomfortably large story in which many U.S. agencies and outfits feel free to take possession of our lives in ever more technologically advanced and intrusive ways.