Portside

Just how bad is the state of public defense in America? The charts below detail some of the biggest challenges plaguing the system.

Researchers are cautiously optimistic that the slowdown in health care spending is here to stay. Two factors potentially contributing to the record slowdown in growth to 3.1 percent during 2007-11: job loss and benefit changes shifting costs to the insured. Other fundamental changes, including less-rapid development of imaging technology and new pharmaceuticals may have led to the majority of the slowdown: 10 year savings may equal $770 billion.

It's difficult for exploited workers to organize and build popular support. Companies can pack up and move to the next low-wage country where people and governments are desperate for jobs and income, however pitiful. This cycle of exploitation is destined to continue until the world runs out of poor countries to exploit, or until citizens in rich countries, like the U.S. get over their ignorant indifference and face up to their complicity for evil done in their name.

The potential Tribune sale would be a high-profile litmus test of the unions' financial self-awareness. Public-sector workers from Massachusetts to California can force their investment managers to make a choice: sell to the Kochs, or keep managing their retirement billions. If the Kochs want to buy newspapers, this is a free country, and nobody can stop them. But the people whose benefits they want to slash don't have to help them get there.

What is happening is that researchers are studying one possible factor at a time, and seeing only a tiny part of the whole picture. It’s the parable of “The Blind Men and the Elephant”, where each one describes only that which is in their range of perception, instead of examining ALL of the evidence (including reading ALL of the literature) and coming up with a theory which explains all of it. We’ve got a pile of incomplete theories all competing for the media spotlight.

In our convoluted world of constantly flowing disinformation, governments tell us the Web is a “privilege” to be paid for and lost if we misbehave, corporations tell us they invented it, and most of us use it without really thinking much about its intent.

The young are idled; their hopes crushed. Americans are paying a terrible price for Washington’s folly.

A cynical pawn to move a more diabolical agenda

Unemployment crisis, chemical weapons, climate change, Bangladesh and more ...

Increasingly, the rabid far-right 'pro-Israel' camp is carrying out repulsive, hate-filled attacks on Jews whose most cherished wish is to see a stronger, more democratic Israel. It is time to take a stand. The celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking became embroiled in a deepening furor today over his decision to boycott a prestigious conference in Israel in protest over the state's occupation of Palestine.