Portside

Beyond the Chart: Sure, Health-Care Deduction Huge, but What's the Return?

From Walden to the White House - We are watching a global crisis unfold before our eyes, and to stand aside and let it happen -- even though we know how to stop it -- would be unconscionable. We can't afford to lose a single major battle. That's why the Sierra Club's Board of Directors has for the first time endorsed an act of peaceful civil disobedience (two items).

When the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington ruled Friday to overturn President Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, it handed a huge gift to Wall Street, big corporations and the politicians they control.

Jobless Americans are paying millions in unnecessary fees to collect unemployment benefits because of state policies encouraging them to get the money through bank-issued payment cards, according to a new report from a consumer group.

Small but highly publicized strikes by Walmart retail and warehouse workers last fall set the labor movement abuzz and gained new respect for organizing methods once regarded skeptically.

Politicians across the political spectrum herald “job creation,” but frightfully few of them talk about what kinds of jobs are being created. Low-wage, temporary jobs have become so widespread that they threaten to become the norm. How did we arrive at this state of affairs?

Late this evening, President Mohammad Morsi declared Emergency Law in three provinces around the Suez Canal that are ablaze in protests. He frankly conceded the government was losing control. ... there is absolutely no doubt that both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood government were caught completely off guard by angry, increasingly intense protests, immediately following what were already massive anti-government actions in Tahrir Square and elsewhere.

A cadre of wealthy business executives and conservative groups tried to sell California voters on new campaign finance reforms.Couched in lofty rhetoric about the importance of cutting off money from special interests to politicians and other regulations favored by reformers, their proposal sought to ban the practice of using payroll deductions for political expenditures — a popular method of union fundraising: The story of the American Fund and Proposition 32.

A boycott of Washington state’s mandated standardized test by teachers at a Seattle school is spreading to other schools and winning support across the country, including from the two largest teachers’ unions, parents, students, researchers and educators.

When banks complain that regulations stifle innovation or profit potential or that business may be driven offshore, the answer may well be “so what.” The startling truth may be that the elimination of most of the financial innovations of the last 35 years would be the best job creator ever considered.