Portside

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.

What should have been a model for health care reform faces an uncertain future. Because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tilts the playing field to disadvantage multiemployer plans, this decades-old gain of the labor movement may be irreparably damaged.

What should have been a model for health care reform faces an uncertain future. Because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tilts the playing field to disadvantage multiemployer plans, this decades-old gain of the labor movement may be irreparably damaged.

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?

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?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pushing for 400,000 new visas for foreign workers, a demand that has been met with fierce resistance by labor unions and which could help derail an agreement between the two sides over an immigration reform bill being developed in Congress.

These regional disparities go back to Reconstruction, when Southern Republicans increased property taxes on defeated white landowners and former slaveholders to pay for the first public services — education, hospitals, roads — ever provided to black citizens. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, conservative Democrats — popularly labeled “the Redeemers” — rolled taxes back to their prewar levels and inserted supermajority clauses into state constitutions.

The CBC Alternative Budget for Fiscal Year 2014 puts forth a plan that reduces the deficit and alleviates harm inflicted by austerity measures in a responsible and fiscally sound manner. Furthermore, it proposes significant investments to accelerate our economic recovery and ensure that our recovery is felt in every community in America.