Portside

For expanded Isis strikes, president relies on legal authority he disavowed only a year ago.

No one likes taxes, but government services cost money. And there is little evidence that tax cuts at the state level help juice a state's economy. A study in 2013 by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found deep cuts in income taxes to be "an approach that has not worked particularly well in the past and is not supported by the preponderance of the relevant academic literature.

“This campaign is only the beginning of a campaign about fighting back,” Teachout said. “We have to be very clear with our elected officials in Albany—including the governor, the senators, the members of the Assembly—that we are not going away. Our agenda is not going away. We’re not just voting, we are organizing, we are grassroots lobbying and we are holding our elected officials’ feet to the fire.”

Housework is a necessary labor for families, but it is largely unpaid, except when others are hired to do it. Families may pay others to cook, clean or take care of their children, but they don’t pay themselves. This year, Italy considered a proposal in which the government, or in some cases the husband or partner, would pay wives for this thankless task. And a few years ago, India considered a similar bill. Should housekeeping be compensated?

Health Affairs study says single-payer reform could save $150 billion annually on hospital overhead

Sociologist Theda Skocpol tells what drives the angry right -- and what comes after the government shutdown. The Right in this country, over the last half century, has recognized that fighting across many localities and states is worth it. And they've developed mechanisms for doing that, and that turned out to have a big payoff in Congress. The real problem that you've got right now on the Left is how to defeat this stuff, how to contain it, how to beat it.

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On the heels of recently report showing that taxpayers lose when fast food workers, who receive low wages, are forced to seek public assistance (Univ. of California), fast food workers and their allies rallied in cities across the country. Front-leading New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio called for not only supporting efforts to raise the minimum wage, but to also help these workers organize.

UAW leadership views latest effort to organize auto plants in the right-to-work South as key to the union's future. This story focuses on the current campaign to organize a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi.

The mass assault on this social order is eviscerating the soul, spirit and vision of a country that by decree but not sustainable policies and leadership could have been an inclusive and viable Democracy. ...founded in treachery and structured on the bones of colonialism, there were so many components from which a real Democracy could have been forged and sustained. For the sake of our grandchildren we can't be held hostage by Tea Party terror.