Portside

It’s not so much that Obama “sold us out” to a powerful constituency as that he picked the wrong powerful constituency. A quick look at the financial details reveals that health insurance nationalization was always the real “path of least resistance.”

Malta's prime minister, Joseph Muscat, exclaimed to journalist Gwynne Dyer that "we are building a cemetery within our Mediterranean Sea.” An NGO, Fortress Europe, says 6,450 died in the channel between Sicily and North Africa between 1994 and 2012. This figure is similar to the 5,570 people found dead in the desert between Mexico and the United States from 1998 to 2012, and has earned the Mediterranean the nickname “sea of death.”

With Washington tied up on other issues, states and municipalities are handling minimum-wage increases on their own. Legislators and voters in five states — California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island — and in four local governments this year approved measures raising the minimum wage above the current national rate of $7.25 an hour, in one case as high as $15 an hour.

Teachers unions are facing tumultuous times, grappling with financial, legal and public-relations challenges as they fight to retain their clout and build alliances, and deal with declines in membership.

The sad reality is that the only households with any 401(k) savings to speak of are white non-Hispanic, college-educated, married couples. Even within this narrow demographic, all but the wealthiest who use retirement accounts as tax shelters, would be better off under a more egalitarian and efficient system.

President Obama has pardoned two birds each Thanksgiving for the past five years. In both 2009 and 2012, he pardoned more turkeys than people. Overall, Obama has granted clemency to just 39 people.

It has cost the United States $8 trillion to provide military security in the Gulf since 1976. The supreme tragedy is that the US has bankrupted itself ensuring military security for the oil-producing nations of the Gulf when oil production is destroying the world.

Unlike so many leaders who rise of power with the support of organized labor but then distance themselves from the movement, Mandela never broke the bond.