Portside

Investment of public money needs transparency and accountability. The CalPERS decision to end hedge fund investments should be a clarion call for pensions to re-examine their relationship with these and other nontraditional investment instruments. Trillions of dollars of public money as well as the retirement security of millions of workers are at stake.

Why doesn’t North Carolina want people to vote?

From the crime novel's mainstream inception in the early 20th century in the United States, numerous authors have explored a wide range of politically charged themes, including class distinctions, government corruption and the oppression of women and people of color.

In 2010 two former employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions, a temp agency that supplies workers at many of Amazon’s U.S. warehouses, sued the company demanding back pay for the time they spent in security lines after clocking out at Amazon warehouses in Nevada. On Oct. 8 the Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether that time counts as work.

What if the most popular hypothesis is wrong? Plenty of fringier theories exist.

It's a Wonderful Commie Plot; Wired's Top 13 for `13; Black-owned TV Disappears; $50m for Greenwald Media Venture; FAIR's P.U.-litzers; Euro Teens are Done with Facebook

An almost unreported strike in South Korea, which has just come to an end, epitomises how a `free' market can be incompatible with the liberty of workers to defend their own security.

Two pieces on the labor movement and climate change. First, an article by Gary Engler, who argues, "There is nothing more important than a healthy environment. Without that, all the other fundamentals — food, housing, education, family, leisure, pensions etc. — are at risk." Second, a link to a video interview of Sean Sweeney, by Laura Flanders.