Portside

A federal judge has ordered Affinity Medical Center to bargain with its registered nurses and to reinstate a nurse who was terminated after nurses voted to join a union in 2012.

With advanced dementia, when people no longer can recognize their own family members, they stop speaking. But when they hear music that’s familiar from their youth, because those memories are preserved, they come alive. They connect with that. It’s a direct sort of a backdoor to that failing cognitive system right to the emotional system, which is really very much intact.

Not only are we now faced with slower growth, but that lesser growth rate is much more narrowly distributed.

The North Carolina state conference of the NAACP recently amended their voting rights complaint against the state arguing that the elimination of pre-registration would affect black and brown teens harder than their white peers because they otherwise have less opportunities to register to vote.

Cops say Jesus Huerta shot himself while handcuffed. The public is outraged at the shady evidence and continued intimidation.

In the Brazilian state of Pará, an army of 25,000 workers is building the world’s 3rd largest hydroelectric plant, a controversial construction project –because of the dam’s low efficiency, its environmental impact and its effects on the Indians, riverbank-dwellers and the inhabitants of Altamira. Folha’s reporters spent 3 weeks in the region to put together the most comprehensive coverage –with 24 videos, 55 pictures, and 18 infographics (see links for full graphics).

According to a new paper on women and unionization by progressive think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), "Even after controlling for factors such as age, race, industry, educational attainment and state of residence, the data show a substantial boost in pay and benefits for female workers in unions relative to their non-union counterparts. In other words, all other things being equal, unions are good for working women.

Dean Baker refutes Bill Keller's New York Times article, "Inequality for Dummies," published on December 22, (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/inequality-for-dummies.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0) in which he contrasts the "left-left against the "center-left.