Portside

Focusing on 10 states where the pension cost controversy has been intense, we compare those costs to the amount of revenue those states lose each year as the result of economic development subsidies offered to corporations as well as the tax preferences and accounting loopholes (including offshore tax havens) used by companies.

The government has everything to lose from violence in the demonstrations, and the opposition has something to gain. Protests are initiated by ultra-right factions of the opposition in the hope of an eventual systemic overhaul. When is it considered legitimate to try and overthrow a democratically-elected government? In Washington, the answer has always been simple: when the U.S. government says it is.

Reader Comments - Keystone XL; Sid Caesar; Venezuela; UAW and Volkswagen; Bernie Sanders Run for President?; Chris Hedges; Nixon, Reagan and Sabotage of Peace; Healthcare; Love and Loneliness; Song for Pete Seeger; Announcements: -Remembering Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Era - New York - Feb. 22; Teleconference on 'Moving Beyond Capitalism' - Feb. 24

Union members, journalists, academics and others express differing viewpoints on the significance of the United Auto Workers union loss in the representation election at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in this New York Times' "Room for Debate" piece.

What's needed in Syria is not military intervention, but a global peace offensive.

The reality of anthropogenic climate change is hardly an issue among climate scientists any more, but the spinmeisters on the payroll of the oil industry keep it alive in the "national conversation." One of their standard gambits is to point to record cold weather, as occurred this winter in much of the United States, and chortle, "What warming?"

Injustice in Knoxville - Anti-war trio took part in plowshares action in 2012 at the Y-12 Highly-Enriched Uranium Manufacturing nuclear weapons production facility. An 84-year old nun and two others were just sentenced to up to five years in jail.

“Would I be standing here if it wasn't for my professors? How come my professors are getting paid less than McDonald's managers? I'm sure you all know the university has been making $250 million in profit every year for the past four years. Why can't just five percent of that go to our professors?”