Portside

Lawmakers must stop functioning as handmaidens to the rich in an economic scheme that has failed the 99 percent from the very day the 1 percent got Ronald Reagan to buy it.

A compilation of articles by Richard Steier, the "best full-time reporter on the New York City labor beat." He is the editor of the Chief where these articles first appeared. This is the book to read if you want to know what was happening on the municipal labor scene since the mid-1990's.

I'm going to make me a good sharp axe, Shining steel tempered in the fire, Ill chop you down like an old dead tree, Dirty old town, dirty old town.

A new House rule creates a legal obstacle course that would make it harder to shift funds from the Social Security retirement account, which has a big surplus, to the smaller disability account. Such transfers have been done routinely in the past under both Republican and Democratic presidencies, including four times under President Ronald Reagan.

An editorial on the upcoming elections in Greece by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) The Greek elections offer a potential breakthrough, but to carry out their program a government of the Left will need massive understanding and support abroad. Unions should be in the forefront of building that support.

If not, we must stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership before it does more damage to our country.

Virtually every state tax system is fundamentally unfair, taking a much greater share of income from low- and middle-income families than from wealthy families. The absence of a graduated personal income tax and over-reliance on consumption taxes exacerbate this problem.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, battled organized labor regularly during his first term over contracts and pensions. Now, just weeks after his re-election, he's roiled the Public Employees Federation, the white-collar state employees union, by attempting to turn more than 2,500 union jobs into nonunion posts.

The civil disobedience, organized by Witness Against Torture, was a dramatic culmination of a week of action in Washington, D.C. to press for the closure of the military's offshore prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as it enters its 14th year.

Centcom hacked; Blind on blind; Every IP address in the world; What David Cameron Wants; iBeacon reinvents libraries & museums; Scared media; ISIS goes glossy