Portside

A lot of Black people love Ebony. But love only goes so far for the journalists who make it happen, especially when the object of your affection is slow to cut you a check. Start by paying your damn journalists.

The results of the UK election are a disaster for the British ruling class. The UK economy is set to enter a period of stagnation at best. The OECD’s economists are already forecasting that the UK economy will slow down to just 1% next year as Brexit bites.

In what may seem a paradox, the worse off Illinois government gets the more the wealthy are willing to spend to gain control. It is part of a national trend that has seen ever escalating spending battles for even down the ballot offices. Down the ballot, a $1 million legislative race in Illinois used to be an oddity. Last year 23 topped $1 million, with five between $5 million and $6 million, according to Redfield’s analysis of state campaign finance records.

In the words of Illinois Network of Charter Schools president Andrew Broy, “Chicago has become the epicenter of charter union organizing in the country.”

Master of None's second season tackles the intersection of queer identities and race, as well as the diversity of New York City, painting a fuller picture of the city than shows that have come before like Girls, or even Louie.

Trying to explain rising inequality without talking about unions is like explaining why the train is late – the tracks are worn, the weather is bad – without noting that one of its engines has been sabotaged.

RAD is a second cousin to everything from privatized highways to the Affordable Care Act, which keeps the public provision and modest expansion of health insurance mostly private. It could be more cost-effective to just appropriate more direct funds to the program and keep it in the public sector, but Congress is not about to do so.

American kids are getting ready to head back to school. But the schools they’re heading back to differ dramatically by family income. Which helps explain the growing achievement gap between lower and higher-income children. Thirty years ago, the average gap on SAT-type tests between children of families in the richest 10 percent and bottom 10 percent was about 90 points on an 800-point scale. Today it’s 125 points.

People had trouble trying to wrap their minds around how the Passenger Pigeon could disappear,. They came up with all kinds of theories to explain why it wasn’t human’s fault, like that the birds moved to South America and changed their appearance. There is a similar reaction now. There is a common human reaction that when confronted with an inconvenient truth to deny it, You can see it today with climate change.

Countries do need to be able to buy foreign products that they cannot acquire or produce domestically, and for that they need a form of currency or an international credit line that other nations will accept. But countries are increasingly breaking away from the oil- and weapons-backed US dollar as global reserve currency. To resolve the mutually-destructive currency wars will probably take a new Bretton Woods Accord.