Portside

This is a test - please ignore

"… the question of unity brings up a hard subject, a subject all of us know about but few want to- acknowledge -- race. Because the reality is that while a young man named Michael Brown died just a short distance from us in Ferguson, from gunshot wounds from a police officer, other young men of color have died and will die in similar circumstances, in communities all across this country. … Because the reality is we still have racism in America."

On September 12, just seven weeks before election day, a panel of three 7th Circuit appellate judges -- all appointed by Republican presidents -- reinstated Wisconsin's voter ID law, which federal district Judge Lynn Adelman had blocked in April as unconstitutional and violative of the Voting Rights Act.

Senator Orrin Hatch, in an earlier round of this century-long debate, told the Times, “Youth unemployment and black unemployment will drastically rise. It’s amazing to me that some black leaders want an increase in the minimum wage.” African-Americans and young adults are evidently consulting oracles different from Hatch’s. Both groups support raising the minimum wage to even higher rates than do Americans as a whole.

Ai-jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance receives $625,000 to expand movement of nannies, cleaners and aides.

Without a socialist consciousness, an independent Scotland risks becoming a smaller — and even more reactionary — version of its southern neighbors.

"As we all know, there are no free lunches...We are not going to be able to hire anyone...if we do not work out an acceptable arrangement with Koch and its funding partners." - A Florida State University department head, explaining the strings attached to a 2007 Koch donation

Koch Sisters; Art, art damned Koch; Whose booty? Our booty; White rage; The forsaken; Invisible money

Historical discrimination, demographics, and public funding have left home care workers at the very bottom of the American work hierarchy. The wages these workers earn are painfully low: the median salary for a personal care aide is $19,910 annually, or $9.57 an hour; a home health aide earns $20,820 or $10.01 per hour. On the Bureau of Labor Statistic's list of 30 fastest-growing jobs, personal and home care aides are the worst paid.

Working with the rebels in Syria will be a daunting task for the Obama administration. There are hundreds of anti-Assad militias, each with its own agenda. Neither the FSA nor the Syrian National Coalition, a political group representing the opposition, control or even coordinate all the various non-extremist fighters. And the dissolution of the Syrian Support Group in the United States could be a troubling sign.