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Hacked Records Show Bradley Foundation Taking its Conservative Wisconsin Model National

Daniel Bice Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Records make clear the Bradley Foundation no longer simply favors groups promoting its signature issues: taxpayer-funded school choice and increased work requirements for welfare recipients. It now regularly funds nonprofits that are, among other things, hostile to labor unions, skeptical of climate change or critical of the loosening of sexual mores in American culture.

Locked Up for Being Poor

N.Y. Times Editorial Board The New York Times
The county’s lawyer defended this policy by arguing that poor defendants — who are disproportionately black and Latino — stay in jail not because they can’t buy their way out but because they “want” to be there, especially “if it’s a cold week.” Judge Rosenthal called this despicable claim “uncomfortably reminiscent of the historical argument that used to be made that people enjoyed slavery.”

Basic Income in a Just Society

Brishen Rogers Boston Review
A decent future of work and welfare requires a basic income—and much more. We need a revamped public sector and a new and different collective bargaining system

Atlanta as a Sanctuary City: Holding Leaders Accountable for Violence Against Marginalized People

Azadeh Shahshahani, Adelina Nicholls and Mary Hooks Truthout
On January 20, our organizations -- Project South, GLAHR and SONG -- joined more than 25 other Georgia-based groups for an action we called the People's Inauguration. Together, we demanded that the City of Atlanta declare itself a sanctuary city by addressing a list of demands to protect the human rights of our communities.

Media Bits and Bytes – Doity Woids Edition

Portside
Sinclair eats Tribune Media; Obscene but not absurd; NYT does it again; Women still down in the Valley; Beware the botnets; Canadian breakthrough; California takes on cop tech

What Risk Says About Julian Assange

David Sims The Atlantic
Risk is an incredibly gripping work, one made with an unprecedented level of access to Assange, but for all its intimacy, it still struggles to nail down its target. Instead, it’s more a story of Poitras herself, and the evolution of the movie she set out to make about Assange, who founded Wikileaks in 2006.

On Offensive Speech and Ethnic Sensitivities

Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber The Magnes Zionist
And when a member of the group who has suffered, and continues to suffer, says something that is offensive to the group responsible for that suffering (or who supports the group responsible for that suffering), then by all means call out that person for his offensive remarks - but cut him some slack and get over it.

An Epidemic of Wage Theft Is Costing Workers Hundreds of Millions of Dollars a Year

Brady Meixell and Ross Eisenbrey Economic Policy Institute
The researchers estimated that the average loss per worker over the course of a year was $2,634, out of total earnings of $17,616. The total annual wage theft from front-line workers in low-wage industries in the three cities approached $3 billion. If these findings in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are generalizable to the rest of the U.S. low-wage workforce of 30 million, wage theft is costing workers more than $50 billion a year.

At Least Some Unions Step Up for Big Climate March!

Abby Scher Truthout
"Sadly, there is no greater incentive than profit. No corporation has given anything without a fight. No union has made gains without a fight, and if this global crisis that affects all mankind is defined as an economic war with winners and losers - I stand ready with my brothers and sisters to march and to fight for worldwide energy democracy and to demand climate protection for the human race." Chris Erikson, head of IBEW Local 3