Portside

Given the acute need for jobs and rising incomes, what passes for “bolstering job creation” in a summary of the budget bill released by the House Appropriations Committee is scandalous. Incredibly, a provision that allows banks to engage in high-risk derivatives trading under the shield of federal insurance is listed as a measure to “bolster job creation.”

A group of Afghan friends had entrusted me with a simple message, their grievance, which they couldn’t personally deliver: please stop killing us.

Which bird is closest to the saltwater crocodiles, American alligators and the slender-nosed Indian gharial? Either the chicken or the ostrich, depending on how you look at it. If a genome is a shelf of books, then the chicken has been a better librarian, but the ostrich has been a more faithful translator.

In a turn-around decision, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that employees can use their workplace email to organize a union. The Supreme Court continued it's pro-business agenda by ruling that Amazon can detain workers at the end of their shift to search them, and they do not have to pay them for the time it takes.

Pope Francis is a reform-driven pope that has huge popularity with rank-and-file Catholics who have hungered for a figure to transcend an age of scandal. But, does even a powerful and popular pope have the power to change church doctrine? The advancing story line of Francis’s papacy is how far can a pope go in making reforms against an embedded culture of cardinals and bishops who are averse to change?

A U.S. activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which supports Palestinians in their non-violent actions against the Israeli occupation, writes of his last days in Hebron. Hebron is the most populous city in the Occupied Territories. It is the only West Bank city where the Israeli settlers live inside the city itself, including many who live in an area close to the hub of the city, designated as H2.

On December 4th the City of San Jose began the eviction of some 300 men, women, and children residing in tents and shanties on the 68 acres of creek-side property called the Jungle. Where will the former residents go. The Jungle, considered the largest homeless encampment in the U.S., is in the heart of Silicon Valley, the high tech region that accounts for one-third of all of the venture capital investment in the United States.

The Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases are examples of how prosecutors manipulate the grand jury process. Criminal grand juries, with their secrecy, lack of oversight, and disregard for the rules of evidence, serve no useful purpose and make a mockery of justice. If we abolish criminal grand juries, at least the deaths of Brown and Garner will not have been in vain.

This movement is not only explicitly about the right to live a life with more opportunity, but the right to simply live. As Howard Zinn said, "You can't be neutral on a moving train." The train is leaving the station, even in the world of sports. The marches in the streets are not done. The die-ins disrupting traffic are not done. And, as part of this moment, athletes are speaking out, with African American sports stars in the lead.

Congressional Progressive Caucus urged members to reject the so-called Cromnibus if a provision which helps big banks trade derivatives in units backstopped by a government guarantee remained in the spending measure. This kind of activity was a cause of the 2008 crisis - it a giveaway to wealthy campaign donors and Wall Street banks. Analysis for more information about key takeaways from the proposed spending bill, as well as a few controversial surprises.