Portside

The major issues are health coverage, pensions and work rules. Pensions rankle TWU members because theirs don't increase if a worker makes more than $50,000 a year, meaning a union member will receive no more than $30,000 a year in pension payments after retirement even if they earned more than $50,000 when they retired. By contrast, managers with Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority] have no pension caps.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Martin Walsh of Boston have correctly noted that charter schools are draining off enormous sums of money from already-underfunded public schools. But an even greater loss may be the draining-off of parents who no longer have a stake in advocating for the schools from which they’ve chosen to depart. Who will stand up for the children at the schools they've left behind?

U.S. District Court Judge John Vazquez has given the party a deadline of 5:00 pm Tuesday by which time it must detail "agreements in any form between [the RNC] and the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump...regarding voter fraud, ballot security, ballot integrity, poll watching, or poll monitoring."

 The left is profoundly divided over the conflict, but we should at least agree on a set of principles to end it.

While many people only recently may have learned of the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), Standing Rock Sioux tribe Chairman David Archambault II has worked for two years to prevent its construction.

Red face in a high place; Militarism now; Inside the militia; Hungarian ultra-right in power; LA left losses

“The Crime of Being Married.” So read the headline that accompanied photos of Richard Loving, a Southern “white trash” construction worker, and his African-American wife Mildred... "Loving" audiences will watch Jeff Nichols’ nobly hatred-proof period romance, as it dramatises and gives due mythological prominence to a remarkable legal case which helped change America’s ugly Jim Crow race laws in the 50s and 60s.

The analysis suggests that a coordinated misinformation campaign, spearheaded by conservative groups like the Susan B. Anthony List, Americans United for Life, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Heritage Foundation, is part of an underlying right-wing attempt to chip away at access to commonly used contraceptives such as Plan B or IUDs.

The great Indian writer Arundhati Roy once said, “…in the midst of putative peace, you could, like me, be unfortunate enough to stumble on a silent war. The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”

The manufacturing industry has been hit hard since China's acceptance in the World Trade Organization. The industry includes imports of computer and electronic parts and accounted for 56 percent of the $240.1 billion increase in the US trade deficit with China. An estimated 1,249,100 jobs were eliminated in the electronic industry.