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The Invisble Workforce: Death, Discrimination and Despair in N.J.'s Temp Industry

Kelly Heyboer NJ.com
The business of providing temps to factories and warehouses is booming in New Jersey, which has one of the highest concentration of temps in the country . But New Jersey's "temp towns" have a dark side. Workers say this sector of the temporary employment industry is rife with mistreatment. They complain about low pay or not being paid at all, rampant racial and sexual discrimination, unsafe working conditions and a system that seems to exploit them at every turn.

The Public Option Is Back: Our Enthusiasm Should Be Tempered

Don McCanne Common Dreams
"A public option will be only one more player in our costly, fragmented system of funding health care," writes McCanne. "It alone will bring us none of the important features of a single payer system such as efficiency, equity, systemic cost savings, and universality."

'Snowden' Isn’t Paranoid Enough

David Sims The Atlantic
Snowden, Oliver Stone’s new film is a perfunctory biopic about the NSA’s international surveillance programs that lacks his trademark fearlessness. The film feels trite in its efforts to depict America’s ensnarement in the creepy web of online spying.

In Building Boom Immigrant Workers Face Exploitation

Beth Healy and Megan Woolhouse The Boston Globe
A Globe investigation found that these workers, eager for a paycheck, are often paid below the prevailing wage and illegally, in cash. They are also the most likely to be subjected to unsafe work conditions, without insurance to cover medical bills or lost pay if they get hurt. And the unscrupulous contractors who employ them are too seldom caught and penalized.

When Labor Laws Left Farm Workers Behind — and Vulnerable to Abuse

Kamala Kelkar PBS NewsHour
“The original, Southern desire to preserve an exploited, economically deprived non-white agricultural labor force pinned to the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy continues to manifest itself full force,” Law Professor Juan Perea of Loyola University said. “The only difference today is now it’s brown and black people.”

Welcome to Brazil, Where a Food Revolution Is Changing the Way People Eat

Bridget Huber The Nation
Latin America is transforming itself into a sort of food-policy laboratory. Some of the reforms they’ve enacted have also been proposed in the United States, but have been thwarted by the food industry and its political allies. Brazil has also made huge progress against poverty and food insecurity while supporting the family farmers who produce 70 percent of the food that Brazilians eat.