Europe: The Sky’s Not Falling

Conn Hallinan Foreign Policy in Focus
True, the neo-Nazis and immigrant bashers will make a lot of noise, but they offer nothing but hate as an economic solution. The left has a better one, and they are back.

Wall Street Sets Its Sights on Renters

Samuel Oakford Inter Press Service
“Previously you had individual ‘mom and pop’ landlords, but now you have companies that have large portfolios that span multiple states – [will] the systems that they are putting in place [...] be able to keep up?” -- Sarah Edelman, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress

Jewish Day School Wants To End Teachers Union

Kathy Boccella The Philadelphia Inquirer
When teachers at the Perelman Jewish Day School in Montgomery County were told in March that the private religious academy would no longer recognize their 60-member union, they filed a federal labor complaint - and then they went to a higher authority.

How Bill Gates Pulled Off the Swift Common Core Revolution

Lyndsey Layton The Washington Post
In a remarkable job of reporting, Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post describes the creation of the Common Core standards. Two men–Gene Wilhoit and David Coleman–went to see Bill Gates in 2008 to ask him to underwrite national standards. He agreed, and within two years, the standards were written and adopted by almost every state in the nation. -- Diane Ravitch

Bad Science

Llewllyn Hinkes-Jones Jacobin
Not only do patents push higher prices onto consumers, they burden the research world with the increased costs of paying for the intellectual property needed to do further research . . . If anything, the neoliberal approach to academic research is a return to the privately funded, pre-tenure origins of the university system when numerous schools were simply research labs and promotional arms for private industry

How to Be a Staffer in a Democratic Union

Alexandra Bradbury Labor Notes
If members run the local... what exactly is the union rep's job? We asked four experienced staffers how they approach their day-to-day tasks while keeping the rank and file in the driver’s seat.

Documentary: Citizen Koch

In this searing exposé on the state of democracy in America and the fracturing of the Republican Party, Academy Award®-nominated directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water; co-producers of Fahrenheit 9/11 & Bowling for Columbine) follow the money behind the rise of the Tea Party. CITIZEN KOCH investigates the impact of unlimited, anonymous spending by corporations and billionaires on the electoral process, featuring stories of life-long Republicans whose loyalty is tested when their families become collateral damage in the GOP fight to take organized labor out at the knees. Alternately terrifying and funny, CITIZEN KOCH is an essential and powerful portrait of our political times.

How Hassan Yussuff won the CLC presidency

Larry Savage Rabble (Canada)
Hassan Yussuff was elected Canadian Labour Congress president, marking the first time an incumbent was defeated. Yussuff did not offer a shift in ideology, but rather a shift in approach. He promised a more open and inclusive CLC that would balance lobbying and advertising campaigns with the type of grassroots mobilization and direct political action that so many rank-and-file members were demanding.