Portside

The civil rights pioneer and scholar is most famous for his book The Souls of Black Folk, but his use of data to show inequality is still profound today

Marx wrote these passages nearly 150 years ago, and he was certainly not infallible: in the same letter he suggested optimistically that independence for Ireland might hasten "the social revolution in England." But a great deal of his analysis sounds remarkably contemporary.

I was among more than 400 people who attended a Protect RP organizational meeting Monday night, an extraordinary display of how hungry people are to Do Something.

Medicaid spending exceeds half a trillion dollars, and the program represents more than half of all federal funds spent by states. Medicaid has changed dramatically from its beginnings as a program largely for women and children on welfare. It now has more than 70 million beneficiaries, and its reach is so broad that almost two-thirds of Americans say that they, a family member or a friend have been covered by Medicaid at some point.

U.S. policymakers and the major media are embroiled in a heated debate over the purported Russian meddling in U.S. politics, but Israeli interference in U.S. politics is the conspiracy in plain sight that no one talks about. Israel intervenes in U.S. domestic and foreign policy all the time, but it never is a scandal. The reason is simple. The U.S. Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, and the major media, including the so-called liberal media, are all complicit.

The union defeat at a South Carolina Boeing plant was devastating, but it wasn't inevitable. Labor can still organize the South.

Day was part of a growing movement of strikes against Trump's immigration policies: 'We're making a statement that this country is sustained by us'

Georgia will have to do away with its exact-match voter registration verification scheme thanks to a lawsuit filed last year by voting rights advocacy groups. The program resulted in the disenfranchisement of some 42,000 people, disproportionately people of color -- but now it's being considered by other states including Florida, Virginia and West Virginia.

For followers of Hayek eager to smash the “para-government,” Trump must look like a godsend. How might conservatives do so? By advancing drastic institutional changes even Hayek conceded could seem undemocratic, such as making voting a once-in-a-lifetime act, for example, and lengthening legislative terms to fifteen years. Resting on popular support, the welfare state’s curtailment required attacking democracy.

Tongue-in-cheek, Marin poet Rebecca Foust offers a sonnet about the seven deadly sins, and rich people who have their trickle-down rationalizations.