Class, Race and Political Strategy in the Rust Belt

Glenn Perusek The Stansbury Forum
Through much of the United States, Washington is viewed with deep suspicion. When unconnected with a higher purpose, said Augustine, the state is nothing more than highway robbery on a larger scale. (2) When was the last time the American state seemed connected to higher purpose? This sensibility is acute in the rust belt, with our towering hulks of shuttered steel mills, machine shops, auto assembly plants and so on.

ALEC and the Minimum Wage

Seth Sandronsky Talking Union
“Taking away local control over wages (and a range of other pro-worker, pro-environment, and pro-civil rights policies) has become a major priority of ALEC, a corporate-backed group with extensive lobbying resources and influence in our state legislatures,” according to an National Employment Law Project statement. “ALEC drafts “model” minimum wage preemption bills for conservative legislatures to simply copy and paste.”

U.S. Government Eases Sodium and Whole Grain Standards for School Meals

Harvard Chan Editors Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
A new proclamation by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture partially rolls back the stronger school nutrition standards in place since 2012, allowing states to grant exemptions for serving whole-grain rich products, and delaying any of the upcoming requirements to lower sodium levels until after 2020.

‘If You Don’t Want Us, Tell Us To Go Back’: The Making of a California Prison Town

Sarah Tory, High Country News High Country News
Adelanto, a town of 32,000, is home to three prisons. This was not a coincidence. With a history of agriculture, excessive water use, the Great Depression, cheap vacant land filled with a military base which closed in the 1990s, Adelanto turned to prisons. During the 1980s, under increasingly stringent drug laws and harsh sentencing policies, demand for new prisons had grown. So had the belief that prisons could nourish economic development in rural communities.