Portside

-30- for Bagdikian; The candidates take the tech test; Trump press-bashing too much for Breitbart scribe; Missing the sick elephant in the room; Hacking the NY Fed; New NYT editorial page head

As it has migrated from social scientists, with their “operational definitions” and facility with math, to the pundit world, however, loose stereotypes and class-prejudiced assumptions have been growing exponentially. It’s becoming a low-level one-sided cultural class war where what Nadine Hubbs calls “the narrating class” blithely assumes that working-class whites are “America’s perpetual bigot class.”

How the people of Chicago silenced Donald Trump. Faced, not with the threat of violence but lack of control of the message or the montage, Trump retreated.

"This is incredible news for our beaches, for our family vacations, and for sea turtles and whales," said Maggie Alt, executive director of Environment America. "Atlantic coastal communities spoke up loudly and clearly against drilling and spilling, and today the president is standing with them."

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's slate of labor-busting measures has touched off a lengthy budget impasse in Springfield.

Some grated Parmesan suppliers have been mislabeling products by filling them with too much cellulose, a common anti-clumping agent made from wood pulp.

California Assemblywoman Lorena S. Gonzalez introduced a bill to allow groups of 10 or more independent contractors working for "hosting platforms" such as Uber to join worker organizations and bargain over pay and working conditions. This would allow workers to have union-like associations, but they would still be considered contractors and not employees.

California leads the nation in having the most severely rent-burdened households, as well as having the largest shortage of affordable rental homes. (The U.S. Department Housing and Urban Development and other agencies consider families that spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent as rent-burdened.)

In spite of the growing sense of disbelief and horror surrounding the lead contamination of drinking water in the Michigan city of Flint, at least one thing is clear: that the catastrophic levels of pollution and destruction are a direct result of the extreme policies pursued by the Michigan's right-wing leadership.

Economic justice activists are championing laws that shift the costs of toxic poverty wages from communities to corporations.