Snowden Leak Reveals Obama Government Ordered NSA, CIA to Spy on Venezuela Oil Firm

teleSUR
Increasing surveillance on the leadership of PDVSA, the most important company in a South American nation seen as hostile to U.S. corporate interests, was a priority for the undisclosed NSA division to which the analyst reported. “Plainly speaking,” the analyst writes, they “wanted PDVSA information at the highest possible levels of the corporation – namely, the president and members of the Board of Directors.”

Carhaulers Vote Down Awful Deal

Alexandra Bradbury Labor Notes
"The IBT Carhaul Division has instructed all carhaul locals to hold meetings to ask members why they rejected the concessionary first offer. These guys are so out of touch, they need to be told the obvious: Teamsters are tired of concessions and want to protect their jobs and make reasonable gains in this boom year of auto sales." Teamsters for a Democratic Union

Shouldn't Social Security Recipients Get A CEO-Sized Raise?

Dave Johnson Common Dreams
Seniors, disabled veterans and others will receive no COLA adjustment next year. This is because the method of measuring living costs – the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers – is not weighted toward seniors. For example, it counts the decrease in gasoline costs for commuters and not the big cost increases in the pharmaceuticals seniors need.

Eden in Pilsen

Philip C. Kolin Finishing Line Press
At the turn of the 20th Century Czech immigrants flocked to the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen on the city's near west side attracted there by the offer of jobs. Mississippi-based poet Philip C. Kolin depicts their hopes and realities in a newly-published chapbook.

Bernie Defines Socialism

Harold Meyerson The American Prospect
Evoking Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., the Vermont senator bridged the aspirations of New Deal liberalism with the democratic socialist tradition.

Bernie Sanders: How I See Democratic Socialism

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders visits Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. to share his vision for a United States more equal, more just and more prosperous through democratic socialism.

Daily Fantasy Sports

Daily fantasy sports sites claim they are not gambling enterprises, but they seem awfully…gamblish. If only their ads were more truthful.