Portside

RAD is a second cousin to everything from privatized highways to the Affordable Care Act, which keeps the public provision and modest expansion of health insurance mostly private. It could be more cost-effective to just appropriate more direct funds to the program and keep it in the public sector, but Congress is not about to do so.

Trying to explain rising inequality without talking about unions is like explaining why the train is late – the tracks are worn, the weather is bad – without noting that one of its engines has been sabotaged.

A U.S. Appeals Court has ruled FedEx’s employees in California, Oregon, and other states with similar employee-protection laws, are FedEx’s employees, "employees as a matter of law.” The Court ruling is similar to the recent National Labor Relations Board ruling against McDonald's for similar practices, designed to circumvent labor standards by pretending their employees are independent "contractors" or employees of "franchises" or labor "contracting companies."

As the World Health Organization warns the Ebola outbreak could infect up to 20,000 people, experts urge the international community to take more aggressive action to address crisis. Medical professionals fighting the Ebola epidemic on the ground in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria say it is "unacceptable" that "serious discussions are only starting now about international leadership and coordination" to fight the virus.

A recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report, kept secret for more than a year, raises serious questions about the ability of California's last remaining nuclear power plant to survive an earthquake on any of Diablo Canyon's several fault lines. The environmental group Friends of the Earth called for the immediate shut down of the plant, charging PG&E, the plant owner, and the NRC with putting profits before the "safety of millions of Californians."

Two provocative articles on our upcoming Labor Day, by Bill Fletcher and Maynard Seider

In a wide ranging acceptance speech for the 2013 Liberator's Prize for Critical Thought, sociologist and author Marta Harnecker discusses the essential role of genuine popular participation in the revolutionary transition to "21st Century Socialism" in Latin America, exercising power in the "inherited (capitalist) state" to build the foundations of a new political system, and the fundamental need for a new pluralist and tolerant culture on the left.

After extensive research in Virginia, scientists have shown that mercury alters the very thing that many birds are known for – their songs. Emitted by the burning of coal, mercury in the atmosphere has quadrupled since the days before industrialization. Understanding why mercury-contaminated songbirds can’t sing their songs could help scientists learn more about how human brains are damaged by mercury, too.