Portside

Everyone deserves a great public education, but better schools alone can’t fight inequality.

Heck, the LA Times said authorities are cautioning that it is too soon even to call the shootings a “hate crime.” Since the shooter is said to have shouted “Heil Hitler,” I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was a hate crime. And I’m also pretty sure it was a form of terrorism.

University of California unionized grad-student instructors lead higher-ed fight for fair treatment.

Municipalities contact out an estimated 35 percent of services. The federal government has doubled the amount it spends on contracts since 2000, with most of the spending on services. Yet it is clear that contracting out public services has major negative consequences.

More than 1,000 members of Culinary Union Local 226 (UNITE HERE) picketed downtown Las Vegas on Saturday, April 12. Contracts covering 10 downtown casinos are expired, as well as Brady Laundry. Major Strip casinos, including those owned by MGM Resorts and Caesar's, were settled in recent months. In addition to picketing, workers queued up from 8am until 7pm to sign up for strike relief benefits and strike picket shifts.

Since the founding of public higher education, our nation has moved progressively toward expanding the doors of access. But in the last generation, we have moved in the opposite direction. State higher education funding on a per-student basis is lower today than it was in 1980. Federal financial aid no longer provides grants robust enough to defray the rising cost of college.

In her new book, All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power, Nomi Prins traces the hundred-year history of collusion between Washington and Wall Street. Prins reveals how a small number of bankers have played critical roles in shaping a century’s worth of financial, foreign and domestic policy in the United States including the Federal Reserve, the response to the Great Depression, and the founding of the IMF and the World Bank.

Across the northern plains, native grassland is being turned into farmland at a rate not seen since the 1920s. The environmental consequences could be disastrous.

When it comes to our immune response, genetics takes a back seat to pathogens.

Elevated long-term unemployment for all groups, like we see today, means that today’s long-term unemployment crisis is not due to something wrong with these workers, it is due to the fact that businesses across the board simply haven’t needed to significantly increase hiring because they haven’t seen demand for their goods and services pick up enough to warrant it.