Portside

Employees at Weight Watchers earn very low wages while working for a very profitable corporation.

Consumer watchdogs, Internet activists and European farmers are gearing up to fight the planned trade agreement between Europe and the United States. Many in Europe are worried that politicians will make backroom deals at the expense of consumers.

A founding member of the Latino Arts Movement, Hernandez was 'our unofficial poet laureate'

The takeaway from all of this is simple: even the low benchmarks suggested here (one half the average production wage, the poverty level for a family of two, simply recapturing the minimum’s 1968 value) come in at more than $9.00. The benchmarks that actually sustain the value of the minimum or tie it to economic growth over time come in at close to twice that.

After today's oral arguments on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, it seems unlikely that the Supreme Court's conservative wing will want to uphold the landmark win for civil rights.

She is known simply as The Teacher, a union boss of such legendary influence that she was credited with putting a president in office and, until this week, so untouchable she flaunted her apparently dubious wealth with abandon. Now Elba Esther Gordillo is behind bars over the alleged embezzlement of stratospheric amounts of union funds.