cengel Posts

Say you’re in for the next phase of this grassroots movement. Join here: http://my.barackobama.com/Organizing-for-Action...

Kathy Newman
Professor of English, Carnegie Mellon University
In season two of Downton Abbey, the inimical Dame Maggie Smith (who plays the “Dowager Countess”) finds out that one of the family’s servants will be allowed to live out his final days (after suffering an incurable war wound) in the family’s lavish second floor quarters. Th...

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer
A mine superintendent at the former Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch (W.Va.) mine, where 29 coal miners were killed in 2010, will serve 21 months in prison for his role in disabling a methane monitor that automatically shuts down a coal cutting machine when dangerous levels of the explosive gas are detected.
As par...

Two Republican state lawmakers vowed last week to bar voters in Orange County from deciding whether to mandate paid sick leave.
The measure, which began as a ballot initiative with more than 50,000 signatures, would require employers to allow workers to earn up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per year, one hour for every 37 hours worked.  The Republicans say they’ll deny voters the right to decide whether to institute paid sick leave in Orange County because the lawmakers believe it would put businesses there a...

Leo Toribio
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Where are we, how did we get here, and where do we go from here?  These are questions addressed in an outstanding article by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
To some extent they were also addressed by President Obama in...

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By Scott N. Paul
Director, AAM
Walmart made a little bit of news on Tuesday. Right after the world’s largest retailer committed to fast-tracking the hiring of more military veterans, it announced

Robert Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America's Future
F. Scott Fitzgerald warned, “There are no second acts in American lives.” And for recent American presidents, second acts have been brutal. The hope of the first act succumbs to the karmic reckonings of the second. Nixon cast out by his crimes in Watergate. Reagan laid low by his Iran Contra fo...

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer
As more and more employers duck paying workers decent wages, health care and training costs by hiring contingent/temporary workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) must step up its protection efforts for those workers, a new report urges.
Martha McLuskey, one of the authors of the Center for Prog...

Jackie Tortora
AFL-CIO Blog/Social Media Manager
Working families all over the United States are gearing up for round two in the fiscal showdown. Once again, Republicans in Congress are demanding benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and threatening to tank our economy by causing a default of the U.S. government on March 1 unless they get ...

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By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer
Health care experts have long said that a public health insurance option not only would provide lower-cost health insurance for those who choose it but would also force private insurers to lower their premiums. A public option was a key element of the 2009 House-passed version of health care reform, but it did not make it to th...

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Senior Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future
Here’s a thought experiment:  What if a group of Social Security and Medicare recipients wanted to increase their benefits by, say, 1,000 percent, and proposed seizing rich people’s assets – houses, cars, boats, whatever – to pay for it? And whenever anybody suggested that was ex...

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By Jim Hightower
Author, Commentator, America’s Number One Populist
Look out – The “fixers” are coming.
Top corporate chieftains and Wall Street gamblers want to tell Washington how to fix our national debt, so they’ve created a front group called “Fix the Debt” to push their agenda. Unfortunat...

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Senior Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future
That deficit problem we keep hearing about is gone. When it comes to spending cuts, it’s time to follow the advice a general offered when we were mired in Vietnam: Declare victory and get out.
We had a deficit problem, once, although it was never as urgent or as important as our jo...

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior WriterWhat would it cost if the nation’s crumbling infrastructure of bridges, roads, rails, sewer systems, power grids, a...

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By Jamie West
USW Local 6500
Whenever I read this phrase: “As more and more municipalities and governments are saying, business as usual simply cannot continue…”, I recognize it as the preamble to increased austerity measures – typically cuts to unionized public sector workers.
With record low tax rates for corporations, our governme...

By Dave Johnson
Fellow, Campaign for America's Future
A number of the DC elites are talking about changing the way Social Security checks are adjusted for inflation. This is a great idea, as long as any such adjustment measures the things the elderly actually spend money on. Let’s do it! Let’s change the way we adjust Social Security for inflatio...