Russ McBee

Over the last couple of months, we've seen a $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, the nationalization of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, pleas for a bailout of the US auto industry, and emergency FDIC guarantees for everything from money market funds to gift cards (hat tip to Suzy Trotta for that one). Randy Neal asked, where does it ...

Because of a budget shortfall, 375 teachers in the Dallas school system were laid off today, some in the middle of class: Campus by campus, hundreds of Dallas teachers learned their fate Thursday in whatever manner their principals saw fit. Some retained a small measure of dignity; others were forced to clean out their desks in front of stunned ...

The majority of US corporations are evading (or at least avoiding) paying their fair share of income taxes: Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. While $2.5 trillion ...

Democratic candidates for the Presidency would do well to pay attention to the fundamental, structural issues facing the American workforce, issues which have so far been given short shrift by most of the candidates. First, the quality of the workplace: It would be positively revelatory to hear a presidential candidate truly speak to the ...

Not surprisingly, Republican Fred Thompson wants to do away with Social Security and replace it with a privatized system which would benefit those in the upper income brackets and penalize the poor and middle class: Thompson's plan draws on ideas favored by conservatives: a reduction in benefits, rather than an increase in payroll taxes; and a ...

This article provides an in-depth survey of the current state of international arms trading. A couple of choice quotes: Vast government subsidies are sought after in the pursuit of arms trading. US and European corporations receive enormous tax breaks and even lend money to other countries to purchase weapons from them. Therefore tax payers ...

Two mostly unrelated things struck me today. First, of course, was the news of Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Any man who can push right wing zealots and their libertarian enablers to extremes of rage merely by winning an award is OK in my book. The fact that he's doing so by promoting science over greed and fact over dogma ...

One of the flashpoint issues of the 1965 Watts riot was the lack of a hospital in that inner-city LA district. As a result of the riots, Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital was built. Its recent failures of care and performance have made headlines; to make the headlines go away, the hospital has been shut down rather than being fixed. Now, ...