Labor
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The Elite Center of Gravity in the Democratic Party
Michael Lind nails it this morning: During the Progressive Era and the New Deal era that succeeded it, idealistic professional-class reformers were only one element of a coalition they were forced to share with the representatives of farmers and blue-collar workers — groups that made up a majority of the workforce in the mid-20th century.
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Sawant on Boeing
“If Boeing executives want to leave the state, they are welcome to do that,” she told a cheering crowd at Town Hall Seattle in 2012. “The fact is, the workers are here. The factories are here. … We are therefore calling for the democratic, public ownership by workers and by the community of the workplaces
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Quote of the Day: David Graeber
What the 1% are is, effectively, a ruling class, they represent the point where concentrated wealth can be turned into political power. National politics in the US has been reduced to battles between different factions of that 1%. This is not just a traditional Marxist bourgeoisie though—and this is where I think it dovetails with
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Wage Discipline
Why are wages are flat, unemployment high, and inflation stable despite the economic recovery? Because it benefits the so-called investor or rentier class: But capitalists are always fighting a two-front war in democracies, against workers and against their representatives in the government, who might begin to change the social framework to give workers more bargaining
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Being in the Grip of Compulsions We Don’t Understand
I have been getting this feeling lately about the big historical sweep of things and of our individual seemingly insignificant part to play in it. It’s a feeling of how mostly things don’t change, and yet how they do, how greed and powerlust seem to be in the driver’s seat, and yet that they are
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Chris Hedges on the Chicago Teachers’ Strike
Hedges points to the obvious, but it's not something you hear discussed a lot: This is Obama's guy, Rahm Emmanuel, taking on the teachers' union. It tells you precisely where the Democrats are in relationship to what used to be their base. In the same way mainstream Democrats have supported and in some cases
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Video of the Day: Jamie Vollmer
Next time you hear someone say schools should be run like a business, show them this video: For more of this talk, here's the link.