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Since the onset of the greed-is-good era, and even more so with the clamor over the “fiscal cliff,” some fat cats have been pushing hard to cut benefits to the old, the disabled and the poor from the big public insurance programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. For instance, Peter Peterson ($1.2B net worth), […]

Occupy Cleveland – circa 2011-10-21 “Welcome to the Plutonomy Machine,” began a 2005 report by three Citigroup analysts to their investor clients.1 The report called the United States a “plutonomy” — an “economy powered by the wealthy,” where “there is no such animal as ‘the U.S. Consumer’ …” There are rich consumers, few in number, […]

On the last day of March, Ohio governor John Kasich signed the Republicans’ anti-democratic law, Senate Bill 5 (SB5). Soon after, a citizens alliance began using the state’s democratic public referendum law to repeal it.1 9 With 40-some clauses that weaken workers and their unions, SB5 practically cancels the public worker’s right to collective bargaining, […]

My 85-year-old father, whom we call “Pappy,” has his land line telephone service with AT&T. Last spring, AT&T sent Pappy a DSL modem and a brochure with a cheery welcome to its internet service. But he hadn’t ordered it. And when we realized that neither had any of his children ordered it, Pappy sent the […]

The Speed-Up “I wanted a union not so much for the money,” said line worker Peter Schmitz, “I wanted a union … to have a little say so about the speed of that line. Like I say you couldn’t do quality work, it just wasn’t possible that you could do quality work the way you […]