workers

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – What is at stake in the battle over the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett? For most commentators the immediate answer is women’s control over their reproductive health and maintenance of the affordable care act. That is surely true, but excessive focus on those issues can obscure consideration […]

Qatar

Qatar: Significant Reforms for Gulf Labor give Workers new Freedoms

Human Rights Watch

( Human Rights Watch ) – (Beirut) – The success of the significant labor reform measures that Qatar introduced on September 8, 2020, will depend on how well the government enforces and monitors them, Human Rights Watch said today. The reforms will allow migrant workers to change jobs without employer permission and set a higher […]

African-Americans

Trump doesn’t Understand History any more than he Understands Epidemics

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump has a long history of proclaiming that he understands things better than the people who are experts in those things. When Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, testified to Congress that mask-wearing is even more effective against Covid-19 than a vaccine is likely to […]

Employment

On Labor Day, Trump’s mismanagement of Pandemic has left 27 mn Unemployed and Turning to Food Banks

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is a sad Labor Day, in the shadow of the Trump Pandemic. Over a fourth of workers are afraid of losing their jobs because of the pandemic, up from 15% last year this time, according to Gallup. That is, the anxiety over joblessness has almost doubled. Many are much […]

Corruption

How did Americans become such Wimps? Silence as Trump kills tens of Thousands, Destroys Social Security and Post Office, Plots Election Fraud

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Nicole Winfield and Lisa Marie Pane at the Associated Press write at the unbelief with which Europeans are staring at the United States, as we head for 300,000 dead from the coronavirus and our economy shrank 33% on an annualized basis last quarter, and we just appear to be all […]

Epidemics

Essential Work suddenly Valued during Pandemic: Why does it Pay so Little, Cost so Much?

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In two weeks, my partner and I were supposed to leave San Francisco for Reno, Nevada, where we’d be spending the next three months focused on the 2020 presidential election. As we did in 2018, we’d be working with UNITE-HERE, the hospitality industry union, only this time on the campaign to […]

Employment

Organizing the Rich or the Poor? Which America Will Be Ours After the Pandemic?

Tomdispatch

By Liz Theoharis | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – In the summer of 1995, when I was 18, I started visiting Tent City, a temporary encampment in an abandoned lot in northeast Philadelphia. About 40 families had taken up residence in tents, shacks, and other makeshift structures. Among them were people of various races, ages, […]

Donald Trump

Sadistic or Crazy? Trump is cutting Food Stamps in the Midst of Pandemic Depression

Jill Richardson

( Otherwords.org ) – Tens of millions of us are out of work. Why on earth is Trump trying to cut food aid? In some ways, this horrible pandemic has brought out the best in humanity. Where I live, neighbors are helping neighbors. A friend who cleans houses for a living says about half of […]

Epidemics

Will Covid-19 Crisis bring Americans together Across Race or Will they Double down on Razing Safety Net?

Inequality.org

By Lewis M. Steel< | - ( Inequality.org) – The new book by New York Times economics reporter Eduardo Porter, American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise, is not for the faint of heart. According to Porter, America’s struggling white middle class, and especially those without college or advanced degrees who once worked in […]