IPS Blog

This OtherWords Labor Day Special features a wide range of commentaries addressing worker rights. Deborah Burger calls for better nurse-staffing ratios at the nation's hospitals, Amy Dean makes the case for accountability when companies getting tax breaks for being "job creators" don't create jobs, and Virginia Sole-Smith casts light on how Mary Kay exploits its own sales force.

As always, I encourage you to subscribe to our weekly newsletter and visit our blog. If you haven't signed up yet, please do.

1. The Lipstick Profiteers / Virginia Sole-Smith
   Mary Kay's biggest revenue source may be the dreams of its own pink-clad sales force.
2. How to Safely Scale Down the Fiscal Cliff / Salvatore Babones
   A slow descent wouldn't be disastrous.
3. Rooting out Fake Job Creators / Amy Dean
   Without serious accountability, the rallying cry for more "job creation" is likely to amount to nothing more than empty rhetoric.
4. Healing our Health Care System / Deborah Burger
   Unsafe nurse-to-patient staffing levels are a key cause of 98,000 preventable deaths each year.
5. A Bold New Call for a 'Maximum Wage' / Sam Pizzigati
   A national labor leader aims to expand the economic fairness debate.
6. Percolate-Up Economics / Jim Hightower
   Every dime of a minimum-wage hike is spent by its recipients -- circulating upward in our local economies as they increase their purchases of such basics as food, kids' clothing, and health care.
7. The Race to the Bottom / William A. Collins
   The American middle class isn't the envy of the world anymore.
8. Hellish Working Conditions / Khalil Bendib (Cartoon)

This week, OtherWords features a column by Sam Pizzigati and Scott Klinger that explains how American taxpayers are subsidizing runaway CEO pay. As always, I encourage you to subscribe to our weekly newsletter and visit our blog. If you haven't signed up yet, please do.

1. Fix the Minimum Wage / Elizabeth Rose
   Americans who work hard should be able to make a living.
2. Washington, Are You Listening? / Mattea Kramer
   The Bush tax cuts siphon off money that could fund education and other crucial programs.
3. Avoiding a 21st-Century Dust Bowl / Jim Harkness
   We need a Farm Bill that plants the seeds of resilience.
4. David Barton's Make-Believe Version of American History / Mark Potok
   Despite the fact that he has no academic training in history or related fields at all, Barton has become the go-to man for much of the religious far right.
5. We're All Subsidizing Free Lunches for America's CEOs / Scott Klinger and Sam Pizzigati
   It's time to close the tax loopholes that subsidize runaway executive compensation.
6. Romney Runs away from his Running Mate / Jim Hightower
   If they were honest with voters, their bumper sticker would read: "Ryan-Romney 2012."
7. Oh, Just Call Them Terrorists / William A. Collins
   Sooner or later, if citizens are going to support further wars and impingements on their own civil liberties, they need red meat.
8. Belt-Tightening Time / Khalil Bendib (cartoon)

This week's OtherWords editorial package features an op-ed by Robert G. Gard, in which the retired lieutenant general urges Congress to take action to avoid the upcoming "fiscal cliff."

We're still getting letters for Donald Kaul, most of which are from readers of newspapers that picked up his column from this editorial service. Please check out this tribute by his old friend and former colleague, Van A. Tyson, on the OtherWords blog. As always, I encourage you to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. If you haven't signed up yet, please do.

1. How Romney Could Blow Iowa / Andrew Korfhage
   The wind energy industry relies on a soon-to-expire tax credit that protects American jobs and our health.
2. Steering Clear of the Iceberg Ahead / Lt. General (USA, Ret.) Robert G. Gard
   It's time for Congress to get real.
3. Why We Need the Food from Family Farms Act / Ben Burkett
   Had Congress heeded our advice, farmers and taxpayers would be far better able to deal with a lack of grain, grass, and water from the drought.
4. Fracking Exports / Deb Nardone
   Selling liquefied natural gas to foreign markets doesn't serve U.S. interests.
5. The 64-Gazillion-Dollar Question / Sam Pizzigati
   A top authority on poverty has changed his mind about the urgency of fighting inequality.
6. Drone on the Range / Jim Hightower
   Those very same pilotless, remote-controlled, undetectable planes that the CIA has been secretly using to spy on and bomb people in Pakistan and elsewhere are headed to our local police departments.
7. Occupy Wall Street Paved the Way / William A. Collins
   When will the really huge crowds come out to the streets?
8. Caution, Fiscal Cliff Ahead / Khalil Bendib (Cartoon)

This week's OtherWords editorial package features an op-ed about the privatization of public schools by Jeff Bale and Sarah Knopp and a column by Jim Hightower regarding Wall Street's new efforts to extract the earnings of college grads.

Thanks for the many kind letters for Donald Kaul. My latest snapshot of these letters is on the OtherWords blog.

As always, I encourage you to subscribe to our weekly newsletter and visit our blog. If you haven't signed up yet, please do.

1. Crashing the GDP / Vicky Plestis
   A harrowing road trip on the first day of my summer internship helped me get the point of my work on the Genuine Progress Indicator.
2. The Separate-but-Equal Sale / Jeff Bale and Sarah Knopp
   While charter proponents claim that their schools are less bureaucratic, more efficient, and more effective, the evidence doesn't really back that up.
3. Shortcut to Nowhere / Gabriel Thompson
   For desperate workers that turn to temp agencies for a step up, too often they find only quicksand.
4. A Rotten Cop on the Beat / Roger Peace
   When one country polices the world, who polices the police?
5. Grabbing Bigger Slices of Pie / Sam Pizzigati
   New research shows that we shouldn't swallow conservative claims about taxes.
6. Turning College Students into a Commodity / Jim Hightower
   After graduation, students' incomes would be "attached" by financiers.
7. Washington's Democratic Double-Standard / William A. Collins and Emily Schwartz Greco
   Uncle Sam isn't making much fuss over Latin America's law-breaking lawmakers.
8. Privatizing Public Schools / Khalil Bendib (cartoon)

This week's OtherWords editorial package features Sam Pizzigati's first column, in which he explains why wealth inequality is officially holding steady while income inequality is growing increasingly skewed. Jim Hightower skewers Mitt Romney's financial shenanigans, and William A. Collins puts the nation's penchant for guns in perspective.

As Donald Kaul and I explained last week, he's either taking a break from writing or recently retired, depending on how things go with his recuperation from a recent heart attack. Thanks for all your kind, and sometimes funny, words of support, many of which are highlighted in my recent letters-to-the-editor blog posts. At least 110 emails and a dozen snail-mailed cards and letters have arrived so far, and Don tells me that he's feeling much better already.

This uptick in correspondence revealed an unfortunate and longstanding glitch in the otherwords@ips-dc.org email account. If you sent anything to that account before Tuesday, July 25th, it probably vanished. I didn't receive it, and since it didn't bounce, there was no way for the sender to know.

I can't begin to describe how sorry I am about this snafu. I know it will be hard for anyone who tried to reach out to me and got no response — possibly on multiple occasions — to believe that this was going on for more than two years. But it was. I deeply apologize for all the misunderstandings this may have caused. So, if you emailed a note for or about Donald Kaul before 4:30 p.m. on July 25, please send it again. And if you emailed me an inquiry that never got answered, please do try again.

As always, I encourage you to subscribe to our weekly newsletter and visit our blog. If you haven't signed up yet, please do.

1. Smoldering Planet / Saul Landau
   Colorado's wildfires and the record heat waves should sober up some climate change doubters.
2. Plain Old Murder / Chris Toensing
   The Pakistani government loudly protests that many of the casualties of drone strikes are civilian.
3. Your Labor Rights or Your Life / Jessye Weinstein
   A hostile labor environment in a country like Colombia, connected through a trade agreement to the U.S., has repercussions for workers at home as well.
4. Cleaning Up Campaign Finance / Michael B. Keegan
   Citizens United is here to stay unless we show it the door.
5. Marching Toward Greater Inequality / Sam Pizzigati
   The world's super rich, according to a new report, are squirreling away phenomenal quantities of their cash in secret tax havens.
6. How Mitt Got His / Jim Hightower
   Romney keeps playing hide-and-seek with his booty.
7. One Nation, Under the Gun / William A. Collins
   Why do so many Americans believe that to properly protect ourselves today, we need guns?
8. Unmanly Drones / Khalil Bendib (cartoon)