Russ McBee

A Rutgers University study has been released that paints a somber picture for American workers: In its first national labor scorecard, the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations said more than 10 percent of Americans are unemployed, discouraged from seeking work or underemployed. That is a nearly 25-percent increase from one year ...

By a lopsided vote of 349-62, the House of Representatives voted today to impose a moratorium on seven regulations promulgated by the Bush White House which would have eliminated $13 billion in Medicaid funding for health care for the poor. Every House Democrat and two-thirds of House Republicans voted to stop the enactment of the regulations, ...

According to this KNS story, 407,000 households in Tennessee were enrolled in the federal food stamps program in March. The Census Bureau estimates that there are 2.4 million occupied households in Tennessee; that means 17 percent of households in this state are on food stamps. The federal food stamp allotment amounts to $21 per week, or $1 per ...

Global Issues has published a run-down of recent statistics on global poverty. Among the startling findings: Half the world -- nearly three billion people -- live on less than two dollars a day. [...] According to UNICEF, 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they ''die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far ...

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 is outrageous: Child workers [in India], some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant. [...] The Observer discovered the children in a filthy sweatshop working on piles of ...

London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced a deal today with some interesting terms. Venezuela has agreed to sell a certain quantity of oil to the UK at a 20 percent discount, as long as it's used only for London's public transportation system. In exchange, the London mayor agreed to give 50 percent discounts on ...

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, ...

The Pope faced pretty much global opprobrium and condemnation for his foot-in-mouth proclamation that the Catholic-led invasion of the Americas ''had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples'' and that the invaders ''purified'' the natives, apparently by murdering them. The Big Pointy Hat has apologized, sort of: Speaking in ...

I blogged here about the four members of Congress who pledged to live on the equivalent of food stamps for one week and their challenge to their colleagues to do the same; this meant they could spend no more than $21 per person on food for the entire seven days. The four brave souls who embarked on this challenge were: Rep. Jo Ann Emerson ...