Trade
Alan Grayson Explains Why We Need To Stop The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement Crooks and Liars ..."Each member of Congress will get 88 seconds apiece to debate this bill."...
The Trans-Pacific Trade (TPP) Agreement Must Be Defeated Op-Ed News ...The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy...
TTIP Update XLVI ComputerWorld UK ...Not much has been happening on the TTIP front during the holiday break, but there's one extremely important report that came out a little earlier ... it's about an aspect of the ISDS mechanism that has so far been overlooked: the fact that the EU has *already* suffered as a result of the inclusion of ISDS in other agreements...
State Battles
Minimum Wage Increases Breaking Out All Over! Huffington Post ... 29 states will exceed the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour at the beginning of January, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The initial changes will enhance minimum pay by as little as a few pennies to as much as $1.25 an hour, affecting about 3.1 million employees...
War on Workers
California colleges see surge in efforts to unionize adjunct faculty Los Angeles Times ...…A wave of union organizing at college campuses across California and the nation in recent months is being fueled by part-time faculty who are increasingly discontented over working conditions and a lack of job security…
Exposing the charter school lie: Michelle Rhee, Louis C.K. and the year phony education reform revealed its true colors Salon ...Charter schools promised new education innovations. Instead, they produced scam after new scam...
The Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls New York Times ...Since 2010, more than two dozen enclosed shopping malls have been closed, and an additional 60 are on the brink … With income inequality continuing to widen, high-end malls are thriving, even as stolid retail chains like Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney falter, taking the middle- and working-class malls they anchored with them...
Chain restaurants are killing us: Billionaire bankers, minimum-wage toilers and the nasty truth about fast-food nation Salon ... Journalists have been replaced with bloggers and crowdsourcing. Factory hands have been replaced with robots. University professors are being replaced with adjuncts and MOOCs...
Mediator brings FairPoint, unions back to table Associated Press ...FairPoint Communications says it's willing to negotiate with striking workers but doesn't want to budge on the employees' core issues: hiring contractors, changing pension plans and reducing health care benefits...
Worker killed at Paulsboro refinery Louisville Courier-Post ...A 63-year-old man working for a sandblasting contractor at the Paulsboro Refinery in Gibbstown died Friday when an air compressor line broke and struck him in the head about 9:30 a.m., according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office...
Miscellaneous
The Senate's 46 Democrats got 20 million more votes than its 54 Republicans Vox ... "the 46 Democratic caucus members in the 114th Congress received a total of 67.8 million votes in winning their seats, while the 54 Republican caucus members received 47.1 million votes."...
