Minimum Wage or Unions
There have been a flurry of good articles about the McDonalds/Visa Budget site. I particularly liked this one by death and taxes mag, but the funniest commentary is undoubtedly the article by Business...
View ArticleAmash Amendment
I contacted my US Representative and encouraged him to support the Amash Amendment.I urge you to support the Amash amendment to limit funding for rogue NSA surveillance of the American people. Allowing...
View ArticleIssues of Class
Today, Tobias Buckell talks about Time Isn't Spare. He's reacting to a recent post talking about asking for money for activities associated with being a well-known author. And this morning I saw this...
View ArticleMore Than Half of Us Make Less than Minimum Wage
Do you think you deserve more than minimum wage? Recently, it was pointed out that if it had grown as much as US productivity, minimum wage would be $21.72 per hour instead of the $7 or $8 dollars it...
View ArticleCitizenship
If someone is born on one side of an imaginary line, they're a citizen of the United States. On the other side, they're not. And there's a constant flood of people across the borders trying to have...
View ArticleGovernment Shutdown
The government shutdown (for which I entirely blame Republicans) brings back memories for me. When the last shutdown happened, I was in Washington to collect data at the Smithsonian for my dissertation...
View ArticleReflections on the Macy's Day Parade
I've never really cared about parades one way or the other. There are a lot of aspects of US culture that I don't get. Topping the list are probably parades, spectator sports, racing, and lager. In...
View ArticleMassachusetts Gubernatorial Candidates at the 2014 Mass Municipal Association...
The closing event of the Mass Municipal Association annual meeting was a review of gubernatorial candidates. The moderator asked questions that had been derived from the audience. Each candidate was...
View ArticleEducators for a Democratic Union
In 2010, when I attended the MTA Annual Meeting, there was a bitter division between the leadership and rank-and-file members, who felt like they'd been sold out. The leadership had cut a deal with...
View ArticleDemocracy happens
On May 10, 2014, the delegates to annual meeting of the Massachusetts Teachers Association choose Barbara Madeloni as president. It's hard to overstate the significance of this tectonic shift in the...
View ArticleNormalization of Relations with Cuba
I'm very pleased that the US is finally going to normalize relations with Cuba. It's a generation overdue, in my opinion. We made peace, however uneasy, with China in the 1970s. And it seems like any...
View ArticleOpen Letter to Stan Rosenberg
I'm writing to express my hope that the Senate, which has traditionally been an ally of UMass Amherst and public higher education, will stop blocking the $10.9 million that the University needs to...
View ArticlePost-primary musing
In Massachusetts, the race between Bernie and Hillary was tight, but not for Trump who carried the Bay State and dominated in most Super Tuesday races — with rare exceptions. Hillary was ascendant in...
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