Congress drove the Big Three CEOs out of Washington, D.C. last week, ordering them not to return with their tin cups until they could guarantee their companies would be viable after a $25 billion bailout.

Just days later, Citigroup, a bank that had already received a $25...

Within hours of Barack Obama's election, naysayers chastened caution. Don't go too far, they inveighed. Build trust slowly with restrained, moderate, and gradual actions, they admonished.
In other words: Start with piddling plans.

Basically, they want to abort hope -- kill it before it has a chance.

The words Barack Obama uses are deeply meaningful to organized labor. He speaks to union members on a gut level about concepts that define their lives: unity and brotherhood.
Listen to what he says in his closing argument speech:

"Each of us has a responsibility to work hard and...

Are you feeling depressed, dogged by daily bad news about the effects of reckless, unregulated Wall Street speculators sinking the economy? Well, U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has decided to take this opportunity to kick you while you're down. And use your money to do it.

Paulson...

Protesters disrupted a convention of mortgage financers in San Francisco this week, storming the stage as former Bush adviser Karl Rove spoke, heckling bankers with bullhorns, and badgering a panel with demands for a foreclosure moratorium.

Fear and frustration compelled ordinary citizens to harangue the green-visor set...

In a perverse way, the media painted Republicans perfectly when it selected red for their states. Reporters would never have guessed when they did it that the red party's candidate would engage in red-baiting. But there was John McCain repeatedly doing it in the debate Wednesday night, trying to convert...

Sarah "Joe-Six-Pack" Palin pulled her labor union roots out of the frozen Alaskan soil and started shaking them at normally union-allergic Republican crowds from the day John McCain announced her as his running mate.

Recently, she redoubled her efforts to cast herself not as a governor and member of...

Republicans in the House contend that critical words by Speaker Nancy Pelosi compelled them to vote against the initial $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill that their GOP President had asserted was essential to save the country from certain economic doom.

But, really, they were pressured by something far...

John McCain should not be traveling in a bus called the Straight Talk Express. No, that equivocating multimillionaire who kowtows constantly to the wealthy should be riding in one of those private, gilded railroad cars.

That would be symbolically appropriate as well since he is trying to railroad the middle...

When presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain introduced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his intended vice presidential running mate, those of us in the lower 48 learned that her husband, Todd Palin, not only was a champion snowmobiler and commercial fisherman but also a steelworker.

At the press conference, Palin...

The most fundamental difference in how Democrats and Republicans view middle class Americans revealed itself inadvertently in speeches during the second night of the convention in Denver.

The keynote speaker, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, started it, and Sen. Hillary Clinton, kept it up - that...

The Democratic Party paid homage at its convention Monday night to a Kennedy scion whose family values demand public service and who believed it was his duty as a senator to speak for the voiceless, not champion the causes of the already powerful.

The film clip...

While some want to paint this year's presidential race in black and white, for middle class America, it's all about the green.

Greenbacks.

Team colors are clearly visible: The Republicans' -- green and gold. That's obvious when their nominee, John McCain,...

In May, when immigration officials raided the kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa and hauled out 389 undocumented workers, the news was all about immigration violations, but now the focus is on the employer, Agriprocessors Inc.
That's because it turns out that while purportedly giving ritual consideration to...

In the free for all 21st, it all sounds terrific -- free markets, free trade and free commerce. But really, it's lies, traderous lies and statistics.

The "d" in trader is deliberate. This is about the sleight of hand billed as free trade.

We're constantly told it's a win-win....

The Government Accountability Office reported to Congress this week that, under the Bush administration, the Labor Department determined that what amounted to a 21st century case of slavery was just fine with the U.S. government.

A Labor Department investigator told the slave, a night attendant at an...

Here everybody has a neighbor
Everybody has a friend
Everybody has a reason to begin again
Bruce Springsteen -- "Long Walk Home"

Sen. Barack Obama yesterday asked 4,500 delegates and observers at the convention of the United Steelworkers in Las Vegas to help him give America...

Today, in Las Vegas, a town where jackpots are sought and fortunes are lost, Derek Simpson, general secretary of the UK-based international union, Unite the Union (Amicus Section) and I together staked everything on a worthy cause -- working men and women world wide.

We signed an...

After a year in which the majority of Americans suffered the effects of recession, including tens of thousands who lost jobs because of rising unemployment, hundreds of thousands who lost homes in the subprime mortgage crisis and millions who lost their shirts because of unrelenting gas price hikes, Merrill Lynch...

"The Toxic Trader," a drama featuring an evil puppet, premiered last Tuesday in a special election-day staging outside U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith's district office in Portland, Oregon.

Toxic Trader. Yes, the double entendre is deliberate. The street theater is intended to hold free traders like Smith and presumptive Republican...