It is expensive to be poor in America. These costs are both small and large. Together they accumulate into a sum that is almost insurmountable. For example, people in poor and working-class communities often pay more for the same goods and services — which are subpar...
Life is gray around P.T. Barnum Apartments, a housing complex for low-income residents in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where Monica Jackson grew up and lived until recently. Within just a few minutes’ walk of the community are a highway, an asphalt plant, a...
The U.S. Department of Energy wants to redefine what constitutes high-level radioactive waste, cutting corners on the disposal of some of the most dangerous and long-lasting waste byproduct on earth — reprocessed spent fuel from the nuclear defense program. …...
On Tuesday, Arkansas voters overwhelmingly approved Issue 5, a ballot measure that will raise the state’s minimum wage from $8.50 to $11 by 2021. The vote is expected to raise wages for some 300,000 workers throughout the state. The measure received a staggering 68...
On Friday, while the White House press corps was playing Dungeons and Dragons: the Judge Kavanaugh edition, President Trump was signing an $854 billion dollar spending bill with no reporters present. The almost $1trillion package included an obscene $674 billion...
Clarity is preferable to ambiguity even when the clear picture is grim. So I have found in many circumstances, and so I find it now that President Trump declares his intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and, in all likelihood, move the United States...
President Donald Trump may want to refer to the Republican tax reform law as a “Cut, Cut, Cut” bill, but for millions of lower income Americans, it may not actually do much cutting. The Republican bill would actually raise tax rates on almost 13 million...
During last year’s Democratic primary race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the disagreements between the two candidates were most apparent when it came to the economy. While Sanders built his campaign around economic issues like income and wealth...
I didn’t vote in the pivotal American election of 2016. Thirty-five years ago, in that unseasonably warm month of November, I was in Antarctica’s Allan Hills taking ice core samples with a hand augur. The pictures I have from that time show my team drilling deep into...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Consider two women in their 70s, both residents of the Kansas City area. One is white and affluent; the other is black and working class. Guess which one is more optimistic about the country’s future and that of their grandchildren? More than...
Race is how economic class is lived in America. Consequently, from the nation’s founding to the present, race and class (as well as gender) are a social and political scaffolding on which opportunities and privileges are affixed in the United States. Racism and...
“The cold was terrible but the screams were worse,” Sara Mendez told the BBC. “The screams of those who were being tortured were the first thing you heard and they made you shiver. That’s why there was a radio blasting day and night.” … Read the full article on...
Since Present Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud on Valentine’s Day 1945, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have maintained a close relationship. For decades, however, critics have warned that this relationship is a fundamentally dysfunctional — and destructive...
Sure, Bernie Sanders’ dovish instincts beat out the hawkish proposals advanced by Hillary Clinton for anti-war voters. But many fans of the upstart democratic socialist readily concede the consensus view: He seems neither very knowledgeable about nor particularly...
