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Six years after finishing college – with a degree in molecular and cellular biology – Sydney Gray works 18 hours a week as a cashier at a New Orleans farmers' market. Other times, she volunteers there to get free food.

"I can't even get a job waiting tables," says Ms. Gray, whose two previous part-time jobs ended when the employers folded. "When I apply for jobs, I'm competing against people with master's degrees and PhDs."

In the Public Interest (ITPI) recently released a shocking study on the alarming frequency of state private prison contracts that contain “occupancy quotas” that guarantee for-profit prison companies a steady stream of revenue even if prison populations decline.

We are in the midst of National Protect Your Identity Week, and credit reporting giant Experian is kicking off the festivities with some ID theft prevention tips, such as signing up for Experian’s own credit monitoring service at a cost of $14.95 a month.

Washington D.C. Mayor, Vincent C. Gray vetoed legislation demanding that large retailers pay a higher minimum wage, Sept.15. The announcement came on the heels of Wal-Mart threatening to cancel plans for new stores in the District of Columbia if the minimum wage was increased.

Mayor Gray denied that he vetoed the minimum wage because of Wal-Mart’s threat in his weekly radio address.

On September 15, the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, progressives toasted a victory.

True, thanks to Congressional timidity, the biggest banks have only gotten bigger since the financial crisis five years ago, and the men (yes, mostly men) in charge of them are mostly still in charge. But Larry Summers, the architect of a good chunk of the deregulation that set the stage for the crisis in the first place, had withdrawn his name from consideration to be chair of the Federal Reserve, thanks to a populist uprising within the Democratic Party.

The crisis in Washington was always partly a story about money in politics, with big conservative donors pushing GOP lawmakers to an extreme stance with threats of primary challenges to those who didn't fall in line. 

Now, even after the bid to defund Obamacare turned into an abject rout for Republicans, these same donors are making good on their threats. 

Talk about your sore losers. After the Supreme Court struck down its attempt to make voter registration harder, Arizona is now attempting to implement a two-tier voting system that would require proof of citizenship in order to vote in state and local elections. Eligible voters who do not show proof of citizenship would only be allowed to vote in federal elections and not in state and local elections.

Three and a half years have passed since the afternoon when the stock markets went into a trillion-dollar free fall and just as suddenly reversed course, recovering 80 percent of that loss. It all happened in less than 45 minutes.

President Obama showed real spine in standing up to Tea Party hostage takers. Now he needs to draw on the same grit in the budget negotiations set to begin immediately as part of the deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.