Media

In his column today, Ezra Klein makes a very strange, and untrue, assertion. In talking about campaign finance reform, Klein claims that small donors are as problematic as big money. Klein writes:

On Tuesday, the House Financial Services Committee voted out six bills that would make changes to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that could have far-reaching consequences. The bank lobbyists deserve a bonus this year.

Critics of the Affordable Care Act have long been calling it a job killer. First, they claimed, companies would cut jobs altogether because of the mandate that all full-time employees must have health coverage.

If Congress doesn't succeeed in gutting SNAP benefits through the Farm Bill, which now proposes sweeping cuts to food stamps, it seems various state legislatures will do whatever they can to get that job done.  A few weeks ago, I wrote about North Carolina's proposed background checks for SNAP applicants.

Federal taxpayers employ more low-wage workers than Wal-Mart and McDonald’s combined, a new study calculates.

As we contemplate the possibly bright future of pre-K laid out in Obama’s state of the union address this year, in which the feds work together “with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America,” along comes a sobering glimpse of what public preschool looks like now. It’s not quite as rosy.

Lucila Ramirez, 55, has been cleaning the bathrooms and tables at Washington, D.C.’s Union Station for 21 years. Despite her long record of service, Ramirez says she makes only $8.75 per hour, and receives no benefits or sick days.

“I work in a federal building doing work on behalf of the government and if I was paid a living wage, I wouldn’t have to go looking for a second job in order to support my family,” Ramirez, 55, told The Huffington Post in Spanish via an interpreter.

The vacuous, cheerful expression of the Walmart smiley face has long been associated with the paradoxically dark reality of low-wage work. With the recent fast-food worker walkouts in New York, the golden arches may go down, too, in the annals of class-war symbology.