Media

Physically large and in charge, Mike Daisey’s performance style suggests a peculiar combination of the late Spalding Gray and Lewis Black of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He sits at a table on a bare stage with some notes and a glass of water and simply tells his story; at times hysterically funny, at others, poignant, withering and accusatory. Some might find his manner a bit loud and overbearing: the night we were there last fall, media moguls Barry Diller and David Geffen were sitting a couple of rows in front of us and walked out after the first fifteen minutes or so.

In November of 2010, New York state’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights—the first such law in the nation—went into effect, giving some 200,000 nannies, health aides, housekeepers, private cooks, and other at-home workers considerable power to address the poor conditions they often encounter in their unusual workplaces. Around the same time, the Urban Justice Center began holding a monthly legal clinic to help domestic workers file complaints.

Sometimes a bad statistic just won't die. Case in point: the endlessly repeated claim that half of all Americans pay no taxes and that this fact underscores how a dwindling band of hard working citizens is supporting a growing horde of free-loaders.

Just this week, this Hertigate Foundation released yet another report that stressed how many people aren't paying taxes. The report, The 2012 Index of Dependendence on Government, notes that:

In Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate in Arizona a predictable event occurred. When the issue of immigration came up--finally, after some 45 minutes--candidates fought to strike the harshest chord. Further, each candidate assured the base that they would not only drop the Federal lawsuits against Arizona’s harsh immigration laws but turn it into a national model.

“It’s a disgrace that this is happening in a country as rich as ours,” former New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert said, describing what he called a “massive employment crisis” in the U.S.

Herbert, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the economic equality think tank Demos, delivered his lecture on “A Call to Civic Engagement” as part of SIPA’s Weston lecture series.

Here is a question you shouldn't have to think on too hard.

What is a more likely scenario in the next ten or twenty years: A) the United States economy is dealt a grievous blow by an energy crisis that, say, is brought on by a disruption of oil supplies from the Persian Gulf; or B) the U.S. faces a military showdown with a foe that possesses more advanced weaponry than we do?

The more we learn about Super PACs, the uglier the picture gets.

The federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the State of New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD) violated Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) by improperly withholding voter registration applications from certain public assistance clients.

Ahead of the 20th UN Conference on Sustainable Development in June, Oxfam has released a discussion paper that presents a model that could help eradicate poverty while at the same time is environmentally sustainable.