“We’re not blocking traffic, we are traffic.” The refrain, of the bicycle activist movement Critical Mass, comes from a (potentially apocryphal) story about one of their eponymous monthly street rides. As the story goes, the flotilla of dozens of bicycles—a “Critical Mass”—careen down a main thoroughfare of a major American city. They are confronted […]

Read more

The headlines haven’t been particularly kind to America’s most relentlessly greedy over the past year. In just the last month alone, the world’s two most visible religious leaders—Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama—have once again dramatically denounced our global concentration of income and wealth. And the world’s most powerful political leader, Barack Obama, has chimed […]

Read more

(Source: @FixTheDebt) Austerity has always been a political choice, not a practical one. That point was underscored yet again when the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released a report on the pensions enjoyed by backers of Fix The Debt, a corporate-funded austerity advocacy. The tax that funds Social Security stops at $113,700 of annual income. […]

Read more

  Sometimes you don’t have to say anything “new” to make news. Consider the “apostolic exhortation” the Vatican released last week. Pope Francis didn’t break any bold new theological ground. But what makes his statement significant is the likelhood that no global religious figure has ever before denounced economic inequality with as wide-ranging—and accessible—an assault. […]

Read more

You can hardly turn on the television or open a newspaper without hearing about the nation’s impressive, much celebrated housing recovery. Home prices are rising! New construction has started! The crisis is over! Yet beneath the fanfare, a whole new get-rich-quick scheme is brewing. Over the last year and a half, Wall Street hedge funds […]

Read more