By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams

As Amazon works to combat its public image as a starvation-wage employer by doling out mere pennies in pay hikes and deploying an army of workers to sing the company’s praises on Twitter, a video leaked on Wednesday revealed that the trillion-dollar company is continuing to work feverishly behind the scenes to crush any attempts by workers to unionize and bargain collectively for better wages and working conditions.
The 45-minute training video – which, according to Gizmodo, was sent to managers of the Amazon-owned Whole Foods last week – instructs company leaders on how to detect “early warning signs of potential organizing,” which include workers “suddenly hanging out together” and using “union words” like “living wage.”

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Posted on September 27, 2018

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

At 3 p.m., when most schools let out, some kids will stay back to attend an after-school program, some will be picked up by parents, relatives or paid caregivers to be taken home or to a soccer or swim class, and some others will hang out, on a street corner, or in the playground nearby with friends, or in an empty home. If you are a working parent with regular office hours, the group that your child belongs to depends on how much you can afford to pay for after-school care.
Unfortunately, the free, public part of education ends when the bell sounds.
Turns out that most of those who can’t afford to pay private school tuition can’t dole out funds for after-school programs either. In 2016, the online education news outlet Chalkbeat reported that only 18 percent of children nationally are served by before- and after-school programs. Many have no choice but to leave children in settings that won’t teach them skills that will help them get to college or snag a high-paying job.

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Posted on September 19, 2018

By Trevor Timm/Freedom of the Press Foundation

On Monday we revealed – for the first time – the Justice Department’s rules for targeting journalists with secret FISA court orders. The documents were obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
While civil liberties advocates have long suspected secret FISA court orders may be used (and abused) to conduct surveillance on journalists, the government – to our knowledge – has never acknowledged they have ever even contemplated doing so before the release of these documents.
The FISA court rules below are entirely separate from – and much less stringent – than the rules for obtaining subpoenas, court order, and warrants against journalists as laid out in the Justice Department’s “media guidelines,” which former Attorney General Eric Holder strengthened in 2015 after several scandals involving surveillance of journalists during the Obama era.

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Posted on September 18, 2018

By Julia Conley/Common Dreams

By releasing new documents late Tuesday previously marked “committee confidential,” Sen. Dick Durbin doubled down on accusations that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury in his 2006 confirmation hearing for his seat on a federal appeals court.

We continue to find more evidence that Judge Kavanaugh misled me and the Judiciary Committee under oath. I’m posting important documents that Senate Republicans didn’t want the American people to see. We deserve transparency about this nominee.

— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) September 11, 2018

In defiance of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Durbin shared with the public two pages of e-mails showing that Kavanaugh was involved in discussions regarding the nomination of William Haynes for a judicial seat in 2002.
Four years later, Durbin said, Kavanaugh misled the Judiciary Committee about his involvement while under oath.
“It is clear now that not only did Judge Kavanaugh mislead me when it came to his involvement in the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies, but also regarding his role in the controversial Haynes nomination,” Durbin said.

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Posted on September 13, 2018

By Steve Rhodes

“A poll bankrolled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s close friend, business adviser and largest political donor shows Emanuel in relatively decent shape to win a third-term if he chooses to pursue it,” Fran Spielman reported for the Sun-Times on August 20th.
This was an odd – but ultimately unsurprising – report. Unsurprising because, as I’ve written frequently over the life of this site, Spielman is wholly untroubled by acting as a stenographer to power in the service of “scoops” – and in fact is sought out by City Hall to serve as such even as some of her colleagues praise her “access” to “insiders.”
To wit:

Is it newsworthy when a politician’s friend pays for a poll and then releases it, and it makes the politician look good? If it made the politician look bad, would his friend have released it? https://t.co/aZsYA5K4T8

— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) August 20, 2018

And:

Ding, ding, ding. Rhetorical question, of course. I’d also note that Emanuel folks keep polls like this in their back pocket to release when other polls comes out, i.e. the not-so-favorable Vallas one reported by Politico today. Sadly, not a lot of independent polling these days. https://t.co/ywexuhpaOM

— Bill Ruthhart (@BillRuthhart) August 20, 2018

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Posted on September 11, 2018

By Robert Reich

The only way I see the end of Trump is if there’s overwhelming evidence he rigged the 2016 election, in which case impeachment isn’t an adequate remedy. His presidency should be annulled.
Let me explain.

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Posted on September 3, 2018