by Kate Harveston Affordable housing has always been a target for the GOP, since the golden days of Ronald Reagan, and his famous “welfare queen” speeches during his 1976 presidential campaign. Something in this image — widowed or unmarried women living luxuriously off welfare ...read more
One of the most pervasive myths about poverty in right wing circles is that people who are unable to lift themselves out of it aren't working hard enough. Some of the most militant advocates of this philosophy are those who come from poor backgrounds themselves, and insist that ...read more
With crumbling public education, crumbling infrastructure, low wage, insecure jobs and sky rocketing health care costs survival for the poorest Americans can only be managed on a day to day basis. Australian professor Philip Alston, a United Nations special rapporteur on extreme ...read more
Just a few weeks after voting to strip million of Americans of their healthcare, Rand Paul wants those Americans to know just how tough he had it after his neighbor beat the snot out of him back in November: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Sunday called the recovery from a November ...read more
Barring a miracle, Bernie Sanders is not going to win the Democratic nomination. While this may seem like the end of the world for the legions of his supporters, to the contrary, it is actually the beginning of something much bigger. I believe the trajectory of Bernie Sanders ...read more
This is not an endorsement, but a proclamation: Bernie Sanders is laying the foundation for a new Democrat that will change the party for the better. This past week, the Democratic Party witnessed political validation for one of its own as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders ...read more
In David Brooks's latest column for the New York Time, he remarks on a recent speech by British prime minister David Cameron that appears to him to represents a modern, progressive conservatism he finds deeply appealing. In his piece, titled "What Republicans Should Say," ...read more
If aliens were studying human societies, other than our bizarre obsession with blowing things up, they'd likely be most shocked at the way in which we manage our food. While industrialized agriculture and corporate supermarkets have produced and distributed food on an almost ...read more
I'd like to be very upfront about this: I am a big advocate of cultural appropriation in virtually all its forms. The more humans experiment with cultures outside of their own, the more we can learn to understand and appreciate each other. Sure, there's misinformed, poorly ...read more
(Pictured above: Conservative Ian Duncan Smith, the architect of Britain's welfare reform) If you want a very good example of how destructive conservative economics can be, look no further than Great Britain and the huge economic revolution the Tory government has foisted upon ...read more
Last night, Bill O'Reilly ran a segment on his show about New York City's Penn Station's homeless 'problem'. In what transpired to be a truly vile piece of reporting, the Factor sent snazzily dressed reporter Jesse Watters to gawk at black homeless people while asking commuters ...read more
This article was made in partnership with the Mentor Capital Network as part of our Studio Banter series If you review the landscape of mainstream news publications that cover business and technology, you’ll notice they have a predilection for covering startups and ...read more
Back in 2013, creator of the HBO hit The Wire David Simon wrote a scathing attack on American capitalism arguing that the relentless pursuit of profit had created 'two Americas', one with a viable economy and future, and the other completely devoid of all hope. He wrote: That's ...read more
When the rich begin to worry that poor people are too poor and that they might be too rich, it is probably a fairly good indicator that society is on the brink of big change. In an interview with Bloomberg today, notorious investor Rob Arnott, chief executive and co-founder of ...read more
There is a huge industry in America built on the myth that you can become infinitely wealthy and happy through the use of self empowerment techniques. At the helm of this gigantic money making scheme are characters like Robert Kiyosaki of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book series, ...read more
Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before. Under this president, his policies have not worked. Their liberal policies are good every four years for a campaign, but they don’t get ...read more
If Jesus Christ was alive today, he would be horrified by much of what passes for the religion he created. Many who claim to be 'Christians' are so far removed from Christ's message that he would have to publicly denounce them or change his name completely. Likewise, many of ...read more
Mark Gongloff of Huffington Post has analyzed a new Census Bureau report that measures changes in areas with concentrated poverty and found that the South doing abysmally. Concentrated poverty areas are places where more than 20% of the population lives below the official ...read more
In the T.S. Eliot poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the speaker wonders if things that take great efforts are worth it if they are doomed to be misunderstood in the end. And as Denver Broncos Mike Adams reads the endless supply of articles about his most recent comment ...read more
I’m one of the poor, lazy people New York Times columnist, and overly-privileged/perennially out of touch, champion for the oppressed moneyed interests, David Brooks, talked about in his recent column ‘The Inequality Problem’. Ben Cohen took Mr. Brooks to task for his ignorant, ...read more
Much of the internet has piled onto New York Times columnist David Brooks for his recent musings on 'The Inequality Problem', and deservedly so. Not only was Brooks timing spectacularly bad (British charity Oxfam just released a shocking report showing 85 people have as much ...read more
I went on the Thom Hartmann show last Friday to debate Matt Purple of The American Spectator and conservative commentator Kris Ullman on Medicaid expansion, the minimum wage, America's threat to the world, and the Duck Dynasty. I don't post these vids too often - only when the ...read more
Question: Is Africa poor because... a) Africans are lazy b) The continent was subjected to 400 years of slavery and colonialism and had vast amounts of its natural resources stolen Tom Corley wants you to believe it's 'a'. President of 'Cerefice and Company', and author of ...read more
By Marian Wang, ProPublica This story was co-published with The Chronicle of Higher Education. Shauniqua Epps was the sort of student that so many colleges say they want. She was a high achiever, graduating from high school with a 3.8 GPA and ranking among the top students in ...read more
Although the rich, the political elite and most of the media are not concerned with the plight of America's working poor, there are now real signs that those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder are taking matters in to their own hands and fighting back. Having spent the ...read more
The program known as "Women, Infants and Children" (WIC) is officially the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Their web site can be found here. The site describes the program this way: "The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, ...read more
I grew up in London during the 1980's -- a Thatcher child if you will. My memories of the first female Prime Minister are not fond ones. When I started going to school we used to get fresh milk during break time -- a result of the government's effort to help poor children get ...read more
By Ben Cohen: When faced with a serious problem, it is always crucial to understand exactly what you are dealing with in order to change it. The first step is an awareness of the problem itself - if you don't see it, you can't fix it, and the problem remains. And if everyone ...read more
The charity 'Barnados' has uncovered a worrying trend in the UK where legal loan sharks entrap the poor into a vicious cycle of debt with high interest payment schemes for basic household goods (via the Guardian): Its report, A Vicious Cycle: The Heavy Burden of Credit on Low ...read more
The Independent uncovers Britain's stealth tax on its poorest residents: Tax cuts for low and middle-income families in April will be dwarfed by hidden reductions in tax credits, according to a study for The Independent. The analysis found that the £1bn of tax cuts in April ...read more
Image by Teo's photo via Flickr Having struggled to pay bills at various points in my life, I would always feel drained after having to make decisions based on financial constraints: Should I go out to eat with my friends and maybe not have enough to pay rent? Should I fill my ...read more
Richard Wolff describes the economic reality facing most people living in post-crash America: The combination of high unemployment and high home foreclosures assures a deeply depressed economy. The mass of US citizens cannot work more hours – the US already is No 1 in the ...read more
by David Glenn Cox Last winter I wrote a story about the number of people who were dying in house fires after having their utilities turned off. I began to do some research on the growing numbers of tent cities springing up across America. How, I wondered, will ...read more
