Dollars & Sense articles from September 2004

Dollars & Sense archives from September 2004

Election? What election?(from the editors)
September 1, 2004... This is the last issue of Dollars & Sense you will see before the November 2. You may be surprised, then, that there is not more election coverage in these pages. There is some, to be sure: Pasqualino Colombaro's "Comment" takes a look at John...

Chernobyl-on-the-Hudson.(the short run)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... September 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta "considered targeting a nuclear facility he had seen during familiarization flights near New York," according to the recently released 9/11 Commission report. That facility was almost certainly the Indian...

Reality TV.(the short run)
September 1, 2004... The reality-TV masterminds have outdone themselves. "Gana la Verde" ("Win the Green"), premiering this fall, will follow 10 illegal immigrants competing against one another for a chance at a green card. The contestants will participate in a...

Canadian Conservatives vs. Michael Moore.(the short run)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Michael Moore is used to all sorts of attacks. But here's a first: The writer-filmmaker now stands accused of corrupting Canada's federal elections. It all started innocently enough in June, when Moore went to toronto, one week before Canadian...

"Advergames".(the short run)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Neopets, the latest Internet obsession for kids, seems harmless enough at first. Users create virtual pets like unicorns, dragons, and other mythical creatures. To keep them happy and healthy, pet owners must earn and spend neopoints, which can...

Making your vocation his vacation.(the short run)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... George W. Bush slashed overtime pay for six million American workers this year. About 1.4 million low-level salaried supervisors, 548,000 hourly supervisors, more than 900,000 employees without graduate or college degrees, 130,000 chefs, and...

The teaching penalty.(the short run)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Pay for the nation's teachers is considerably lower than for other workers with similar education and skills, and that wage gap grew larger over the last decade, according to a new book by the Economic Policy Institute, How Does Teacher Pay...

Schoolyard missionaries.(the short run)
September 1, 2004... Evangelist Franklin Graham has a plan to convert America's children to his brand of Christianity--and it all starts at your local public school. "I want to see at least one child in every public school in America who is trained as a witness for...

No Hamm for Olympics sportswear workers.(the short run)
September 1, 2004... Before athletes like Michael Phelps, Paul Hamm, and Carly Patterson amazed the world with gold medal performances in the Athens Olympics in August, Olympic sportswear workers around the world toiled daily for months to produce the clothing that...

Longshore rank and filers sue to annual contract vote.(active culture)
September 1, 2004... Rank-and-file members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on July 14 requesting that their contract vote be annulled. The contract covers 15,000 dockworkers from Maine to Texas....

Rivera v. NIBCO.(active culture)
September 1, 2004... The recent Rivera v. NIBCO decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stands as a modest but significant affirmation of immigrant workers' rights. The April decision involved the claims of 23 Latina and Southeast Asian women formerly...

Florida election redux: interview with Alessandra Soler-Meetze of the ACLU-Florida.(active culture)
September 1, 2004... In May 2004, the administration of Florida Governor Jeb Bush hired a private firm to draw up a list of convicted felons in order to purge them from the state's central voter list. With memories of the disastrous 2000 election--when hundreds...

Free markets and death squads: the U.S.-backed regime in Haiti is violently cracking down on worker organizing.(making sense)
September 1, 2004... On February 29, a right-wing coup took control of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, and sent President Jean-Bertrande Aristide into exile. Within two days, the same right-wing troops began attacking Haitian factory workers and sharecroppers...

Build homes, not jails: no surprise--a new study shows that increasing mortgage funding cuts crime.(making sense)
September 1, 2004... Home mortgage lending has increased and crime has gone down in the nation's cities over the past 10 years. And these changes have been dramatic. Lending to low-income borrowers grew by 91%, compared to just over half that for wealthier...

Misreporting the new overtime rules: the way the mainstream media reported on the recent changes to overtime rules is a perfect illustration of the bias of supposedly "balanced" news coverage.(comment)
September 1, 2004... On August 23, the Bush administration's Department of Labor eliminated the right to time-and-a-half pay for overtime work for millions of Americans. That's the biggest pay cut in American history. The facts that should have made that statement...

Will Kerry stand up for workers?(comment)
September 1, 2004... The AFL-CIO has committed $44 million to the election of John Kerry. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest union in the country, committed $65 million and is working with the labor-sponsored political organization...

Iraqi labor confronts new rulers, old rules: Iraqi workers defy a ban on union organizing and win support from U.S. unions.
September 1, 2004... When the U.S. occupation of Iraq began 18 months ago, Iraqi workers lost no time in reorganizing their country's labor movement. Labor activity spread from Baghdad and the Kurdish north to the southern port of Um Qasr, with intensive activity...

Hidden horrors: California dairy workers face danger and abuse.
September 1, 2004... Lorenzo Bravo Salgado, 35, can barely walk. He used to work at Soares Dairy in Turlock, California, until a cow he was milking kicked him in the chest. Bravo fell backwards and broke a disc in his back. "I started to black out. I started...

Born to Buy: interview with Juliet Schor.(Interview)
September 1, 2004... Americans love to shop. We own roughly one TV per person and acquire an average of 48 new pieces of apparel a year. We also work longer hours than people in any other industrial country, and 1.5 million U.S. households declare bankruptcy every...

Is Chile a neoliberal success? Chile is often heralded as the global South's best case for free-trade economic policies, but the facts tell a different story.
September 1, 2004... Chile is commonly portrayed as the great exception to Latin America's long and difficult struggle to overcome economic backwardness and instability. In 1982, conservative economist Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago pronounced the...

Slow wage growth but soaring profits in the current recovery.(economy in numbers)
September 1, 2004... The current economic recovery has done less to raise wages and more to pump up profits than any of the eight other recoveries since World War II. No wonder inequality continues to worsen, and most people still doubt that the economic turnaround...