As much as Pope Francis criticized hyper-capitalism’s cruelty to the poor and the middle class, it was business as usual for the Catholic Church bureaucracy, selling access to the Pope’s events with front-row seats going to well-heeled benefactors, notes Michael Winship.
Tag: Income Inequality
How ‘Adjunct’ Professors Are Exploited
While some “star” professors at major universities are very well compensated and college football coaches can make millions of dollars a year, “adjunct” professors are exploited as cheap labor, often needing other jobs and food stamps to survive, notes Laura…
Dolores Huerta and the Struggle
The struggle for social justice is never easy, as United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta knows full well. Many of the problems from lack of independent media to police brutality remain the same as communities seek solutions to the challenges that…
Swimming Left, into the Mainstream
Despite pundits dismissing Sen. Bernie Sanders’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, he is drawing big and enthusiastic crowds who seem eager for ideas about rebuilding the middle class and ending plutocracy, as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship note.
Understanding Baltimore’s Violence
As much as the United States thinks it’s made lots of progress on racial equality we have a black president, you know the on-the-street reality has, in many ways, gotten worse with the “war on drugs,” police violence and other…
The Iron Law of Oligarchy Returns
From the Archive: The death of Danny Schechter, “the News Dissector,” at age 72 from cancer marks a sad moment for independent journalism. Schechter’s was a strong voice against the empty platitudes and blatant hypocrisies that have come to define modern…
The One Percent’s Great Escape
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that the rich “are different from you and me,” which remains true today except now they don’t even want to be around regular people, seeking more and more remote locations to escape from the increasingly…
Obama’s Modest Proposals
President Obama struck a folksy tone during his State of the Union address, but there wasn’t much substance for the average folks and even his fairly modest proposals for helping the middle class face determined GOP opposition as Michael Winship…
What Would Jesus Do at Christmas?
America’s widening gap between rich and poor is especially noticeable at Christmastime when the rich shower themselves with extravagant gifts and assuage their self-images by donating a few turkeys and a toy or two to the poor, a tradition that…
Administrators Are Big Men on Campus
America’s universities are turning more teaching over to low-paid “adjunct” professors and are leaving students with greater debt burdens, but one area were pay is high and the perks are lavish is in college administration, writes Lawrence S. Wittner.