The Ghosts of Tom Joad

After storms ravaged Iowa last summer, devastation wasn't the only thing that people found amid the flood waters. Scores of out-of-work electricians from Michigan, hard hit by auto industry cutbacks, spied opportunity.

Trekking hundreds of miles from home, where the unemployment rate of 8.5 percent is the highest in the United States, they were eager to scoop up jobs rewiring Cedar Rapids -- even if it meant sleeping in a tent for weeks on end.

Exploiting Poverty Caused the Financial Crisis

Sure, the CEOs and hedge fund managers were greedy. There's no question that wealth and the pursuit thereof led to the sub-prime fiasco and the decline of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch and more. But what's really at play here is persistent poverty and Wall Street seeking to make a dime off the poor, consequences be damned, while Washington looks the other way.

FCC Spreads Digital Disinformation on TV Transition

Thanks to corporate media's longstanding refusal to report on itself, along with a multimillion dollar campaign of public disinformation paid for by the FCC on behalf of commercial broadcasters, high-def TV and converter boxes are all most of know about the switch to digital TV. Last Monday, September 8, Wilmington NC became the first community in the nation to cease analog TV broadcasting and switch entirely to digital.

Who's to Blame for Market Failure? Clue: Not the Bankers

How extraordinary it is, that representatives of the great names in global finance that have recently bitten the dust were lately paraded on television as the supreme experts on the global economy.

88 Years Later: A Promise Unfulfilled for Millions of Disenfranchised Women Voters

All over America, there were plenty of reasons to celebrate women last month: August marked the 88th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's ratification, which gave women the right to vote. Women's Equality Day, which was on August 26, commemorated that victory. There are now more women in the U.S. Congress than ever (88) and 2008 was a year when a woman came within a hair's breadth of becoming a major ticket presidential nominee.

But this year, there's also a real threat to the voting rights of millions of low-income women, and it is in direct violation of Federal law.

The Whiner's Recession

Senator McCain and his friends no doubt still believe that the economy's fundamentals are strong, but Friday's jobs numbers clearly show how bad things have gotten. The 6.1 percent unemployment rate reported for August is almost as high as the worst levels from the last recession. A broader measure of labor market weakness, that includes people who can only find part-time work or who have given up looking for jobs, is higher than at any point in the last recession.