What would you call a guy who loves smoking marijuana, loves animals but doesn't like kid, loves girls and sex but never wants to get married, loves talking dirty, and loves shocking people with wisecracks about organized religion and hillbillies? You might call him a teenage boy. But what if...

Following the April 24 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, which (at last count) killed 1,127 factory workers, several of the world's leading apparel and retail companies got together to adopt a new set of safety rules, assuring that such a disaster (the...

If you happen to follow the American and international labor scene, and want to kill a leisurely hour, an entertaining way of doing that is to visit the Department of Labor's (DOL) official website. It offers a wide selection of labor tidbits, explanations of bureaucratic procedures, helpful tips, advice for...

There's a reason why so many industrial and manufacturing companies resort to almost any means (some of them not entirely legal) to dissuade employees from joining a labor union. Besides having to offer higher wages and improved benefits (and giving employees a voice in how they're treated by management), they...

Why is it easier to respect (maybe "respect" isn't the right word) a self-confessed racist ("I'll be the first to admit that I don't like black people") than an obvious racist who goes around sanctimoniously pretending he has no prejudices? Dante was aware of this phenomenon 700 years ago. In...

Approximately 1,300 members of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union (BCTGM) from Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota, who'd been locked-out since August 1, 2011, by the Moorhead, Minnesota-based American Crystal Company, voted on April 13 to accept the company's last offer. The new contract will run until...

By now most of us have heard the gory details of how Atlanta's elementary and middle school teachers (and principals) conspired to falsify the scores on state proficiency tests. The investigation not only implicated teachers and administrators, it reached all the way up the ladder to Atlanta's celebrated district superintendent...

Have you ever looked forward to a movie or television show, and then found yourself not only not enjoying it as much as you expected, but actually disliking it (hating it) to the point where you wanted to get in your car, drive to the home of the person who...

It's almost impossible to overstate the importance of old-fashioned "resistance." Indeed, without resistance (e.g., pushing back, taking an aggressive stand, demonstrating that you're willing to fight, etc.), things can get out of hand very quickly, whether we're talking about international relations, social intercourse, basic economics, children or adults.

Take...

Not to wax nostalgically, but when we look back at the social progress made over the last half-century or so, we have much to be proud of. Granted, in many instances it was unfortunate we had to wait so long before these progressive measures took root, but late to the...

It's got to be tough being actor Michael Cera these days. Cera, the male lead in the critically acclaimed teen pregnancy movie, Juno, has the same general look, feel, and demeanor as Jesse Eisenberg, but because Eisenberg is the "bigger name" -- the more popular and bankable actor (he starred...

We'll all need to buckle up in preparation for some dramatic and historical confrontations in the coming weeks. No, we're not talking about college basketball's "March Madness" (Go UCLA!) We're talking about the confirmation hearings of Thomas Perez, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Labor. By all accounts, the Republicans...

Although there hasn't been much mainstream news coverage, the U.S. is currently in negotiations with nine APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) countries on what could become the biggest, most ambitious, most comprehensive FTA (free trade agreement) in history. The proposed agreement is called TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). Basically, if approved in its...

Last week (March 6), McDonald's, the international fast-food juggernaut, was surprised and, one hopes, publicly embarrassed when a group of student "guest workers" in central Pennsylvania called an impromptu strike to protest working conditions. According to the guest workers, McDonald's failed to comply with the terms of their agreement, and...

Take a moment and think about that. If we're not the "most evil" country in the world -- i.e., the country with the greatest number of evil people in it -- then we Americans are doing something terribly wrong, because we have the greatest number of people incarcerated in our...

Something to consider: If we are NOT the "most evil" country in the world--i.e., the country with the greatest number of evil people residing in it--then we're doing something terribly wrong when it comes to jurisprudence, because we have the greatest number (1.6 million) of incarcerated people.

Now if...

We've all seen those movies where Mr. Big (influential politician, wealthy CEO, crime boss, etc.) is riding in the backseat of a limo when two guys on a motorbike -- the driver and a shooter -- suddenly pull up beside the car, fire an automatic weapon, kill the passenger, and...

It's astonishing that we have all these people out there -- all these wildly opinionated, patriotic folks -- who, without any prompting, will spontaneously burst into rhapsodic discourse about how much they admire the "checks and balances" written into the U.S. constitution by our genius Founding Fathers, but who, alas,...

To say Paul Krassner has lived an eventful life is an understatement. He invented "The Realist," America's premiere counter-culture journal. He co-founded the Youth International Party (Yippies). He was a child violin prodigy who, at age 6, was the youngest person ever to perform at Carnegie Hall. He was a...

Legendary comedian Mort Sahl (who's still alive and kicking, by the way) used to tell this one during the Nixon administration. If a man were drowning 15-feet from shore, President Nixon would throw him a 10-foot rope. Then Henry Kissinger would go on television and declare that "the president had...