The Boeing Dreamliner 787 will resume flights at the end of this month after being grounded by the FAA in January when the plane's lithium-ion battery caught fire. Regulators and Boeing are still investigating the source of the problem, looking for a fix and hoping to get the newly designed...

Last year an outbreak of meningitis killed 53 people in 20 states and sickened more than 720 nationwide. As many as 14,000 patients may have been exposed to the deadly drug.

This was not a natural disaster but a human-made and preventable tragedy. It was caused...

Open government and transparency are essential pillars of a functioning democracy. But when governments privatize public services and infrastructure, we too often lose access to information and the tools to hold officials accountable.

In many cases, residents lose access to public information even before a service is privatized. Some...

As soon as President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour in his State of the Union address last week, you could see Speaker John Boehner, seated behind the president, uttering his religious mantra: "Job killer." And even if you couldn't read his...

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama told Congress that the victims of gun violence "deserve a vote" on a sweeping gun control package. Around the country, Americans are not only lobbying their Congressmembers to support legislation to reduce gun violence, they are also voting with their...

In February 2005, Patti Phillips sat by her daughter's bedside during the weeks before Stephanie Phillips died of bone cancer. Patti was able to be at her daughter's side the day she died because of the federal law that allows millions of Americans to take family leave without risking their...

Despite President Obama's important, even landmark, accomplishments, by the time November 6 arrived many Americans were disappointed with his first term. They expected him to be a "transformational" president who would, somehow, single-handedly, change Washington's political culture. When their hopes were dashed, many blamed Obama rather than the corporate plutocrats'...

Fifteen people have died and several hundred have been infected in an outbreak of meningitis contracted from contaminated spinal steroid injections. The numbers are growing and so is awareness of the growth of a little known corner of the pharmaceutical industry, called compounding pharmacies, which is responsible for...

There is little disagreement that consumer spending is a critical driver of American economic growth. The recession that began in 2007, while precipitated by the meltdown in the financial sector, is at root a crisis of aggregate demand. The halting recovery has been punctuated by disappointing monthly job reports and...

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2012 has been the hottest year on record -- ever. Millions of Americans suffered through the sweltering heat this summer, many in triple-digit temperatures in the Northeast and Southwest and California's central valley.

California farmworkers are literally dying from...

As the GOP assembles in Tampa, the Business Roundtable is joining the corporate chorus complaining about the "burden" and "uncertainty" of government action to remove toxic air pollution, stop climate change, stem the dramatic increase of workplace repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel and give consumers information about calories in...

President Obama's conservative opponents lambast him as a radical, a socialist, and a purveyor of class warfare. His left-wing critics think he's in bed with Wall Street, too cautious and timid to challenge the corporate establishment and the richest 1 percent.

These...

Senator Mitch McConnell argued in 1987 that we should reject limits on corporate campaign contributions and instead, embrace public disclosure of campaign contributions important "so," he said, "voters can judge for themselves what is appropriate." He was right. Telling voters about the sources of political campaign contributions would...

The London Olympics starting in two weeks will be an enormous logistical and security challenge for the city. More than four million people are expected to visit London over the Olympic period and billions more will be watching. 4.7 billion people from around the globe watched...

The young lifeguard, Tomas Lopez, who was fired recently for saving a life, is now being honored by the South Florida city of Hallendale Beach as a hero. He's been interviewed on CNN, Fox and Friends and is a YouTube celebrity. This week, he was given the key...

Few American institutions have been subjected to such a consistent stream of vitriol and assault as the minimum wage that celebrates its 74th birthday this week. The first federal minimum wage was established when FDR signed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) on June 25, 1938. The FLSA also established...

This piece was previously published in Dissent.

Last month Wal-Mart became the latest company to drop its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council in response to public outrage over ALEC's aggressive support for "Stand Your Ground" laws (which are implicated in the death of Trayvon Martin, among...

Forty years ago, a botched break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex brought down a president and accelerated the public's distrust of politicians and government. But, ironically, many government programs that most Americans now cherish were initiated under Nixon's watch. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency,...

Economic development in Arizona is now by corporations for corporations and the public is left to in the dark as to how its tax dollars are spent. Last year the state's Department of Commerce was replaced by the public-private Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA), steered by a board of...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is proposing a bold new plan to rebuild the city's aging infrastructure. He has lined up financing giants including Citibank NA, Citi Infrastructure Investors, Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets Inc. and JPMorgan Asset Management Infrastructure Group willing to invest $1.7 billion in...