by Abby Scher
When Cecilia Pastor greeted us at the door of an empty unit at Spring Meadow Apartments in Springfield, Mass., she was surrounded by the harsh smell of paint and the cleaners she had used to scour the space to make it presentable for a new tenant. A petite 30-year-old woman, she was working for United for Hire, a worker-controlled landscaping, snow removal, and cleaning firm operated by the innovative nonprofit Alliance to Develop Power (ADP).
“One thing I have learned and really like in United for Hire is we work in a community economy, and the money circulates,” she said. “And we have good salaries where we can support our families.”
by Thomas H. Clarke
WASHINGTON, DC — Bills to legalize the possession and adult use of marijuana have been introduced in several states since voters in Washington and Colorado approved similar initiatives in the November elections.
Other states are in contention to become the 20th jurisdiction in the United States to allow medical marijuana, many states have introduced legislation to decriminalize or reduce criminal penalties for the possession of small amounts of cannabis, and a few have taken steps in the opposition direction, attempting to increase penalties for small time marijuana offenses.
But as the 2013 legislative session continues, where do those bills stand, what are their chances of passing, and which ones have already been tabled, killed, or left forgotten? Lets take a look, state by state, at the progression (and regression) of marijuana laws at the State House.
by Paul Buchheit
By David Bieninstock
Meanwhile, the big, bad Drug Enforcement Agency burns through roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer money every year going after kingpins, cartels and the occasional cancer patient caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. By comparison, Congress allocates only around $1.6 billion per year to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency responsible for policing Wall Street.
The point is to resist falling into the familiar game of optimism vs. pessimism and to minimize that tempting blame-game within the Left...
by William E. Connolly
by Norman Solomon
If your daily routine took you from one homegrown organic garden to another, bypassing vast fields choked with pesticides, you might feel pretty good about the current state of agriculture.
If your daily routine takes you from one noncommercial progressive website to another, you might feel pretty good about the current state of the Internet.
But while mass media have supplied endless raptures about a digital revolution, corporate power has seized the Internet -- and the anti-democratic grip is tightening every day.
by Glenn Greenwald
There's not much I can count on in the News-Gazette, but I can count on our faithful paper carrier to deliver the local fishwrap, as it arrives even on days like this. That said, there's little else that I can take at face value, other than the paper's decisions about how they carry the news. Today, that was encapsulated in a front page story about potential prison crowding because of the state's inability to come to grips with obeying the Constitution and a 3rd page article on medical marijuana.
In a longish article in the middle of the front page, various state and local officials bemoan the fact that a bill to increase sentences for unlawful use of weapons (UUW) could lead to further prison overcrowding. That in a state that found itself so embarassed by prison conditions it banned all journalists from the prison system. It's not until the end of the article that a couple of terse, brief paragraphs note that Illinois, as the ONLY state without a process or right to concealed carry, has well under 180 days at this point to pass a law to govern and eprmit such licenses under order from the feds.
Following the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, The Washington Post thought it might be a good idea to have someone write about how the media's role during that time impacted the Bush administration's ability to galvanize a nation towards war. They thought it was a good idea, that is, until they were seemingly reminded how integral a part of that effort they themselves were in the debacle.
Journalist and media critic Greg Mitchell, who ran the highly regarded Editor & Publisher during the years directly before and after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, was asked to write the piece, but as he announced on his personal blog Saturday night, the Post killed the story after reviewing its contents.
According to Mitchell:
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