The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow

The scale of incarceration-related discrimination is astonishing. Ex-offenders are routinely stripped of essential rights. Current felon-disenfranchisement laws bar 13 percent of African American men from casting a vote, thus making mass incarceration an effective tool of voter suppression -- one reminiscent of the poll taxes and literacy tests of the Jim Crow era. Employers routinely discriminate against an applicant based on criminal history, as do landlords. In most states, it is also legal to make ex-drug offenders ineligible for food stamps. In some major urban areas, if you take into account prisoners -- who are excluded from poverty and unemployment statistics, thus masking the severity of black disadvantage -- more than half of working-age African American men have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. In Chicago, for instance, nearly 80 percent of working-age African American men had criminal records in 2002. These men are permanently locked into an inferior, second-class status, or caste, by law and custom.

Why Canada Can Avoid Banking Crises And U.S. Can't

Why Canada Can Avoid Banking Crises And U.S. Can't

Since 1790, the United States has suffered 16 banking crises. Canada has experienced zero — not even during the Great Depression.

How Republicans stopped worrying and learned to love big government

How Republicans stopped worrying and learned to love big government

Bernanke Kills Fed Credibility and the Confidence Fairy in One Shot « naked capitalism

Bernanke Kills Fed Credibility and the Confidence Fairy in One Shot « naked capitalism

The House just voted down its $940 billion farm bill. Here’s what’s in it.

The House just voted down its $940 billion farm bill. Here’s what’s in it.

The Obama Phone?

The Obama Phone?

Has the Obama administration started a program to use "taxpayer money" to give free cell phones to welfare recipients?
A: No. Low-income households have been eligible for discounted telephone service for more than a decade. But the program is funded by telecom companies, not by taxes, and the president has nothing to do with it.