Browsing PBH By Articles

Why Don’t More Foodies Care About Restaurant Workers?

Posted on May 9, 2013 in Articles

Restaurant Workers

The Article: The Hypocrisy of Foodies: Restaurant Worker Abuse by Anya Sacharow in Time.

The Text: Our growing, conscientious food culture has put a priority on eating all things sustainable, local, organic and free-range. Though most foodies would never step foot in a McDonald’s, they would happily eat at a farm-to-table restaurant where food is sourced according to the highest standards.

And yet, here’s the unspoken hypocrisy. We give more thought to how the chickens and cows on our plate have been treated than we do about the people who cook and serve our food. Restaurant workers hold six of the 10 lowest-paying occupations in the U.S., earning less, on average, than farm workers and domestic workers. Just 20% of restaurant jobs pay a living wage, and women, people of color and immigrants are often barred from getting these living-wage positions.

It is “the chasm between American food values and business practices,” writes Saru Jayaraman, founder of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and author of the new book Behind the Kitchen Door.

The Austerity Agenda

Posted on May 8, 2013 in Articles

Paul Krugman Austerity Agenda

The Article: The 1 Percent’s Solution by Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

The Text: conomic debates rarely end with a T.K.O. But the great policy debate of recent years between Keynesians, who advocate sustaining and, indeed, increasing government spending in a depression, and austerians, who demand immediate spending cuts, comes close — at least in the world of ideas. At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics.

Yet two big questions remain. First, how did austerity doctrine become so influential in the first place? Second, will policy change at all now that crucial austerian claims have become fodder for late-night comics?

On the first question: the dominance of austerians in influential circles should disturb anyone who likes to believe that policy is based on, or even strongly influenced by, actual evidence. After all, the two main studies providing the alleged intellectual justification for austerity — Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna on “expansionary austerity” and Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff on the dangerous debt “threshold” at 90 percent of G.D.P. — faced withering criticism almost as soon as they came out.

In The US, We Lose Our Heads Over Terror But Not Daily Gun Deaths

Posted on May 7, 2013 in Articles

Guns United States

The Article: Why does America lose its head over ‘terror’ but ignore its daily gun deaths? by Michael Cohen in The Guardian.

The Text: The thriving metropolis of Boston was turned into a ghost town on Friday. Nearly a million Bostonians were asked to stay in their homes – and willingly complied. Schools were closed; business shuttered; trains, subways and roads were empty; usually busy streets eerily resembled a post-apocalyptic movie set; even baseball games and cultural events were cancelled – all in response to a 19-year-old fugitive, who was on foot and clearly identified by the news media.

The actions allegedly committed by the Boston marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, were heinous. Four people dead and more than 100 wounded, some with shredded and amputated limbs.

But Londoners, who endured IRA terror for years, might be forgiven for thinking that America over-reacted just a tad to the goings-on in Boston. They’re right – and then some. What we saw was a collective freak-out like few that we’ve seen previously in the United States. It was yet another depressing reminder that more than 11 years after 9/11 Americans still allow themselves to be easily and willingly cowed by the “threat” of terrorism.

Matt Taibbi On The Biggest Financial Scandal Yet

Posted on May 6, 2013 in Articles

Financial Markets

The Article: Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Financial Scandal Yet by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone.

The Text: Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that’s trillion, with a “t”) worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it “dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets.”

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world’s largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world’s largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

Ralph Nader On The Bush Legacy

Posted on May 5, 2013 in Articles

Bush Legacy

The Article: He Is Comfortable with Bush’s Inferno by Ralph Nader in Common Dreams.

The Text: George W. Bush is riding high. A megamillionaire, from the taxpayer-subsidized Texas Rangers company, he makes $150,000 to $200,000 per speech, receives a large presidential pension and support facilities and is about to dedicate the $500 million George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on April 25.

President Obama will be at the dedication, continuing to legitimize Mr. Bush, as he did from the outset by announcing in 2009 there would be no investigations or prosecutions of the Bush officials for their crimes.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Bush continued to say he has no regrets about his Presidency. “I’m comfortable with what I did,” he said, “I’m comfortable with who I am.” He added, “Much of my presidency was defined by things that you didn’t necessarily want to have happen.”