Tula Connell

Dorene, a cancer survivor in Oregon, can't afford health insurance, so she takes part in what she calls "faith-based health care"—she prays she won't get sick. Barbara's son spent a year in Iraq after enlisting in the National Guard. It was the only way he could get health insurance for his wife.

So, Bush's Defense Department gives a massive tanker contract to Northrop Grumman and the European firm EADS. In doing so, it shunned Boeing, which bid on the contract. This action is perverse on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. In handing out the contract—worth between $40 billion to $100 billion—for the construction of Air Force refueling tankers, the Bush administration claimed that 25,000 jobs would be created in

What is it about teachers that reactionaries don't like? Maybe it's because an educated electorate poses a threat to those who seek to control the public—"Danger: Educated Union Member" is one of our favorite phrases—and so teachers pose an easy target for the antediluvians among us. (Remember John Stossel's ABC trash piece, "Stupid in America"?). The success of teachers' unions also draws particular ire from the anti-education crowd.

Help me welcome professor Richard Freeman, who holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in economics at Harvard University. He currently serves as faculty director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School and is senior research fellow in Labour Markets at the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance.

We all know that when it comes to providing health care, maternity leave and retirement security for all their citizens, Britain, France and all the rest of "old" Europe make the United States look pretty pathetic. For instance, Britain provides 72 weeks of paid maternity leave while even South Africa, at the low end of the spectrum, offers 12 paid weeks.

The union movement is turning green. Not with envy, but with an escalating sense that the nation must work to address climate change and that we must be part of the effort to create good jobs that also are green jobs. Last December, an unprecedented delegation of unionists traveled to Bali, Indonesia, for the U.N. climate change conference. Of the 90 union delegates, more than 20 were from North America.

There are many reasons economic immigrants come to this nation—driven out of their home countries by bad trade deals that fail to consider the impact on workers or because they are fleeing unfettered corporate greed that seeks out impoverished nations to pay the lowest possible wages. Last week in this spot, I took a look at why border crossings start in the boardroom.

Once in the United States, immigrants are ripe for employer exploitation—and many U.S. employers don't hesitate to do so.

Before the immigration debate builds steam later this election year, I really wish candidates at all levels and in every party could spend a few hours in a maquila talking with workers. A few years ago, I spent two weeks in Guatemala with STITCH, a U.S.-based labor group that supports women workers in Latin America.

Join me in welcoming Amy M. Traub, director of Research at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy. President Bush seems to have discovered that the economy is turning sour just in time for his State of the Union address. But for current and aspiring middle-class Americans, things have been tough for some time.

Back in January 2001, in an article presciently titled: "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over,' " The Onion satirized the list of horrors on our horizon following the installation of the Bush regime. Here's what The Onion had to say about Bush and America's economy: