A Conversation with President Obama and The Wire Creator David Simon

Industrial Revolution

Move Over Food Trucks, Food Bikes Are Taking to the Streets

Charlie Wicker of Trailhead Coffee Roasters makes
all of his deliveries within the 6-mile radius of Portland,
Oregon on one of his custom-built cargo bikes.
Photo credit: John Lee / Trailhead Coffee Roasters

Yes, they're really cool, but they're also eco-friendly.

While food on-the-go is nothing new—wheeled food carts delivering food to cowboys and soldiers date back as early as the late 1800s—food bikes are seeing a sudden urban resurgence likely fueled by the recent food truck craze.

According to IBISWorld market research, food trucks are a booming industry with $857 million in sales in 2015 with an estimated 4,000 businesses employing nearly 15,000 people nationwide. While the industry is expected to continue to thrive, the drag of costly equipment, unfavorable regulatory conditions and gas-guzzling trucks has a new crop of traveling food entrepreneurs opting instead for cheaper eco-friendly food bikes.   READ MORE

WORKMAN CYCLES BUILDS THEM HERE
 

Robert Reich Demolishes Myth that College Is Gateway to the Middle Class

The suffering kids experience over college admissions is intense and largely unnecessary.

I know a high school senior who’s so worried about whether she’ll be accepted at the college of her choice she can’t sleep.

The parent of another senior tells me he stands at the mailbox for an hour every day waiting for a hoped-for acceptance letter to arrive.

Parents are also uptight. I’ve heard of some who have stopped socializing with other parents of children competing for admission to the same university.

Competition for places in top-brand colleges is absurdly intense. With inequality at record levels and almost all the economic gains going to the top, there’s more pressure than ever to get the golden ring.
A degree from a prestigious university can open doors to elite business schools and law schools – and to jobs paying hundreds of thousands, if not millions, a year.

So parents who can afford it are paying grotesque sums to give their kids an edge.
They “enhance” their kids' resumes with such things as bassoon lessons, trips to wildlife preserves in Botswana, internships at the Atlantic Monthly. They hire test-prep coaches. They arrange for consultants to help their children write compelling essays on college applications.

They make generous contributions to the elite colleges they once attended, to which their kids are applying  – colleges that give extra points to “legacies” and even more to those from wealthy families that donate tons of money.

You might call this affirmative action for the rich.

Excuse me, but this is nuts. READ MORE

Guess Which Ultra Liberal State Is About to Become a Hellish Place for People to Work in?

Bad news for Bernie Sanders' back yard.

Vermont, a state perceived as a liberal utopia by many, is being hit with a barrage of anti-labor policies. In a recent budget address, Gov. Peter Shumlin called out Vermont State Employees' Association, declaring he expected VSEA to reopen its contracts to ditch pay increases. The governor also announced that he plans to hack away at state jobs by consolidating emergency call centers and closing a school that serves state prisoners. In addition, he said that Vermont parents should “expect better outcomes for our students at lower costs.” He’s called for education cuts and higher student-teacher ratios, moves that will probably result in layoffs. This past fall, he announced he wants to outlaw teacher strikes in the state. That idea might soon become a reality: a bill prohibiting public school teachers from striking was recently introduced by Republican Rep. Kurt Wright and passed the House Education Committee by a vote of 8-3.

Shumlin is a Democrat who has received support from Bernie Sanders and owes much of his success to the working people of Vermont. He was supported by VSEA when he first ran for governor in 2010, after he criticized his Republican predecessor’s proposed layoffs and budget-cutting methods. The union continued to support him during his re-elections in 2012 and 2014. Before the last election, in 2014, Shumlin met with all the unions and assured them that he could be counted on. He insisted that layoffs would be a last resort. He won that election by less than 2,500 votes and, because he received less than 50% of the state's vote, his win had to be approved by the Vermont General Assembly. If Shumlin hadn't obtained support from the unions, there's a very real chance he could have lost. READ MORE

Exposing America's Billionaire Welfare Ranchers

America's .01 percent like the Kochs and the Hiltons are collecting massive subsidies from the federal government.

Americans love ranchers: Gritty ranchers, mom-and-pop ranchers, renegade ranchers — especially those who raise livestock on the vast open prairies of the West through a mixture of hard work and rugged independence. But there’s another side to the ever-popular rancher mythology— a side the media doesn’t cover and the public never sees. The Koch brothers, Ted Turner, the Hilton family and nine other powerful ranchers share an uncommon privilege: giant public subsidies, unknown to U.S. taxpayers.

It’s the other side of the Cliven Bundy story, the other side of the Wright brothers saga—the bronc-riding, ranching family at the center of the New York Times photographic essay published this March.
That “other side” of those stories is the federal grazing program that enables the Wrights to run their livestock on public lands for cheap; allows ranchers to have thousands of protected wild horses removed from public lands at public expense. It’s also the program that earned Cliven Bundy the title of "welfare rancher."  READ MORE

9 Things Many Americans Just Don’t Grasp (Compared to the Rest of the World)

Americans' lack of worldliness clouds their views on everything from economics to sex to religion.

To hear the far-right ideologues of Fox News and AM talk radio tell it, life in Europe is hell on Earth. 

Taxes are high, sexual promiscuity prevails, universal healthcare doesn’t work, and millions of people don’t even speak English as their primary language! Those who run around screaming about “American exceptionalism” often condemn countries like France, Norway and Switzerland to justify their jingoism. Sadly, the U.S.’ economic deterioration means that many Americans simply cannot afford a trip abroad to see how those countries function for themselves. And often, lack of foreign travel means accepting clichés about the rest of the world over the reality. And that lack of worldliness clouds many Americans' views on everything from economics to sex to religion. 

Here are nine things Americans can learn from the rest of the world.  READ MORE