History Readings

There is not only a continuing belief in some quarters that markets should set wages, but strenuous efforts to make deep cuts to food-stamp funding and slash other programs that help low-income workers—condemned as “takers.”

A second is that no one with a family working full-time at the minimum wage can possibly survive without major assistance. Keep in mind that if one works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year at $7.25 an hour, that means an annual income of $15,080—assuming no time off and no sick days.

. We now have a body of research by top-flight economists showing that an increase in the minimum wage does not reduce employment or significantly hinder the economy.

It is a fact that our economic system continues to have big gaps

Liberal cant notwithstanding, there is a culture of dependency that can discourage work among many. But the fact is most people out of work want to work—it defines their self-worth.

Let’s try to alter the incentive structure to make work pay, while maintaining devices like EITC, rent subsidies, and the health-insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act so that those who are working can support their families and live decent lives. As Jared Bernstein has written, let’s provide a tax credit when two people in a family want to work so that their work pays. Let’s do more robust job training instead of cutting funding, and experiment with innovations like the German apprenticeship program and their work-sharing policy.

female candidates are running in tough places, red states Mitt Romney won, or against entrenched incumbents. They aren't favored to win—and many may end up on the 2014 political scrap heap—but party operatives believe they give Democrats the best shot in such hostile political territory.

It's a deep problem for the Republicans," said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Democrats have made plain that the "war on women" playbook will be key to their efforts to unseat McConnell.

"Kentucky's first female United States senator."

They need to have legislation that has a positive [message] that will help female voters in an attempt to soften their image going into the elections," he said.

Factors such as central heating systems dependent on coal mean that northern China experiences frequent bouts of toxic air, the latest episode of serious pollution in eastern China is a reminder that the rest of the country is not immune to the dangers.

Environmental officials blamed the poor conditions on the lack of strong winds to flush out bad air and the growing number of vehicles pumping out pollutants, according to the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post. The newspaper said more favorable weather conditions that could help reduce pollution are expected to begin Sunday.

“What European leaders understand now is they are dealing with a person who cheats them and who lies,” Evgenia Tymoshenko said in an interview on Thursday. “There can be no negotiation with a person who cheats and lies.”

In her remarks, Ms. Nuland did not rule out the calls by some Ukrainian officials, including the speaker of Parliament, Volodymyr Rybak, for so-called round-table talks —the same phrase for negotiations that helped resolve the Orange Revolution nine years ago.

At the same time, participants in the meeting said they understood her message to mean protest leaders might have to accept the prospect of Mr. Yanukovich remaining in power, unless he should decide to resign voluntarily

The possibility that he would quit is regarded as extremely unlikely, and from a practical standpoint there seem to be few legal ways to oust him, as the protesters have demanded.

“The highly corrupt political class is more interested in its own pockets than in the public interest,” said Thomas Gomart of the French Institute of International Relations. “And it cannot give a political answer to the demonstrations. The real issue is not deciding to go to Brussels or Moscow, but popular exasperation with this political system.”

“There should be no doubt about where the United States stands on this,” she said. “We stand with the people of Ukraine who see their future in Europe and want to bring their country back to economic health and unity.”

His successors, even those he personally supported, have, sadly, not been his equals. South Africa today faces many challenging problems. Scandalous mismanagement of the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic by Thabo Mbeki brought widespread, unnecessary suffering.

It will be up to a new generation of South African leaders to resolve these problems. All of them will owe a historic debt to Nelson Mandela.

NewCo will emulate the founders of The Atlantic. At some point "independent from" turned into "objective about." That was the wrong turn, made long ago, by professional journalism, American-style.

You've written that The View From Nowhere is, in part, a defense mechanism against charges of bias originating in partisan politics. If you won't be invoking it, what will your defense be when those charges happen? There are two answers to that. 1) We told you where we're coming from. 2) High standards of verification. You need both.

If it works out as you hope, if things are implemented well, etc., what's the potential payoff for readers? I think it's three things: First, this is a news site that is born into the digital world, but doesn't have to return profits to investors. That's not totally unique

The basic insight is correct: Since "news judgment" is judgment, the product is improved when there are multiple perspectives at the table ... But, if the people who are recruited to the newsroom because they add perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked are also taught that they should leave their politics at the door, or think like professional journalists rather than representatives or their community, or privilege something called "news values" over the priorities they had when they decided to become journalists, then these people are being given a fatally mixed message, if you see what I mean. They are valued for the perspective they bring, and then told that they should transcend that perspective.

When people talk about objectivity in journalism they have many different things in mind. Some of these I have no quarrel with. You could even say I’m a “fan.” For example, if objectivity means trying to ground truth claims in verifiable facts, I am definitely for that. If it means there’s a “hard” reality out there that exists beyond any of our descriptions of it, sign me up. If objectivity is the requirement to acknowledge what is, regardless of whether we want it to be that way, then I want journalists who can be objective in that sense. Don’t you? If it means trying to see things in that fuller perspective Thomas Nagel talked about–pulling the camera back, revealing our previous position as only one of many–I second the motion. If it means the struggle to get beyond the limited perspective that our experience and upbringing afford us… yeah, we need more of that, not less. I think there is value in acts of description that do not attempt to say whether the thing described is good or bad. Is that objectivity? If so, I’m all for it, and I do that myself sometimes. 

By "we can do better than that" I mean: We can insist on the struggle to tell it like it is without also insisting on the View from Nowhere. The two are not connected. It was a mistake to think that they necessarily are. But why was this mistake made? To control people in the newsroom from "above." That's a big part of objectivity. Not truth. Control.

What about ideological diversity? The View from Somewhere obviously permits it. You've said you'll have it. Is that because it is valuable in itself?

Second: It's going to be a technology company as much as a news organization. That should result in better service.

a good formula for innovation is to start with something people want to do and eliminate some of the steps required to do it

The third upside is news with a human voice restored to it. This is the great lesson that blogging gives to journalism

he felt that only socialism could truly face down fascism;

he was still naive enough to want to abolish the stock exchange because he wanted an economy that benefited the many and not the few;

he passionately supported a robust welfare state on the lines of the post-war Labour government out of a patriotic love of his fellow countrymen and women

He despised Toryism, privilege and jingoism in all their manifestations.

He was also, of course, a serious anti-Communist, which is why some now on the neoconservative right cannot fathom him.

Above all, I think, he believed that class numbed people to the lives of their fellow citizens. It wasn’t masochism that prompted him to slum it in London and Paris; it was a desire to understand what was actually going on by living more fully on the margins and writing about it with candor and freshness.

slavery was not just an evil in itself; but an incalculable fomenter of evil. Ditto segregation.

the only long-term effective response to these hatreds is forgiveness, not revenge, to escape the cycle by self-esteem, not more anger, however justified.

Eradicating hatred is a utopian folly, still entertained on the left (as in the absurdity of hate crime laws), but now also embraced by the right as a way to deny any power to history or to the fallenness of humankind. It is a Christian heresy. Which is why it has taken root in today’s “exceptionalist” far right.

For them, simply being American is itself absolution from sin. I remember once hearing Newt Gingrich actually claim that America had abolished envy. He was serious. And how can one forget that Michele Bachmann truly believed that the Founding Fathers ended slavery in their lifetimes? Once a country has replaced God as an object of worship, it can, of course, do no wrong.