A single-payer system is one in which the government, rather than private insurance companies, pays all health care costs. Some on the left have long harbored hopes for a national single-payer system, but the odds that Congress would ever extinguish the private insurance industry have never been anything but long. Vermont is different. Vermonters proudly bring … Read More
Half a year after Newark Public Schools launched an “agenda to ensure all students are in excellent schools,” the plan has come under a federal civil rights investigation to determine whether it “discriminates against black students.” An in-depth look into the district’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to close one South Ward school reveals how real estate concerns … Read More
Hilary Wainwright’s booklet – The Tragedy of the Private, the Potential of the Public – describes water, health and education as “the commons” and illustrates a quiet process of remunicipalization is taking place all over the world. There is a palpable momentum to these ideas. Last summer saw the formation of the We Own It campaign … Read More
Less than a year after Michigan shifted responsibility for feeding its prisoners to a private contract with international food services conglomerate Aramark, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) is warning the company that it may yank the contract. The DOC says Aramark has violated terms of the contract hundreds of times since December. The violations include … Read More
By the time you read this, Congressional Republicans will have overwhelmingly voted to violate one of their most cherished guiding principles: A service should be paid for by those who use the service. If we don’t fully pay for services, Republicans usually insist, markets can’t work effectively. We undervalue and overuse services, resulting in wasteful overspending. … Read More
The United States Postal Service (USPS) management just ran into a possible game-changing obstacle to its shameful pursuit of a fully privatized post office: labor solidarity. Here’s the background. For a decade the USPS has been aggressively shrinking, consolidating, and outsourcing the nation’s postal system. In July 2011 management upped the ante by announcing the rapid … Read More
“(W)ithout power and independence, a town may contain good subjects, but it can have no active citizens.” That was the conclusion of Alexis de Tocqueville after touring a youthful American Republic in the early 1830s, as recorded in his classic Democracy in America. Today we are engaged in a renewed debate about the authority of governments … Read More
With the announcement by the FCC that cable and telephone companies will be allowed to prioritize access to their customers only one option remains that can guarantee an open internet: owning the means of distribution. Thankfully an agency exists for this. Local government. Owning the means of distribution is a traditional function of local government. We … Read More
The upcoming Crimea referendum is both ordinary and extraordinary. Ordinary because more than 100 times since World War II geographically concentrated ethnic or linguistic groups have voted on the question of independence. Extraordinary because never before have a people encountered a ballot allowing them to choose only between continuing subservience within their existing nation or subservience … Read More
