Pledging to implement policies that will boost the economy and protect the right of workers to join unions, Barack Obama spoke with thousands of labor activists by teleconference July 31.

Union members protest the decision by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to cut the wages of over two hundred thousand state workers to the Federal minimum wage of $6.55/hour, alleging he must do so because the state legislature has not passed a budget.

There have been many policy missteps over the last twenty some years, and this has amounted to a mismanagement of the U.S. economy. The result has been an unhealthy mixture of greed, shortsightedness and market manipulation.

On the face of it, there is no immediate danger of a clash with Iran over its nuclear development project. The US military seems to have convinced the political echelon that the United States is simply unable to handle a third war, at this stage.

Senior US government officials are making an overt demand that Japan spend more tax money for the military.

Venezuela does not only represent a political and a sovereignty problem to the United States of America, but additionally Venezuela owns the energy resources from which the American economy of tomorrow depends.

Everyone is now accustomed to hearing that the financial crisis in the United States and in Britain was caused by American financial institutions lending money to unsafe borrowers for buying houses.

Last week, media reports revealed that presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain gets almost $2,000 per month in Social Security checks, a system, he recently told an audience at a campaign stop, which he finds to be an "absolute disgraceful."

It has never happened before. For the first time in modern economic times, three major crises – affecting finances, energy and food – are coinciding, coming together and merging. Each interacts with the others, exponentially worsening the deterioration of the real economy.

The Bush administration's ideologically motivated abstinence-only sex education programs don't work and may endanger young people, say opponents of the administration's latest effort to convince states to spend federal dollars on those programs.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), CDs and DVDs are typically manufactured by combining various mined metals (aluminum, gold, silver and nickel) with petroleum-derived plastics, lacquers and dyes.

A recent commentary from The Environmental Magazine (E) describes presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama as the greener of the two candidates for president.

BERLIN – I attended the big rally with Obama in Berlin Thursday evening, not as a press representative but as one of the crowd. And what a giant crowd it was! The news reports counted “over 200,000” but to someone sandwiched in so tight I could hardly lift my hand to scratch my itching nose.

This week it was revealed that John McCain's family could make as much as $2 million on a deal with a liquor company that nearly controls the market for beer in Cuba.

A new VoteVets.org ad hammers John McCain on his previous statements about the Iraq war.

The mention of screenwriter John Howard Lawson conjures up images of a dauntless, spirited genius, Dean of the Hollywood Ten, a leader among artists determined to defend himself and his colleagues in the face of one of the worst, most repressive campaigns against free speech in American history.

¿Alguna vez has oído mencionar a la Fundación Nacional por la Democracia (Nacional Endowment for Democracy, o NED, por sus siglas en inglés)? Muy poca gente la conoce. Sin embargo, la NED recibe fondos del erario público y lleva acabo una política externa sin ningún grado de transparencia ni control público.

The WTO negotiations have turned into a fight by developed countries to open markets in developing countries to favor their big companies. The agricultural subsidies in the North, which mainly go to agricultural and food companies in the US and Europe, will not only continue but will actually increase, as demonstrated by the 2008 Farm Bill in the United States.

There's "a change a-comin'." It's gonna be big, huge. Think China earthquake; think tsunami. Like an earthquake it's going to shake the foundations of US political life from the ground up.

An unprecedented discussion is sweeping the country about how to change direction for the common good. Tens of thousands of union members are knocking on the doors of millions of co-workers and their families to talk about the issues.