A team of national labor market experts has released a groundbreaking study of the low-wage workforce in the nation’s three largest cities, finding that core employment laws — like the minimum wage and overtime pay — are being aggressively and systematically violated in some of the economy’s fastest-growing industries. The report can be viewed here.…

NPR reports: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that in August, the jobless rate hit 9.7 percent, up from 9.4 in June.” MAX FRAAD WOLFF Wolff, an instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School University who regularly writes on the economy, said this morning: “Today another 216,000 job losses were…

More than one out of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient’s physician, are rejected by California’s largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation’s biggest state, according to data released Wednesday by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.…

Just back from Afghanistan, Institute for Public Accuracy executive director Norman Solomon and veteran Rick Reyes are available for interviews. While in Kabul they met with scores of officials and policy analysts at UN agencies, the World Bank, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies (run by the…

Currently in Afghanistan’s capital, these three commentators are available for a limited number of interviews from Kabul before Tuesday. (Phone calls from U.S. to Kabul, which is 8.5 hours ahead of U.S. ET, may require multiple tries.) They can also be contacted to arrange interviews from the United States beginning on Thursday. REESE ERLICH Erlich…

This Friday marks four years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. CHRIS KROMM Executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, Kromm said today: “New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still waiting for Washington to show leadership in the Katrina recovery. Four years after the storm, one out of three New Orleans addresses…

ROBERT AUERBACH Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Auerbach is author of the book Deception and Abuse at the Fed. He said today: “The Federal Reserve operates with far too much secrecy. The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the…

CINDY SHEEHAN, via Laurie Dobson Available for a limited number of interviews, Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in the Iraq war, drew global interest when she attempted to confront a vacationing George W. Bush at his Crawford ranch in August 2005. She went on to write Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey through Heartache to…

As violence in Iraq increases, the Washington Post reports: “U.S. troops could be forced by Iraqi voters to withdraw a year ahead of schedule under a referendum the Iraqi government backed Monday.” CHRIS HEDGES LAILA AL-ARIAN Hedges and Al-Arian are co-authors of the book Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians. A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter,…

On Monday, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, President Obama stated: “But as we all know, much of our defense establishment has yet to fully adapt to the post-Cold War world. … Twenty years after the Cold War ended, this is not simply unacceptable. It is irresponsible.” — NY Times DARYL KIMBALL…