Guest Contributor

The Other NRA: How the Insidiously Powerful Restaurant Lobby Makes Sure Fast-Food Workers Get Poverty Wages and Have to Work While Sick

-- by Steven Rosenfeld

While thousands of fast-food workers were preparing to walk off their jobs earlier this summer to seek raises to $15 an hour, the industry's corporate lobbyist, the National Restaurant Association, was celebrating a string of political victories blocking state minimum wage increases and preempting local sick day laws.

Executive Excess 2013: Bailed out, Booted, and Busted

-- by Sarah Anderson, Scott Klinger, Sam Pizzigati—Institute for Policy Studies

Nearly 40 percent of the CEOs on the highest-paid lists from the past 20 years were eventually "bailed out, booted, or busted."

This 20th anniversary Executive Excess report examines the "performance" of the 241 corporate chief executives who have ranked among America's 25 highest-paid CEOs in one or more of the past 20 years.

ALEC's Chicago Conference Incites Protest, Multiple Arrests

-- by Ashlee Rezin, published from Progress Illinois

Six activists holding "no to alec" signs before being arrestedSix people were arrested Monday when protesters descended upon the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago to push back against the impending visit of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), whose conservative agenda, activists say, promotes policies and legislation that protects corporate interests and disenfranchises workers and voters.

A Book Is Better Than a Box of Chocolates

-- by Ralph Nader

Ralph NaderSummer is an ideal season for jolting your mind into action by expanding your reading horizons. So shut off the computer and the television, put away the various gadgets, close your email and pick up a good book. There are plenty of entertaining choices for your reading pleasure, but the following titles are ones that I have enjoyed. They all address the serious pursuit of justice/happiness side of the written word.

America's Most Dynamic (Yet Under-Covered) Movement: Overturning Citizens United

-- by John Nichols, The Nation

The most under-covered political movement in the United States -- and there are a lot of under-covered political movements in the United States -- is the broad-based national campaign to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court rulings that ushered in a new era of big-money politics.

Buzz off, Monsanto

-- by Paul Towers, Pesticide Action Network

beeLast week, the term "bee-washing" emerged in public conversation. It doesn't refer to some new bee cleaning service, but to the insidious efforts of Monsanto and other pesticide corporations to discredit science about the impacts of pesticides on bees -- especially neonicotinoids -- by creating public relations tours, new research centers and new marketing strategies.

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