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Keeping kids safe and free from harm should be common sense. However, last week the Department of Labor caved to opposition from big-money, corporate special interests and withdrew a proposal that would have prevented nearly 27,000 debilitating injuries and 80 deaths annually for child farm laborers. The opposition, led by Big Agribusiness, gained traction by distorting the truth about the rule’s intended outcome.
Contrary to the industry’s misinformation campaign, the proposed rule explicitly maintained the family farm exemption (Federal Register, Vol. 76,

An interesting find today when I was looking for something else in the FRED databases: the Congressional Budget Office is forecasting the slowest real recovery in the post-war era, and given trend inflation which does not rise above 2 percent, the slowest nominal recovery in the post-war era.
What these forecast data tell us is that the CBO expects the trend “potential” rate of real growth — growth in the actual production of goods and services — to rise slowly from now until 2016 to 2.6 percent year-over-year. In the interim, trend real growth is supposed to be below 2 percent; this is the lowest on record, and a long low stretch at that.
Moreover, the CBO doesn’t seem to expect the Fed to do anything much about it. In tune with the Fed’s forecasts, which show inflation slowly rising to the ceiling “target” of 2 percent, the CBO expects the trend inflation rate to hover around 1.8 percent. This reflects a substantial asymmetry between overshooting and undershooting the Fed’s inflation target.
What do you get when you put the two — historically low real growth, muted inflation — together? The slowest sustained period of NGDP growth on

Reversals of fortune and the artifice of self-presentation are the subjects of author Deborah Copaken Kogan’s superb new novel, “The Red Book”.
The red book, from which the book takes its title, is a Harvard class report published every five years with brief autobiographical overviews written by alumni. Using it as a framing device, Copaken Kogan explores the divide between the personal narratives presented in the red book and the real lives of those penning them. She traces the lives of four women who come together for a college reunion during the summer of 2009: Clove, a former securities broker with an unusual family background struggling with fertility issues; Addison, a “trustafarian” who had a gay lover in college and is now stuck in a stale marriage; shopaholic Mia, a former actress turned stay-at-home mom married to an older man going through his own mid-life crisis; and Jane, the Paris bureau chief for a newspaper with her own set of emotional

Foreclosures are non-discriminatory. They affect all races, genders, ages, and classes. While we hear about the effects of foreclosure on the real estate market and the economy on a daily basis, we don’t often receive specifics on how it may affect one group more than another.
According to the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Latinos have been significantly impacted by the increase in

This is an exciting time to work in libraries — technology affords us the opportunity to make accessible materials that have for years been kept in dark rooms in protective boxes.
The British Library just purchased the world’s oldest book and it is already available for viewing online. It is amazing that this single book survived since around AD689 when it was buried alongside St. Cuthbert on the island of

Texas law enforcement officials have come up with some mighty creative legal arguments over the years to justify executing Hank Skinner without first testing evidence that could prove his innocence — or confirm his guilt.
At times, they claimed the tests would be costly to the taxpayers. Then Skinner’s legal team agreed to pay for the tests.
Shifting gears, they argued that Skinner had waived his right to the tests when he didn’t request them before his trial. Then Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation that ensured post-conviction DNA testing in cases like Skinner’s.
So, at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday, they needed an imaginative pitch to persuade the nine judges not to apply the new DNA law to Skinner’s

This week marks the end of the In Wonderland exhibit at LACMA, a three-month-long journey into the subconscious of female surrealist artists like Rosa Rolanda, Leonora Carrington, Jacqueline Lamba, Helen Lundeberg, Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo and the Woman of Sorrows herself, Frida Kahlo. I ventured down the proverbial rabbit hole last month and found myself not as Alice with optimistic curiosity in this Wonderland, but as one with shock, sympathy and even distress. The works, all incredibly personal and often painful, look like a screen capture inside the minds of these women longing to escape their societal roles. Backed by a modest gray wall, we are confronted with issues of infertility, infidelity, molestation and

Andr 3000 (OutKast)
Song: Roses
Album: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap
Buy: iTunes.com
Tammy Wynette
Song: Too Far Gone
Album: Tammy’s Greatest Hits
Genre: Country
Buy: iTunes.com
Bob Seger (& The Silver Bullet Band)
Song: Turn the Page
Album: Live Bullet (Live) [Remastered]
Genre: Rock
Buy: iTunes.com
Young M.C.
Song: Know How
Album: Stone Cold Rhymin’
Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap
Buy: iTunes.com
Sid Vicious
Song: I Wanna Be Your Dog
Album: Sid Vicious Selected Favorites (Live)
Genre: Rock
Buy: iTunes.com
Johannes Brahms
Song: Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115, Adagio-Piu Lento
Album: Brahms: Clarinet Quintet/String Quartet, No. 3
Genre: Classical
Buy: iTunes.com
Big Joe Turner
Song: After My Laughter Came Tears
Album: Big Joe TurnerGreatest Hits
Genre: R&B/Soul
Buy: iTunes.com
Irving Berlin (& Fred Astaire)
Song: Isn’t This a Lovely Day? (Top Hat)
Album: Irving Berlin at the Movies
Genre: Popular
Buy: iTunes.com
Liberace
Song: Me and My Shadow
Album: Best of Liberace
Genre: Pop
Buy: iTunes.com
Bernie Taupin (& Elton John)
Song: Someone Saved My Life Tonight
Album: Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (Deluxe Edition)
Genre: Rock
Buy: iTunes.com
Bill Ward (Black Sabbath)
Song: War Pigs (Live Evil Version)
Album: The Rules of Hell
Genre: Rock
Buy: iTunes.com
Tchaikovsky (Erich Kleiber, NBC Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Arrau)
Song: Symphony No. 4 in F Minor

Here’s the best thing I can say about The Avengers (and no, I will NOT refer to it as Marvel’s The Avengers, because the branding is implicit):
It offers a couple of the biggest laughs in recent memory, including a slapstick gag worthy of Chuck Jones in his Looney Tunes heyday.
Thankfully, there are other nice things to say about The Avengers, a Marvel mash-up featuring a group of superheroes who (almost) all have had their own movies. Don’t think of this as a sequel to the others; it’s its own thing unto itself.
And, thanks to writer-director Joss Whedon, that thing is veined with wit, even as it offers exactly the kind of action that fanboys and normal movie-goers alike want out of something like

One of the key pieces of circumstantial evidence in the murder charge against George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin is a cry for help moments before the fatal shot that was recorded while a witness who heard the struggle made a 911 call to the police. Identifying the voice of the person screaming, although not conclusive, would certainly be compelling evidence that the outcry was made by the victim of the physical encounter rather than by the aggressor. The recording, in other words, could be used by the prosecution to disprove Zimmerman’s claim that he shot Martin in self-defense, or by Zimmerman to prove he was being beaten by Martin when he shot him. So, to prove it was Martin’s voice, the prosecution likely will rely on family members and friends of Trayvon

This Sunday’s election seems to be a trap — one that was originally set by the extreme left-wing and later taken on by newly-created anti-austerity parties. Austerity measures are known as bailout plans and understood by the average Greek to be imposed by the Troika (European Union, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank). This trap was set to snare socialist Pasok and conservative New Democracy — the country’s traditionally biggest parties and the main advocates of the Troika involvement.
Shocked by severe recession (-7 percent of GDP and over 20 percent of unemployment), Greeks seem to blame their woes on the harsh austerity measures imposed by the two Troika loans in less than 20 months. There is a strong sentiment that the solutions to the economic crisis are even harsher than the crisis itself.
People are tired, angry and broke because liquidity is

by guest blogger Maya Rodale,writer of historicaltales of true love and adventure
For years I lived in tiny Manhattan apartments with microscopic kitchens that barely had room for a person to stand, let alone cook. Yet even with little space to store or use kitchen supplies, I managed to cook and feed myself, thanks to these utterly essential kitchen tools:
Cast iron skillet. They’re safe, non-stick, and double as a weapon or, if necessary a brownie pan (Seriously. A girl has

This just in: AUSTERITY DOESN’T WORK!
It doesn’t work here, it doesn’t work in Europe, it doesn’t work for state and local governments. I’m tempted to ask how many data points we need to recognize this crucial economic truth, but I’m afraid data points don’t have much to do with it.
Another weak jobs report for April, with only 115,000 jobs added — 130,000 in the private sector — and a lower-labor-force-induced tick down in unemployment, from 8.2% to 8.1%.
You can see the trend in payrolls in the figure below, with acceleration toward the end of last year morphing to deceleration over the past few months. After last month’s disappointing report, I was careful to point out that “one month does not a trend make” and there are some technical reasons — mostly seasonal adjustments that haven’t caught up with unusually warm weather — to consider as well.
Source: BLS
Well, two months doesn’t quite a trend make either, but it’s getting closer. Average out some of the monthly noise, payrolls are up 176,000 per month over the past three months, compared to 218,000 over the prior three

People who care about helping companies raise capital to innovate and create jobs don’t drive our contemporary Wall Street. “High-frequency” traders do.
A decade or so ago, these computer-driven, warp speed traders didn’t even exist. Now they make up about 55 percent of all U.S. stock trading and a rising share in derivatives

Don’t trust the trailers for Anne Renton’s The Perfect Family.
They make it look like an irreverent, iconoclastic satire, one that attacks hypocrisy among the pious – like something from the Farrelly brothers or, perhaps, John Waters. Oh wait – Waters already made that movie with Turner and called it Serial Mom. And it was a lot more interesting than this alleged comedy.
In fact, The Perfect Family is dramatic – when it isn’t dull and

Have you ever heard of the saying, “It doesn’t matter the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog”? Being small, I will definitely agree that size within matters more than the size on the outside. But honestly, when it comes down to it, which one is the more important?
Looking deeper into the idea of toughness and what it means to be a leader, I looked up to one of the greatest role models in NFL history, Vince Lombardi. When it comes to being a leader, one of the points he makes is, “The strength of the group is the strength of the leaders.” In less than four months, I will be a college freshman majoring in business management. I want to be known as a businesswoman who gets the job

In November 2011, I was one of the nearly 3,000 soldiers in the Iowa Army National Guard who were deployed to Afghanistan. My job was to provide behavioral health services to these remarkable men and women. While I was deployed I kept a journal, which was my way of taking care of myself. The following is my entry from April 22, 2011.
I’ve just returned from a four-day mission to Forward Operating Base (FOB)

“Where’s your dad?” Cal’s friend once asked her while on a playdate. There was nothing mean-spirited about the question. It was just one 7-year-old asking another in a curious “My dad’s at work; where’s your dad?” kind of way.
Very matter-of-factly, my daughter, Cal, replied, “I don’t have a dad. If my mommy gets married, then I’ll have one.”
Cal didn’t bring it up for the rest of the afternoon, but at bedtime, she told me God wanted to know when I would be getting married.

The modern social issue of equality among those of differing sexual orientations is reminiscent of the days of racial segregation. It echoes the same central idea: you are different, and because you are different, you are clearly in the wrong. And, because you are in the wrong, you do not deserve the same rights as those who adhere to the norm.
The debate over gay marriage absolutely infuriates

This is part of our new series “Gen: Change,” in partnership with Youth Service America, featuring stories from the 25 most influential and powerful young people in the world. Click here to read more about Kyle and his amazing story.
“His majesty will see you now.”
Admittedly, standing in the palace of one of the last true monarchs in the world was a bit intimidating, but as the interview progressed, I loosened up a little. After the interview, King Mswati III of Swaziland took pictures with

Next month, the country’s educational community will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Plyler vs. Doe. In Plyer

It happens every year. I get a bunch of tequilas or mezcals or agave nectars or orange liqueurs in the mail. I think, well, this margarita-centric stuff doesn’t fit with the in-depth exploration I’m working on of schnapps made in the greater West Virginia area, or the pastrami-flavored vodka review I have to write for next week. I’ll leave it until Cinco de

I attended a teleseminar of Patti Digh’s (author of Life Is A Verb) in which she posed this question: If you knew that your art would support your life, how would you live?
That question climbed into me and set up camp. I meditated on it for two years. I printed it out in forty-point type and pasted it onto my notebooks. Before I planned any project, I went and sat with this

The entertainment industry today is
caught in a kind of purgatory, somewhere between Zero Mostel and
Franklin Roosevelt. It’s an odd place to be, and not sustainable to
be there for much longer.
From Mostel, comes the line, “Without
our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as… as… as a fiddler
on the roof!” from the play, “Fiddler on the Roof.”
The industry respects, and clings to, its