Features

As we reach the climax of the great battle over trade with China, it’s worth taking a closer look at the main sticking point of this and every other major global agreement likely to arise in future years. There’s widespread acceptance of the need for “global labor standards” and “global environmental standards.” But apart from […]

Tracey Hunt, a 28-year-old single mother living in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, did not want to go back on welfare. She had been there before, about five years ago, while she was pregnant with her second child. Back then, the problem was not a lack of work; it was that the work (waiting tables at a […]

On April 14, 1998, two days after Easter, Janice Lacy called the Appleridge group home in Houston, Texas, to see how her sister Trenia had spent the holiday. “They told me she’d had a nice Easter and was asleep,” says Janice, recalling her conversation with a caregiver at the home where Trenia […]

Through recent decades, America’s social welfare policies have oscillated between two contradictory impulses. The 1960s were marked by a campaign against poverty; in the 1980s, welfare policy was increasingly concerned with fighting dependency. By the early 1990s, when welfare rolls hit an all-time high, the fear of unintended consequences–that welfare was discouraging work and marriage, […]

ACROSS: 1 BONN + IEST (site anag.); 5 S + CAN; 9 NI(NE)S; 10 A…T + TRACT; 11 TAHI(T)I (Haiti anag.); 12 PAT + I + O; 14 CATCHMENT AREA (anag.); 17 EARTH (h shifted in heart); 19 ERNES + T; 22 CHIC + A + GO; 23 (d)INNER; 24 YARD (2 defs.); 25 STAR […]

ACROSS: 1 THOUSAND (anag.); 5 BRED (bread hom.); 9 CACHE (cash hom.); 10 TRA(NS)IT (NS = last pair of coiNS); 11 G + ROT + TO; 12 KO(A)LA; 14 R(OR)SCHACH TEST (stretch cash anag.); 17 CELLS (sells hom.); 19 G(R)ASPS; 22 ERITREA (hidden); 23 E(C)LAT (rev.); 24 SAKE (acronym); 25 OD + IOU + SLY […]

It is one of the great ironies of American labor history that enslaved workers toiled at a wider variety of skilled tasks than did their descendants who were free. Slave owners had an economic incentive to exploit the multifaceted talents of blacks in the craft shop as well as in the kitchen and field. But […]

ACROSS: 1 A + D(MON)ISH; 5 S + HOT; 9 SIMB + A (IBM’s anag.); 10 DIG + IT + AL(l); 11 IN(BOR)N (Rob rev.); 12 ORDER (hidden); 14 P + ROM + PT; 16 SECRET (anag.); 19 ANEAR (anag.); 21 P(ROOF)S; 24 SHUT + TLE (let anag.); 25 I + DAH + O (had […]

ACROSS: 1 JINGLED (hidden); 5 MA(CH)O; 8 N(IN + N)Y; 9 S + CUTTLE; 10 E + ERIE (Haiti anag.); 11 NO + YES; 13 (h)ARNESS; 15 DRAG ON; 18 DU(S)TY; 20 USA + GE(ts); 23 REIGNED (rained hom.); 24 S + US + HI; 25 NEEDS (kneads hom.); 26 ASPERSE (hidden) DOWN: 1 JUNK […]

With Bill Bradley out of the presidential race, Vice President Gore’s proposal to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remains the one comprehensive proposal on the table in the presidential election to address the plight of the 44 million Americans who lack health insurance. But CHIP is far from an ideal foundation for expanding […]