Tag: Middle class

Class War

The Murder of the Middle Class Began 40 Years Ago This Week

Members of PATCO, the air traffic controllers union, hold hands and raise their arms as their deadline to return to work passes. All strikers were fired on the order of President Reagan on August 5, 1981.

Forty years ago, on August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers and barred them from ever working again for the federal government. By October of that year, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, the union that had called the strike, had been decertified and lay in ruins. The careers of most of the individual strikers were similarly dead: While Bill Clinton lifted Reagan’s ban on strikers in 1993, fewer than 10 percent were ever rehired by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Source: The Murder of the Middle Class Began 40 Years Ago This Week

Income Gap, USA

If You’re White, Married, or College Educated, There’s a Good Chance You Just Got Poorer | Mother Jones

A new Census Bureau report paints a bleak picture of the so-called recovery.

Source: If You’re White, Married, or College Educated, There’s a Good Chance You Just Got Poorer | Mother Jones

Racism USA

Racist Killing Fields in the U.S.: The Death of Sandra Bland: She was Middle Class to boot

The Racist Killing Fields in the US: The Death of Sandra Bland – Truthdig

drugs

Heroin has spread beyond inner-city neighborhoods to middle-class suburbs, threatening a larger section of Americans than ever before

http://rt.com/bulletin-board/230803-rtamerica-news-february9/

Heroin has spread beyond inner-city neighborhoods to middle-class suburbs, threatening a larger section of Americans than ever before. Cheaper prices, increased supplies from Mexico and doctors who are too willing to prescribe high-strength painkillers are all reportedly contributing to the increase in addiction and overdose deaths, leading officials in one state to take drastic steps. RT’s Ameera David reports, followed by analysis from drug expert Sanho Tree.

Civil rights lawyers are taking the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo. to court over what they are calling unconstitutional “debtors prisons.” Claiming that city officials routinely burden low-income individuals with outrageous fines before proceeding to throw them in jail for failure to pay these penalties, the group of attorneys is targeting the largely African-American city’s second largest source of income. RT’s Marina Portnaya has more.