Free Republic

Please Do Your JobRussell Roberts The headline: Study Finds Rich-Poor Income Gap Growing The story by Mark Johnson of the Associated Press begins: The disparity between rich and poor is growing in America as the federal minimum wage has remained flat for years, union membership has declined and industries have faced global competition, according to a study released Thursday. Interesting.  Let me try a different first sentence: The disparity between rich and poor is growing in America as the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years, Mars came very close to the earth and the global frog...

"When I was in Alabama 13 years ago, they had no child labor law," wrote labor activist Mary Harris Jones, better known as Mother Jones, in 1908. "In Alabama 13 years ago, women ran four or five looms. Today, I find them running some 24 looms. This is the Democratic south, my friends -- this is a Democratic administration. This is what Mr. Bryan and Mr. Gompers want to uphold." The "Gompers" that Ms. Jones judged to be insufficiently concerned about the subjugation of labor was Samuel Gompers, the 10-year-old who was taken out of school to become an apprentice...

<p>Former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, in an appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live," blamed the September 11 attacks on errant U.S. foreign policy and world poverty, the Media Research Center's Brent Baker reports at www.mediaresearch.org.</p> <p>"Cronkite said he believes 'very definitely that foreign policy could have caused what has happened,' before he asserted that anti-U.S. terrorism is caused by 'this great division between the rich and the poor in the world.' The people of the world 'who don't have adequate housing, don't have adequate hospitalization, don't have adequate medical care, don't have adequate education,' Cronkite warned, 'are not going to live forever in the shadow of the riches that we display constantly.'</p>