living wage

The coal mine in West Virginia where an explosion killed 25 workers on Monday and left four missing "had amassed scores of citations from mining safety officials," according to ABC News. Amidst all the talk of jobs and unemployment, Ed Ott notes, we've lost focus on the "good" and "safe" jobs part of the equation, let alone "well-paid." Ott joins us in studio to talk about the continuing crisis of unemployment, and the importance of unions and years of labor struggle to create decent, safe jobs that created the American middle class. When Punk Planet, the magazine that Anne Elizabeth Moore co-edited, folded, she was stuck facing the death of the entire independent publishing world that had sustained her and her activism since childhood. What's a creative, independent writer/artist to do? In her case, the answer was twofold. Write a book, and go to Cambodia. Her book, "Unmarketable," was published in 2007, and details the way corporate interests co-opted underground values. Her work in Cambodia, teaching independent publishing to girls, is detailed on her blog, Camb(l)o(g)dia. She joined Laura in studio to talk about both. Then, on Monday, the independent site Wikileaks.org released a video of a shooting in Iraq that had been covered up for years. Among the victims of the U.S. soldiers in an Apache helicopter were two children and a Reuters photographer, whose telephoto lens was apparently taken for a weapon. We bring you a selection from the video, and Laura's commentary. The video is graphic.