Kathleen Geier

What’s good enough for other people’s kids apparently isn’t good enough for the daughter of Michelle Rhee. As The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss reports, one of education reform advocate Michelle Rhee’s daughters apparently attends an elite prep school for grades 5-12 that charges tuition of upwards of $20,000 a year. On one level, the hypocrisy […]

This is a real cause for celebration: yesterday, a compromise was reached that at long last will bring paid sick leave to New York City. As always, the devil is in the details, and the bill is far from perfect. As In These Times’ Sarah Jaffe explains, the bill, which will provide up to five […]

Is this an early April Fool’s prank, or has everyone at the Scripps Howard News Service been hit with the stupid stick — hard? I read the piece with ever-increasing slack-jawed amazement, my eyebrows raised so high they nearly met my hairline. Clearly an attempt to portray the kinder, gentler side of the Klan, it […]

I’m going to be writing a lot about gender this weekend, and I thought there was no better way to kick off that theme than to post this song from Corin Tucker’s terrific album from last year, Kill My Blues*. The song is called “Groundhog Day,” and I don’t know of another that better expresses […]

Over at The Same Facts, Michael O’Hare posted a response to my earlier post about restaurant employees. Michael takes issue with my suggestion to tip generously. Here’s his rationale: [T]o think you can do people any good in the medium to long run by generally tipping more, you have to believe the labor market in […]

I wanted to make a few points about this awful piece by economist Casey Mulligan, in which Mulligan not only opposes a minimum wage hike, but actively supports reducing the minimum wage. And this in spite of the fact that, as he admits, the “least skilled workers” in our economy are continuing to “see their […]

And now comes the time to turn our beautiful minds to exciting new developments in the laboratories of democracy*. Have you been worrying lately that low-wage workers in this country have it too good? That those sweeeeet minimum wage paychecks are going to their heads? That those lazy bastards should probably just be forced to […]

Something happened today that is exceedingly rare in America, and the world — justice was served in a rape case. News outlets are reporting that 17-year old Trent Mays and 16-year old Ma’lik Richmond, both of whom are star football players at Steubenville High School in Ohio, were found guilty of raping a 16-year old […]

Sheryl Sandberg is all the rage these days. I’ve read her book and my feelings about it are mixed, albeit more positive than negative. I’ll have much more to say later once I’ve finished writing my review, but for now, I’d like to point to this illuminating post by Mike Konczal. Konczal digs into recent […]

Legend has it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland (although actually, scientists say Ireland was always snake-free). But in today’s Ireland, the slithery devils are back. As The New York Times reports, the crap economy is the culprit: During the Celtic Tiger boom, snakes became a popular pet among the Irish nouveaux […]