Verizon, who has recently been quite happy to secretly turn over millions of loyal Americans' phone records to the government (and then lie about doing so!), now has a much more difficult choice to make about what's right. Do they cater to anti-union bias and Wall Street profit-grabbing? Or do they engage just a little in trying to make America better by not helping to destroy the middle class?

With global operating revenues last year of $106 billion (and only $31 billion in real costs), the company doesn't feel a need to really engage with its 45,000 striking workers. Last year, Verizon laid off lots of staff—2500 directly, [...]

Writing about Israel is tough when the Israeli-Arab conflict isn't front and center. It's been a geopolitical nightmare for decades; it hangs in the background during the discussion of even innocuous topics. But a massive new protest movement in Israel is centered around financial issues instead—and could give a sneak preview of what could happen if European and American economies hit the fan again.

A gigantic tent city in downtown Tel Aviv was organized via Facebook and is now home to hundreds of protesters. They are mainly middle-class urbanites, angry at the rapidly rising Israeli cost of living and at Tel Aviv's lack of affordable [...]