Monthly Archives: September 2009

Taxation of the Arts: The Pennsylvania State Budget Scramble

As the state of Pennsylvania scrambles to find new sources of revenue to balance the state budget, a proposed arts tax has come into play. The proposed arts tax would add an additional 8 percent to the cost of tickets for museums, plays, zoos and historical parks in Philadelphia and 6 percent for the rest of the [...]

Bosom Buddies: Stock Exchange and the Incarcerated

America can boast it is the leader for the incarcerated.
Our prison system is on the stock exchange.
It’s not necessarily the prison system, but the companies that run them. Some companies explicitly, others implicitly while companies have gone through buy outs, mergers and name changes. America is not the lone profiteer. Europe is profiting, too, off [...]

The Meaning Behind Labor Day

The first celebrated Labor Day was on September 5th in New York City in 1882; however, Labor Day wasn’t made into a national holiday until a labor union strike. It came about with the Pullman Strike in Chicago on May 11, 1894.
Pullman Palace Car Company workers walked out due to reduction in wages. Considering trains [...]

Review: The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

Téa Obreht has her fictional debut in the New Yorker with “The Tiger’s Wife.” The story, taken from her novel that’s due out this April, questions fact and fiction based upon memory. Obreht begins her story with one fact. The city was bombed in 1941 by Germans. The story immediately breaks from that shifting into [...]