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As a teenager, I belonged to a retail union. This enabled me to work 20 hours a week at Master's, a regional department store. When business slowed, the store laid off workers, including me. The union rep said she could get my hours back -- or I could just accept the union's unemployment compensation, which amounted to the same check I'd get if I went back to work. Master's, if it existed today, would have been gutted by monolithic Wal-mart, whose "Save Money, Live Better" mantra masks a business strategy that demands lower costs for the goods it sells. This, in turn,  sends manufacturing jobs to countries that don't defend the safety of their employees. That's what unions did best: they led the push for safer working conditions and livable wages. By Walmart from Bentonville, USA  (Walmart’s Grease Fuel Truck)  [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] via Wikimedia Commons You may have missed how Wal-mart attempted to trample a...

The dance about net neutrality has barely begun. And it's going to affect what crawls across your computer. Unless you start asking questions. By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons First, Common Cause says this about net neutrality: "network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be able to access any web content they choose and use any applications they choose, without restrictions or limitations imposed by their internet service provider." You can learn more at http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1234951 What this means: think of the internet as a collection of pipelines through which media content flows. Verizon, Comcast, or Time Warner are some major owners of those pipes. They can "throttle" downloads of content providers like Netflix if they don't pay for increased bandwidth. Or, you might see Walmart's online shopping pages load more quickly than Amazon's, if Walmart buys preferential pi...