Harold Meyerson

The road to unionized Wal-Mart runs through obscure towns where workers are abused in hidden warehouses.

Nobody, it seems, is responsible for the conditions of work in the warehouses of Fontana -- even though warehouse work is mainly what Fontana has to offer. The Los Angeles exurb is part of California's Inland Empire, which boasts the world's largest concentration of warehouses, to which thousands of trucks make a daily 70-mile trek from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, carrying Asian-made goods for market. Thousands more trucks depart daily from Fontana, carrying those goods, re-sorted and repackaged, to Wal-Marts, Targets, Loews, and Home Depots up to a thousand miles away. Close to 90,000 people work in those warehouses. But no one is responsible for the conditions of their work.

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Populism comes in two varieties -- progressive and reactionary.

Since our founding two decades ago, the Prospect has published many articles on the importance of pocketbook issues in restoring progressivism as this country's governing philosophy. During this period, jobs, earnings, pensions, health coverage, and ladders into the middle class have all become more precarious. Finance has become increasingly

influential on both parties and more dominant in the economy. Economically anxious voters, especially white men, have drifted right. The distress of ordinary people has only worsened with the current crisis.

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Of all the groups in the Democratic orbit, it is labor that has assumed the most demanding role in this year's midterm elections: keeping the white working class from flooding into the Republican column.

"When our canvassers call on our members on their doorsteps, they hear Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly in the background," says Dan Heck, who heads a massive union-sponsored program in Ohio devoted to persuading its members to vote this November for candidates who would mightily displease Beck and O'Reilly.

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Labor's campaign in California has been an ambitious mix of trying to persuade swing voters while at the same time trying to mobilize those Democrats who don't often vote in nonpresidential elections.

Just how blue will California be this November? Will this Democratic state return Barbara Boxer to the Senate and Jerry Brown to the statehouse, or will their mega-funded GOP opponents ride the red tide of what's looking to be a strong Republican year into office?

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Who's afraid of a little egg? Of late, anyone who eats them, at least since the announcement of massive recalls of the salmonella-tainted spheroids.

The deregulated chickens have come home to roost. The Food and Drug Administration, the New York Times reported Wednesday, considered mandating the vaccination of chickens with anti-bacterial shots -- and decided against it. Instead, the vaccinations are merely recommended. In Britain, where such vaccinations have been required for egg vendors who wish to put an industry-standard label on their eggs, the incidence of salmonella in eggs has dropped 96 percent.

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A plan to raise revenue in the state hits the middle class while sparing the truly wealthy.

In Washington, Democrats want to end tax cuts for the rich. In Sacramento, they want to create some.

The preferences of the national Democrats are much better known than those of their California counterparts. With the Bush tax cuts expiring at the end of the year, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress want to extend those cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans — those making more than $250,000 a year.

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