Detroit’s Pensions Under Attack

The bankrupt city is looking to cut its already underfunded retirement benefits; given the current economic climate, perhaps it’s time for the affordable housing options that were used in the last century to make a comeback; meanwhile, Pope Francis’ new banker, hired to clean up the Vatican’s messy accounts, comes with sex scandals of his own. These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

Detroit Bankruptcy Takes Aim at Pensions Detroit hit the Trifecta—the third in a series of body blows that politicians have landed on the city’s working people.

Power, Price, and Profits Chris Dillow is right: when corporate power exists, prices do not reflect social costs, and profit-maximization may not contribute to the welfare of society as a whole.

Pope’s Bank Clean-Up Man ‘Found stuck in lift with rent boy’ As the man charged with cleaning out the stables at the scandal-struck Vatican bank, Monsignor Battista Ricca will need Machiavellian cunning, good fortune and a whiter-than-white record to have even a fighting chance.

Is It Time to Bring Back the Boarding House? Around the turn of the last century, American cities were full of housing options that are largely nonexistent today: tenements, boarding houses, rooming houses, flop houses, single-room occupancy buildings or SROs – all variations on the idea of small living spaces at low cost.

Streets Can Be Public Spaces Too To move more deliberately toward anything resembling a sustainable future, we need to use land more efficiently, building more compactly, with higher densities of homes and businesses per acre than we built, on average, in the late 20th century.

How Dropbox Could Rule a Multi-Platform World In a bid to become ubiquitous, Dropbox unveils tools to help developers sync apps across mobile platforms.