Kiss your golden years goodbye.

• Who Shredded Our Safety Net?
  By James Ridgeway
  What starts with “f,” ends with “k,” and means “screw your workers”? That’s right—401(k).
• Rip-Off Artists
  By David Cay Johnston
  You: no nest egg. Your boss: feather bed.
• No Country for Middle-Aged Men
  By Sasha Abramsky
  Company cutting corners? Hard-earned pensions could be first to go.
• Security Blanket
  By James k. Galbraith
  How Social Security can save us all.

As a public service, Mother Jones, which is a nonprofit magazine, will release the full contents of this issue online over the next several weeks. If you’d like your Mother Jones sooner—and you want to support independent investigative journalism—please subscribe now.

DEPARTMENTS

• Editors’ Note
• Masthead
• Contributors
• Backtalk

OUTFRONT

The dragon that ate Wall Street; does the government know you’re addicted to Gossip Girl?; how Washington sabotaged Iraq’s corruption cop; the GOP vs. the Internets; NuvaRing’s risky business; America’s most notorious lockup; MoJo readers to the rescue

NOTEBOOK

Banks of America

By Kevin Drum
Why real capitalists aren’t afraid to nationalize (and why it’s our only choice).

MEDIA JONES

Ted Genoways on how the Mad Men are spinning the recession; comics legend Harvey Pekar channels Studs Terkel; plus more book (The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, Blood and Politics, Fordlandia, ), film (Burma VJ, Handmade Nation), and music (Country Club, Songs in the Night, Márcio Local Says, Headstunts) reviews.

MOJO INTERVIEW

Kabul’s Splendid Son

By Michael Mechanic
The Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini talks about homecomings and Taliban-censored flamingos.

Biz Stone Is Totally Tweeting This

By Jesse Finfrock

Gwen Ifill keeps her balance

By Elizabeth Gettelman

PRACTICAL VALUES

Give When It Hurts

By Dave Gilson
Brother, you can spare a dime: why you should give away more of your hard-earned cash.

FEATURES

By Bruce Falconer
Special Agent Bassem Youssef was one of the bureau’s top terror cops. So why was he exiled to a desk job?

By Robert Dreyfuss
Fixing Afghanistan: mandatory or mission impossible?

We’re burying the planet in garbage. Here’s how to dig out.

Bill McKibben talks trash
By Bill McKibben
The Big Apple vs. the little green bin
By Susan Burton
Meet the zero-waste zealots
By Elizabeth Royte
Can we learn to live with (and even love) plastic?
By Jennifer Kahn
Good riddance to industrial rubbish
By Joel Makower
Toxic sludge hits the fan
By Josh Harkinson

Photographs by Jonathan Torgovnik
Fifteen years after the genocide, Rwandan women are raising the children of their attackers.

Cover illustration by Tim Bower