Demos In the News

A Republican's Worst Nightmare: The Poor Vote

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 15:09:00 EST

Demos, a Washington-based policy center, wants to get these millions of low-income Americans into the political process, as well. It's not only wishful thinking, either. Demos points to an often-neglected provision of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) that requires states to provide voter registration services to applicants and recipients of public assistance benefits. NVRA is better known for the so-called "motor voter" provisions that enable Americans to register to vote at their state motor-vehicle departments.

Originally Published: BlogCritics.org

Beyond Messaging: Obama's Path to Jump Starting The Economy Without Congress

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:20:00 EST

But the American Prospect and the progressive policy center Demos released a special report this week, to be featured in the magazine's next issue, that could offer some short-term and long-term help by using the power of government agencies and contracts. These under-used strategies could be put into effect without needing to thread the needle of centrist Democrats and obstructionist Republicans in the Senate.

As Robert Kuttner points out in the lead essay to this report, "The Case for Presidential Action," that also features In These Times writer David Moberg, "The U.S. government spends half a trillion dollars a year to buy goods and services from the private sector. Federal procurement, directly or indirectly, influences about one job in four in the entire economy. And most most large national companies do business with the government," including service and manufacturing companies that pay their workers relatively low wages, thwart unions and deny benefits.

Originally Published: In These Times

Demos Asks Obama to Step Up on Creating Good Jobs

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:52:00 EST

Demos and The American Prospect (TAP), in its forthcoming collaborative special report, have noted that though Congress has passed a $26 billion jobs bill earlier this month, they want the Obama administration to do something about the jobs problem as well. In a call today with bloggers and reporters, they outlined some ways Obama could kick-start jobs without congressional intervention.

Originally Published: Campus Progress

Working for wages that don't pay the bills

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 15:49:00 EST

How this has happened and what can be done is the focus of "Not Just More Jobs — But Good Jobs," a special report in the upcoming edition of the American Prospect. According to co-founding editor Robert Kuttner, multiple factors got us here: Government retrenched on labor-market regulation. This allowed the minimum wage to tank in value, and union busting to become a look-the-other-way affair. Globalization expanded without government insisting on symmetrical rules to protect workers, thereby ending the tacit social contract between labor and management that workers were not to be treated as disposable cogs of production. In short, for more than 30 years the U.S. government has failed workers.

Originally Published: St. Petersburg Times

An End to Prison Gerrymandering

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:50:00 EST

Gov. David Paterson of New York took a stand for electoral fairness earlier this month when he signed legislation that bans prison-based gerrymandering - the cynical practice of counting prison inmates as "residents," to pad the size of legislative districts. The new law, which requires that prison inmates be counted at their homes, deserves to be emulated all across the country.

Originally Published: New York Times

Response to 'Griffo Criticizes Phantom Population Law'

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:28:00 EST

To the Editor,

Senator Griffo is ignoring a large elephant in the living room when he complains about the legislation recently passed in New York to count incarcerated persons as residents of their home community rather than as residents of the prison town. Although he casts the issue as pitting upstate against downstate ["Griffo Criticizes Phantom Population Law"], the elephant in the room is the huge distortion in the City of Rome itself caused by counting prison population as residents of the city. By pretending that incarcerated persons are really citizens of Rome, the City has created a true phantom district: almost half of the entire population in Ward 2 in Rome consists of incarcerated people who can't vote. This means that an actual Rome voter living anywhere except Ward 2 has only half the representation in city government as a voter who happens to live next to the prison in Ward 2. It's not an issue of upstate vs. downstate; it's about correcting a distorted system that doesn't benefit anyone except the few people living in the same district as a prison.

The New York Constitution says that a prison is not a residence for purposes of voting. The new law just brings New York's redistricting practices in line with the state Constitution and common sense.

Sincerely,

Brenda Wright

Originally Published: Oneida County Courier

A Welfare Check and a Voting Card

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:01:00 EST

The best reason to applaud the Justice Department's new posture is that it will bring more voters into public life. When advocacy groups sued Ohio and Missouri to force their public assistance offices into complying, huge groups of new voters surged onto the rolls - more than 100,000 in Ohio, and more than 200,000 in Missouri. Nationwide enforcement by the Justice Department could add millions more. The more people who have access to the ballot, the better the country will be.

Originally Published: New York Times

Pay Czar Ken Feinberg Calls Executive Compensation 'Ill-Advised' but Not Illegal

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:45:00 EST

The excessive pay was reported at only a small group of the 419 firms examined. The report found that out of the entire pool of firms receiving taxpayer funds, 240 did not give more than $500,000 to any of the top 25 executives. A subset of 116 firms handed out this amount to five or fewer executives.

The pay czar has forced banks to change their compensation practices before. Last October, Feinberg ordered companies that received the largest amounts of bailout money to cut compensation for their highest-paid executives by about half.

Other companies singled out by Feinberg include McLean-based Capital One, AIG, American Express, Wells Fargo, Boston Private Financial Holdings, CIT, M&T Bank, SunTrust, Bank of New York Mellon, Regions Financial, PNC Financial and U.S. Bancorp.

Originally Published: Washington Post

'Motor Voter' Law Likely to Be Bigger Priority for States

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:06:00 EST

Already, some states are making changes. A legal settlement in Missouri led to more than 200,000 voter-registration applications from welfare offices in less than two years. A settlement in Ohio has led to more than 100,000 this year. Lawsuits are pending in Indiana and New Mexico.

The lawsuits were brought by three groups: Project Vote, Demos and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Lisa Danetz, senior counsel for Demos, which advocates higher levels of voting, says more legal action is needed. "I truthfully think that we're just going to go one by one through the states," she says.

Originally Published: USA Today

Welfare Agencies Boost Voters

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:01:00 EST

Lawsuits by voting rights groups in Missouri and Ohio have led hundreds of thousands of people to file voter registration applications at welfare agencies, as mandated by the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, or the "motor voter" law. Cases pending in Indiana, New Mexico and other states, as well as new Justice Department guidelines, probably will boost those figures.

Originally Published: USA Today

Prison Gerrymandering Still An Issue For the Eastern Shore

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:51:00 EST

Deborah Jeon, legal director of American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland who has studied Somerset County for more than two decades, said she's been struck by how effectively blacks have been excluded.

"Somerset County seems to me different than almost any other place in America in that it has a very significant African-American population-- depending upon whose counting 42 percent or 35 percent, if you exclude the folks who are incarcerated there -- and yet, in all of history the county has never elected an African-American to the county commission or any top job in county government or had such a person serve by appointment."

The glaring inequity made Somerset County the poster child for legislation enacted this year by the General Assembly that will change the way prison inmates are counted in election districts. When the new lines are drawn using 2010 census numbers, inmates will be tallied at their last known address instead of where they are incarcerated.

Originally Published: Your Public Radio

Rebuilding the American Middle Class and Refashioning Wall Street

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:33:00 EST

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act's consumer reforms, investor protections and new Wall Street rules are necessary for a strong economic recovery. Although the Act falls short of transforming the financial sector in the way that the Glass-Steagall Act did after the last great banking crisis, it represents a victory of the public interest over the status quo in virtually every provision and rule. Demos applauds the tireless efforts of experts and advocates in Washington and across the country who have worked together to create this historic set of reforms."

Originally Published: new deal 2.0

How a Cap on Big-Bank Leverage Was Watered Down

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:33:00 EST

Speier, who allowed that the overall bill is good, added that the rationale behind a detailed leverage cap is to keep big banks from growing so dangerously large that, if they were to fail, they'd cause collateral damage to the markets. During the height of the boom leading up to the financial crisis, many investment banks hiked their leverage to as high as 50-to-1.

"High leverage has been shown to have been one of the best predictors of major financial firms' falling into distress or needing government support during the current crisis," she said. "I believe that it is a mistake to leave all discretion in how to accomplish that task to the primary regulators."

Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, in a recent report on the bill, said it expects that the "grave threat" authority will rarely be used, and only as a last resort.

However, Heather McGhee, director of the Washington Office of Demos, expressed cautious optimism that some U.S. bank regulators could do a good job setting specific limits. "We can be confident that there are reform-minded regulators who want substantively higher capital requirements," McGhee said.

Originally Published: MarketWatch

New Voter Registration Rules Could Bring More Poor People to the Polls

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:26:00 EST

Demos reports that in 2008 over 11 million low-income adult citizens remained unregistered to vote and the registration gap between low-income and high-income citizens was over 19 percentage points. And changes in how voter registration is done at public assistance agencies can has already shown dramatic results in other states.

In Ohio registration at public assistance agencies has soared following a settlement of a Demos case over compliance with federal voter registration laws at public assistance agencies.

"In the first five months of 2010 (January through May), over 84,000 low-income people have applied to register to vote at public assistance offices in Ohio, following completion of the settlement agreement in that case in November 2009," said attorney Brenda Wright, director of the Democracy Program at Demos. "This amounts to almost 17,000 per month, compared to just 1,755 registration applications per month that Ohio agencies were collecting before we filed suit."

On June 1 the DOJ Civil Rights Division issued updated and more detailed information on which offices must provide registration services, who must be offered the forms, what type of assistance must be provided and how the forms are to be handled.

According to Demos a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization headquartered in New York City, the guidance sends a strong signal to states of the importance of providing voter registration as required by federal law and represents a departure from the practices of the Bush Administration, which did not enforce the public assistance provisions of NRVA.

Originally Published: The Michigan Messenger

Should Non-Profits Act Like Corporations?

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:26:00 EST

Over the last 20 years, businesses have been making more explicit their "social and environmental objectives," giving rise to a blurring between corporate and nonprofit sectors. Philanthrocapitalism was a term coined by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green in their book of the same name, which argues in favor of businesses solving social ills. What is missing from philanthrocapitalist endeavors, Edwards argues, is upheaval, a questioning of the systems that give rise to societies' developmental needs. Business and markets, he says, can only produce "small change - limited advances as it is, not as it could be if we summoned up the courage to confront the deeper problems and inequalities that capitalism creates."

Edwards' call for a kind of separation of powers is a compelling one. Civil society, as he sees it, should be free from the constraints of the market and the "business is best" philosophy to seek sustainable solutions and "human fulfillment" over time, rather than quick fixes that meet bottom line. After all, he asks, how do you measure empowerment? What happens when billionaires like Carlos Slim garner immense decision-making power over education? Philanthrocapitalism can deliver laptops to kids, for example, but falls short in creating the conditions for communities to combat their problems for themselves. Microfinance might have reduced poverty in Bangladesh, but Edward points out that the country remains a "socially and politically dysfunctional state."

Originally Published: Zocalo Public Square

Parting Thoughts

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:06:00 EST

I have two parting thoughts before I head for the beach and the garden. First, I want to recommend a fascinating book. It is Michael Edwards' Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World. Edwards led the Ford Foundation's program on governance and civil society. His book analyzes efforts by philanthro-capitalists to impose business principles and market thinking on institutions of civil society, where they are inappropriate.

The philanthro-capitalists, he writes, develop metrics for everything; it's a means of control. They love competition, and they love measurement. They don't understand that the values and qualities of civil society are different and are not measurable. Civil society relies on participation; it changes the world by activism and social commitment. It teaches tolerance, love, solidarity, sharing and cooperation. Its goal is not the achievement of certain metrics, but social transformation. Edwards points to the great social movements of our lifetime-the civil rights movement, the women's movement-as examples of civil society at work, transforming society in ways that are fundamental. These were bottom-up movements, not movements that were controlled from the top by a master planner armed with data.

Originally Published: Bridging Differences

Will new financial regulations prevent future meltdowns?

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:44:00 EST

But the bill doesn't revamp Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the money-losing, now government-run mortgage buyers that financed many subprime mortgages at the heart of the crisis.

Democratic leaders say there's no alternative funding source for the giants, which the government took over in 2008. The measure is also speckled with loopholes. It doesn't break up the nation's biggest banks, potentially leaving the door open to future tailspins.

What's more, the next crisis will likely stem from problems the bill doesn't anticipate, says Tom Pax, head of the U.S. bank regulatory group for law firm Clifford Chance. An Associated Press poll found that 64% of Americans aren't confident the bill would avert a future meltdown. Others say the bill would hurt bank profits and U.S. competitiveness, although stocks of many financial-services firms rallied Friday as investors decided the proposed measure might be less severe than they had expected.

Originally Published: USA Today

Business: The Better Way?

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:33:00 EST

Business approaches can help social causes, that much is undisputed, says the American author who's affiliated with the think tank Demos in New York. If you want to get more efficient cooking stoves to African villages, for example, or microcredit loans to poor people here in Canada, you have to harness the power of the markets to meet as many people as possible at a price-point they can afford that is profitable and sustainable over time. What's more, financial projections and other business tools are most effective in ensuring the viability of a project. And formal business training for individuals responsible for these important decisions is not only useful, it's highly recommended.

However if we allow philanthrocapitalism to completely overtake society's efforts toward social transformation, civil society will lose out, states Edwards emphatically. We will lose something central to our democracy and our ability to create a future as a community of equal citizens, rather than as clients or consumers. "Using business thinking to attack deep-rooted social problems of inequality, discrimination, violence etc. is a bit like using a typewriter to plough a field or a tractor to write a book," he says. "It's the wrong choice of instrument for the task at hand."

Business is not equipped to handle these fundamental social ills. The purpose of the market is to facilitate exchange, not negotiate solutions democratically; markets work according to supply and demand, not fairness or the pursuit of human rights. Markets use competition as their basic modus operandi, not cooperation and collaboration that build strong and successful social movements and alliances for change.

Originally Published: Charity Village

In Financial Reform, Rules Made to Be Broken

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:29:00 EST

Welcome to the wonderful world of financial reform, where rules are set and then it is quickly determined which firms get to ignore them. In the next few days, Congress is expected to wrap up legislation that would overhaul the rules that govern Wall Street. The House and Senate have each passed their version of reform. Now legislators are in the process of settling the differences between the two bills before voting on a final bill. Lawmakers have already come to a number of agreements. A prepaid fund by the banks to cover the cost of bailouts is out. A rule prohibiting transfer fees on debit-card transactions is in. Auto dealers are likely to be exempt from examination from the to-be-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will be housed at the Federal Reserve.

One of the key issues yet to be resolved is a rule that would govern how much of a bank's own capital can be risked in trading activities. Just weeks ago it looked likely that the so-called Volcker rule, which would ban all banks from proprietary trading - buying and selling for their own account rather than their customers' - and investing in hedge funds, private equity deals and other structured funds. But in the past few weeks, financial-industry lobbyists have been pushing hard to win an exemption that would allow banks to sponsor hedge funds as long as they put only a small amount of the firms' own money into the funds.

Originally Published: TIME

Behind Closed Doors Four Key Democrats Maneuver To Weaken Financial Reform

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:48:00 EST

The underlying Wall Street reform bill has a weak version of the Volcker rule in it, which by numerous accounts is supposed to be replaced with Levin and Merkley's beefed up version. But for that to happen, according to conference rules, House members on the committee must first propose it--and these Reps have toyed with the idea of allowing banks to invest 5 percent of their capital in hedge funds.

"An amount that's five percent of capital in a healthy financial market could quickly become 25 percent of capital in a crisis when financial assets are suddenly devalued," warns Heather McGhee, Director of the Washington office of the policy and advocacy group Demos, and a member of AFR.

Originally Published: TPM

New Government Powers Won't Be Able To Dismantle Megabanks

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:57:00 EST

The resolution authority proposal is "a bit of a red herring" when it comes to credible ways to end TBTF, said Heather McGhee, Washington director of Demos, a public policy organization. It won't work, she said.

She argues that megabanks need to shrink or be broken up, which is why she supports a reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act -- a Depression-era law that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investment bank activities, and vice-versa -- and why she fought for a provision pushed by Democratic Senators Ted Kaufman of Delaware and Sherrod Brown of Ohio that would have dismantled the nation's biggest banks. The Senate voted it down.

Originally Published: Huffington Post

The Obama Presidency: Possibility or Peril?

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:12:00 EST

What happened to the progressive moment that was supposed to follow Obama's historic election? Well, Kuttner argues, it was hijacked by financial elites, thwarted by White House economic advisers who prioritized Wall Street over Main Street, and squandered by an unexpectedly passive and status quo occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This was not how events were supposed to turn out.

Kuttner, a co-editor of The American Prospect and fellow at the think tank Demos, calls Obama's appearance on the political scene "an almost providential rendezvous of man and moment." In his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in Boston, Obama "displayed a superb facility for framing boldly progressive ideas as reassuringly patriotic," Kuttner writes. Following his election, Kuttner believed, "the stage was set, seemingly, for a great ideological and political reversal, comparable to the Roosevelt revolution. Obama was poised to create a new majority coalition, built on the premise that rapacious private finance had to be contained so that the rest of America could thrive." Of course, that's not what happened, which is why Kuttner wrote his latest book. He notices "startling continuity" between the new president and his predecessor on economic issues and warns that "a rare opportunity for realignment and reform is being missed."

Originally Published: The Nation

Political Prisoners in the United States?

Tue, 18 May 2010 15:36:00 EST

The Census Bureau should be commended for taking action. "For too long, communities with large prisons have received greater representation in government on the backs of people who have no voting rights in the prison community," said Brenda Wright, director of the Democracy Program at Demos, a research and advocacy organization. "The Census Bureau's new data will greatly assist states and localities in correcting this injustice."

Originally Published: Philadelphia Jewish Voice

Senate Democrats to Battle over Strength of Wall Street Reform Legislation

Mon, 17 May 2010 13:18:00 EST

The Merkley-Levin proposal would target major Wall Street banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which became bank holding companies in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.

Industry lobbyists and congressional aides have suggested, however, that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley could shed their bank holding companies and in the future escape the outright ban. They would still be subject to potentially higher capital requirements set by the Fed.

The reform is designed to tamp down on highly leveraged firms that did not have enough capital to weather the financial crisis.

"It is a very important amendment," said Heather McGhee, director of the Washington office of Demos, a liberal-leaning advocacy group. "It is a crucially important amendment to safeguard our economy from reckless gambling that does not benefit the vast majority of businesses."

The pending bill would leave it up to a council of regulators to restrict proprietary trading.

Originally Published: The Hill

Wall Street Reform Package Is Being Toughened By Public Debate

Thu, 13 May 2010 13:15:00 EST

The latest amendment to toughen up the bill came Thursday, pushed forward by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) against the objections of Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who succumbed to pressure to consider a measure that would end the practice of banks choosing their own rating agency for a particular project. Instead, an independent panel would randomly assign an agency to a specific offering, removing the incentive for a rater to give a generous review in exchange for the business. During the crisis, financial products that had been blessed with AAA ratings were found to be little more than garbage, undermining confidence in the integrity of the market.

The amendment passed 64-35, with 10 Republicans backing it and 30 (plus Joe Lieberman) opposed. [UPDATE: The Franken amendment drew inspirations from Demos Senior Policy Analyst James Lardner's suggestions laid out here in the American Prospect.]

Originally Published: Huffington Post

Path to Middle-Class Prosperity Runs through Ohio Colleges--Maybe

Sat, 01 May 2010 12:25:00 EST

That's why all the candidates this year, Democrats and Republicans, probably should spend less time at factories and more time talking about what they're going to do to help Ohio's colleges and universities, particularly schools such as Dayton's Sinclair Community College, prepare young men and women with skills for a future that often looks uncertain.

"Building Ohio's Future Middle Class: Addressing the Challenges Facing Young Adults," a report released last week, makes the point.

The report, published by two left-leaning research groups, Demos of New York City and Policy Matters of Ohio, basically said that higher education has replaced the social contract forged by factory workers, often aided by unions, and companies such as GM as the gateway to middle-class prosperity.

Originally Published: Dayton Daily News

Can Switching to Hybrid Cars and Organics Really Save the World, or Is It Just Lazy Environmentalism?

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:24:00 EST

Over the past few years, more and more so-called green solutions have emerged to address environmental crises within the context of the current economic structure. But author Heather Rogers suggests that some of these solutions amount to lazy environmentalism and may actually camouflage a larger problem. In fact, Rogers argues that our current socio-economic system depends on pollution to maintain its own well-being. If that's the case, what are the real solutions? Rogers' latest book, Green Gone Wrong: How our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution explores this idea and digs a little deeper to see the effects of the green industry.

Originally Published: AlterNet

U.S. Saw 216 Bank Failures Since 2008

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:19:00 EST

These banks embarked on proprietary trading, profiting from market forces instead of commissions. These banks have, on their payroll, traders who do nothing else than proprietary trading. These traders are the greatest risk takers in these banks, but also bring in the highest returns.

The five biggest players that are involved in proprietary trading include JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group, Citigroup Inc., and Morgan Stanley & Co., according to a recent report "Bigger Banks, Riskier Banks," published by Demos, a nonpartisan public policy research and advocacy organization.

These banks reported very high profits in 2009 when compared to 2008, mostly from trading and capital markets activities as revenues from the consumer sector remained weak.

Originally Published: Epoch Times

Earth Day Reflections: How Green is My Planet?

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:18:00 EST

Green products also have multiplied and offer many benefits, but the prevailing notion that we can help the environment mainly by buying products is increasingly being questioned. In her new book "Green Gone Wrong," journalist Heather Rogers assails this "green capitalism" as a convenient but bankrupt solution to global warming and other environmental problems.

Originally Published: Seattle Times

Generation Y's Steep Financial Hurdles: Huge Debt, No Savings

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:50:00 EST

They're called "Generation Y"--teens and twenty-somethings known stereotypically for their coddled upbringing, confidence, opinionated dialogue, free-spending habits and openness to change.

Ultimately, however, the more than 50 million members may be best remembered for whether they can overcome the dire financial straits that plague many of them.

Even before the recession, those in Generation Y - the latest products of a get-it-now, pay-for-it-later mind-set that has permeated the nation's economy - faced a range of financial pitfalls as they embraced expensive high-tech gadgets and added credit card debt onto student loans.

Now, stagnant wages, job insecurity, the decline in employer-sponsored health insurance and retirement benefits, the rapid increase in basic expenses, soaring debt and minimal savings have jeopardized the economic security of the entire generation, according to a recent report by Demos, a public policy research and advocacy think tank.

Their generation is the first in a century that is unlikely to end up better off financially than their parents, the Demos report said.

"The recession has hit them hard," says Jose Garcia, associate director of policy and research at Demos, based in New York. "It affects their income potential, their saving potential and their career-ladder potential."

Originally Published: USA Today