Media

For the past two days, the Senate has debated a bill proposing an amendment to the Constitution that would add, in main part, the following text:

To advance the fundamental principle of political equality for all, and to protect the integrity of the legislative and electoral process, Congress shall have the power to regulate the raising and spending of money and in-kind equivalents with respect to Federal elections….

A bill that aims to “prohibit discrimination based on one’s consumer credit history” by banning employers from doing credit checks on job applicants will be the subject of a City Council hearing set for 10 a.m. Sept. 12 at City Hall. [...]

According to an article by Amy Traub titled “Discredited: How Employment Credit Checks Keep Qualified Workers Out of a Job,” the practice of checking credit on prospective employees is legal under federal law.

“Demos strongly supports the Democracy for All resolution and calls on all senators to vote to send it to the states for ratification as the Twenty Eighth Amendment.

Providence, RI.  Local Cranston residents and the ACLU of Rhode Island won a significant victory today in their fight for equal voting power in City elections when Judge Lagueux of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island denied a motion to dismiss their one person, one vote lawsuit, allowing their case to move forward.

“I’m thrilled this case is going forward,” said Karen Davidson, lead plaintiff.  “As a Cranston resident and taxpayer I’m entitled to equal representation and I will keep fighting for it.”

It’s hard to make broad causal inferences about student debt and homeownership among recent graduates, because there are simply too many factors in play.

A tool that will clarify and measure the way policy reinforces racial disparities.

In a record-breaking demonstration of support, over one million commenters have submitted comments to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) calling on the agency to take immediate steps to require publicly traded corporations to disclose their use of corporate resources for political purposes to their shareholders. 

“You know who talks about race? Racists!” That was a Fox commentator, unintentionally providing a pithy summary of the conservative reaction to the national conversation surrounding the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting. To note that the officer is white and the victim black — well, that’s just needlessly injecting race into an already volatile situation, right-wing pundits repeatedly charged.

Jon Stewart, in a biting Daily Show segment last week, skewered this rhetoric, asking incredulously of Fox, “did you just ‘he-who-smelt-it-dealt-it’ racism?”

This year, Labor Day came on the heels of the annual Jackson Hole conclave of central bankers.