Media

On Andrea Mitchell Reports, Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow Bob Herbert discusses how recent events relate to the idea of post-racial

Student loans are having quite the moment. Unfortunately, that moment has been a bit... confusing. Let's clarify things.

Medical debt is different. Typically when consumers borrow money, they can consider how much they’ll owe, shop around for the best interest rate, and usually have at least a little breathing room to reassess whether the goods or services they want to purchase are worth going into debt for in the first place. All that goes out the window, however, if your child is rushed to the emergency room in need of life-saving treatment.

Reformers in Washington are looking for a few good scandals.

Watergate led to the biggest overhaul of campaign finance law in the past century. Outrage over donors sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom and Enron influence peddling helped spur the 2002 McCain-Feingold overhaul. And the Jack Abramoff affair got Congress to act quickly on lobbying and ethics reform.

Earlier this week Vox gave welcome attention to whether CEO pay would benefit workers, but it didn’t go far enough in examining the company's wage inequality. In response to recent news of a college president giving up part of his compensation to give lower-wage workers a raise, Danielle Kurtzleben pivoted to Walmart, asking "what if Walmart's CEO took a pay cut for his workers?"

Every rule of government budgeting — not to mention common sense — says using a one-time windfall to finance ongoing commitments is a very bad idea.

It’s the political equivalent of hitting the lottery for $1,000, then rushing to put a down payment on a Ferrari.

So it was disturbing that Gov. Cuomo — when asked how he would spend an unprecedented $4.2 billion in legal settlements flowing into state coffers this year — threw out the following list of options:

In New England, the Market Basket supermarkets are known for their low prices and friendly staff. But Market Basket's lines are short and the parking lot empty today, due to an a two-week old worker-led strike and an ongoing customer boycott.

One of the most unnoticed labor trends in the past few decades has been the rise of “just-in-time scheduling,” the practice of scheduling workers’ shifts with little advance notice that are subject to cancelation hours before they are due to begin.

A year after a conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority gutted the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), the nation’s foremost voting rights attorneys say that racial discrimination in voting is rampant, especially in southern states where the the VRA helped to ensure access to the ballot.