Media

I was almost a member of the United Auto Workers union. At the turn of the millennium, I was a graduate student working as a teaching assistant at Columbia University. While I had expected the low pay, the arbitrariness of some university decisions making left me eager for a greater voice at work. I joined other graduate student workers organizing with UAW Local 2110, which ably represents the office and administrative employees at the university. But it was not to be.

The Aspen Institute hosted an event today on the familiar challenge of closing the skills gap. The people at Aspen, including Melody Barnes, have some good ideas on how to do this -- and also some serious funding from JP Morgan Chase, which has a major initiative on closing the skills gap.

Quick: What federal expense costs more than food stamps and unemployment insurance combined—and nearly as much as Medicare? No, it's not Medicaid. 

In November, Congress failed to renew the 2009 stimulus provision allocating additional funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  This removed a much-needed $5 billion from an already underfunded public program tasked with keeping 47 million Americans from going hungry. 

Here’s a policy idea that should be as uncontroversial as they get: America should stop doing business with chronic lawbreakers. If a company repeatedly exposes their employees to dangerous working conditions that have triggered serious OSHA penalties, we should think twice before signing another contract with that company to do work for the federal government. If a contractor can’t bother to pay the minimum wage and follow other basic employment laws, we can surely find someone else to run government call centers and carry out public construction projects.

NEW YORK -- In response to the final, approved version of the Volcker Rule, Demos Senior Fellow Wallace Turbeville, a former investment banker and the author of Demos' recent Volcker Rule explainer and The Detroit Bankruptcy report, released the following statement: 

President Obama calling economic inequality the premier challenge of our time is notable for two reasons: first, he is acknowledging the weakening of the America middle class as one of the greatest threats to America's future. But perhaps more telling, he is making this declaration at THEARC - a community center in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.

The much-anticipated final regulations implementing the Volcker Rule will be released today and, almost miraculously, it seems to be significantly stronger than the proposed text publicized more than a year ago. We will all have to await the actual wording since this is an area in which the devil is truly in the details.

But the all-important limitation on insured banks betting on the trading markets with depositors’ money is rumored to do a few key things: