Media

The city of Richmond, California, has taken bold action to pull the community out of the depths of the residential real estate crisis. Its approach -- using eminent domain to forestall foreclosures -- promises relief for Richmond homeowners. But it also is a template for cities across the land suffering from their own fiscal crises and facing bankruptcy.

One of the sorriest American myths these days is that getting into enormous debt will secure a better financial future for today’s students.

Not only is debt a manacle for future generations, it’s not good for the country at large — a $4 trillion burden on future earnings and wealth.

When politicians make a stink about student loan rates, they’re smelling a rotten fish, but not the most obvious one. They should be berating colleges and our own broken higher education-funding system for not providing more grants — and less loans.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has, ironically, found that exploiting children turns a profit. It has been doing so since its creation in 1984 under Ronald Reagan, who created the quasi-governmental agency. It enjoys liberal funding from the Department of Justice and a level of privacy other non-profits don’t have.

The horrifying subject of missing children often obscures questions of budget allocation, employee compensation, and the accuracy of statements the organization releases.

Low wage workers and their advocates have been pushing for a paid sick leave bill for almost eight years in Massachusetts, where it’s still legal for an employer to fire workers for taking time off due to sickness or injury. The latest bill, introduced by Democratic State Senator Dan Wolf was presented to the senate’s Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development in January, where it’s been stuck ever since.

The fast food worker strikes have become an occasion to repeat age-old arguments that raising pay for low-skilled jobs will result in fewer such jobs. In effect, the advice to fast-food workers—many of whom work full-time but still live in poverty—is to endure low wages because lousy pay is better than no pay. 

Forty eight years ago today President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law what would become the most effective civil rights provision in the history of the country: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Back in June, that law was rolled back by a conservative Supreme Court majority who argued that the country had moved beyond discrimination in the voting process. This despite an election year rife with states introducing voter suppression legislation, which continues unabated, most recently in North Carolina.  

Democracy North Carolina put together a one-page report that summarizes HB-589, the bill the General Assembly passed in late July despite the mass demonstrations outside the capitol that came to be known as Moral Mondays.

A new report from NonProfit VOTE shows the incredible impact non-profit service providers can have on voter registration and turnout. Under a program called Track the Vote, Nonprofit VOTE tracked 33,741 individuals who had registered to vote or signed a pledge to vote at 94 nonprofit service providers.