Media

Washington, DC: Today, a petition on the White House website urging President Obama to “use the State of the Union to call for a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics” exceeded the 25,000 signatures necessary to guarantee an official White House response.  The petition, launched by the groups Free Speech For People, Avaaz, People For the American Way, and Demos on January 8 took less than two weeks to cross the threshold.

The petition can be found here: http://wh.gov/P9j7

One road to democracy is through periodic, competitive elections with secret ballots, protected by the rule of law.

“My client only wants to look at employed candidates,”  said one recruiter. “The company. . . will not interview any professional not presently working,” said another. “Candidate MUST be currently employed . . .  "employed or only recently unemployed. .

Annapolis, MD – A coalition of government reform groups praised efforts by Governor Martin O’Malley and Delegate Kiril Reznik that would help Marylanders vote and make sure every vote is counted. The groups also encouraged the Governor to further strengthen his voting package and fix the range of problems Marylanders encountered last year at the polls. Those would include an increase and fair distribution of early voting sites and funding for a new voting system.  

NEW YORK - Today, Demos and O’Melveny and Myers LLP filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of respondents in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (No.

Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz made some critically important observations in the Sunday New York Times. He pointed out that income disparity is a cause of the maddeningly slow recovery from the effects of the Great Recession, not merely a consequence of it. He drew parallels to the income disparity that predated the Great Depression.

The standard conservative rap on the social safety net is that it turns people into slackers by providing a comfy hammock and discouraging work and initiative. 

Yesterday, President Obama offered a diametrically opposite analysis: Programs like Social Security and Medicare, he argued, actually enable people to reach higher:

these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great. 

President Obama’s call for Americans to stay engaged has rightly been taken to refer to issues high on the public’s agenda, such as gun control and immigration reform. Essentially, the President is saying that reform reflective of the country’s most broadly held values can only be realized if people remain engaged and let their representatives know that they are paying attention.