Media

Well, it's official: Most Americans don't know squat about financial investing.

That's one of the chief conclusions of a 212-page study of financial literacy that the SEC, collaborating with the Library of Congress, released late last month:

Should Dodd-Frank be overturned, the financial industry stands to make (with government backing, of course) a ton of money. It’s unsurprising that its repeal has become a centerpiece of the 2012 campaign, with Wall Street donating far more to candidates who want to overturn or weaken the law. What is surprising is how brazen they’ve gotten.

NEW YORK – As millions of young adults begin their fall semesters across the nation, new findings from a national survey by policy center Demos reveal the relationship between college costs and credit card debt, and its impact on students and their parents.

READ "COLLEGE ON A CREDIT CARD: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN 2012"

Major findings in “College on a Credit Card: The Experience of The Middle Class in 2012” include:

Laws disenfranchising felons and ex-felons, many passed post-Reconstruction, were sometimes designed with the purpose of disenfranchising African American voters, and often were implemented to do so.

Now that the Democratic Party has released their policy platform, we can compare what the two parties envision for the future.  One huge point of difference is that the Democratic platform acknowledges climate change and the scientific backing for this claim. In contrast, the GOP openly mocked the idea of climate change even though their convention was delayed by a hurricane.

Requiring voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls is a poll tax.

The United States needs to be reimagined. A recent study from the Pew Research Center tells us that in economic terms the middle class "has suffered its worst decade in modern history." It's shrinking.

With jobs scarce, wages declining and the nation's wealth concentrating ever more intensely at the top, the middle class has shrunk in size for the first time since World War II.

The good jobs deficit is larger now than it was in 2000. The deficit grew dramatically during the recession and, despite two years of growth, has continued to grow during the recovery.

Ronald Reagan's hologram may not have shown up  to the Republican convention last night to extoll the virtues of draconian government cuts, but the anti-tax movement that launched his political career continues to strangle California's government. That's because the movement has continued to define the state's finances with a decades-old proposition leading to yearly budget crises.