Media

But praise for Clinton fades to disappointment because her solution to quarterly capitalism, an adjustment to capital gains tax rates, holds little promise of getting the job done. What’s needed are new restrictions on Wall Street and changes to how corporations do business, territory occupied so far by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The fact is that we have all knuckled under to Wall Street so that we have an economy that increasingly is based on finance without even asking whether Wall Street is investing in us.

"Police cannot lawfully target protestors based on the content of their speech and cause protesters to abandon the protest."

Today is National Voter Registration Day, and it’s clearer than ever that we need a democracy revolution in the United States. As the first Presidential election without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act approaches, boosting voter registration and turnout is the best cure for what ails American democracy.

Bill Clinton's interview provoked Wallace Turbeville, a former lawyer and investment banker turned financial reform advocate, to contradict him.

"His statement is flat wrong," Turbeville wrote in a blog post for the liberal think tank Demos. "The Graham-Leach-Bliley Act that President Clinton signed had everything to do with the crisis."

“There is no justice in America when the largest low-wage employer is not McDonald’s, it is not Burger King, it is not Walmart.

Wal-Mart recently made headlines for increasing the starting salary of workers from $9 to $10 an hour, which would boost the wages of 500,000 employees, along with other boosts in specialized sections.

Last year, Demos started a high school summer internship program. We select a rising senior from a New York City school in a lower income community. The student, paid the Demos minimum wage, spends the summer supporting the legal and administrative teams and meeting with staff to learn about careers, colleges, and the work we do.

During the program, students write a blog post about a Demos topic that interests them. Below is the post by the 2015 high school intern, Astia Innis, who starts her senior year at a Bronx public high school today.

Heather McGhee, President of Demos, said: "Incredibly, working a full-time job is no longer a guarantee that you will be able to afford basic necessities—much less provide for your family. We applaud Governor Cuomo’s leadership in calling for a $15 minimum wage, and the community and labor groups who have worked tirelessly to make this a reality. This proposal will lift the living standards for the many families who have been struggling to stay afloat and will bring us one large step closer to a more equitable New York.”

Nevertheless, Walmart has had to make concessions to the pressure upon the business, mostly from OUR Walmart. It is in the process of enacting a series of wage hikes, starting with boosts to $9 an hour this year and $10 next year for a half-million of its lowest paid workers (out of 1.4 million), changes in scheduling policy, more accommodating pregnancy policies (after OUR Walmart’s “Respect the Bump” campaign).