Media

Eric Garner said “I can’t breathe” 11 times as a New York City police officer squeezed his neck in an illegal chokehold. More officers piled unto the 43-year-old until he was lying motionless on the ground. It was all caught on video from beginning to its sickening end.

Unfortunately for voters, the $3.7 billion spent over the most recent election cycle did not come with a gift receipt. Despite being rung up as the most expensive midterm in US history, nearly two-thirds of Americans sat out the election -- the lowest voter turnout in more than 70 years.

For the past four months, the people of Ferguson have been standing up for the very oldest American ideal: democracy, a say in the decisions that affect their lives. Just now, I was shocked to learn that the state of Missouri will not pursue a trial over the killing of Mike Brown. This latest miscarriage of justice shows that our democracy is still haunted by the oldest American reality, present at our nation’s creation: a belief by many in power that not all of our voices, and lives, truly count. We can, and must, do better.

(NEW YORK, NY) – Following the nation’s most expensive mid-term election cycle, where political spending hit an unprecedented $3.7 billion high, the national public policy organization Demos has released a new report on the federal election spending of big box retail companies.

Manufacturing jobs were supposed to be the good jobs.

Once again, maybe for the last time, Senator Carl Levin and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation has demonstrated how government, and the legislative branch in particular, can work in the public’s interest regardless of partisanship.

Yesterday’s hearing laid out a complex system of price manipulation in which Goldman Sachs appears to have pocketed huge sums by marrying aluminum derivatives and warehouses. The public was the victim.

As Ferguson, Mo. and the nation await a grand jury decision on whether or not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown, authorities are “preparing for the worst.”

Last year, the Daily Show hilariously lampooned the Goldman Sachs “merry-go-round of metal” in which the firm uses its ownership of the major Midwest aluminum warehouse (think auto manufacturing and beer) to slow availability of supply, with a predictable effect on prices.

Thousands of families in the United States are separated due to immigration laws that have affected hard-working immigrants who are just trying to support their families.