Media

(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.

The Daily Show last night had a great segment highlighting Detroit's ongoing water crisis. They point out that out of the $145 million dollars in delinquent water bills, nearly half is owed by commercial and municipal accounts, including the Joe Louis Arena, a local golf course, and an ice skating rink. People in Detroit pay much higher rates than the rest of the country, and continue to suffer from severe economic hardship, with 47% of mortgages still underwater at the end of 2013.

While Corinthian and its campuses may downsize or disappear completely, we should be concerned the students who attended its campuses and are currently in no man’s land.

Nearly half of the nation's employers investigate job applicants' credit histories as a condition of employment.

As a result, New Yorkers struggling with debt -- medical bills, school loans or car payments -- are often shut out of jobs. This unfair barrier to employment can be dismantled by outlawing employment credit checks.

Democratic Council Members Brad Lander of Brooklyn and Debi Rose of Staten Island have introduced a bill that would ban such checks in hiring except when required by state or federal laws. The measure is supported by 40 council members.