Media

 New Legislation Is Important Step Forward; Bill Can Be Strengthened

Representatives James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), John Conyers (D-MI), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Spenser Bachus (R-AL), John Lewis (D-GA), Sean Duffy (R-WI) and others have introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, offering common sense fixes designed to modernize the Voting Rights Act (VRA).  Demos President Miles Rapoport issued the following statement in response:

As we wait for the Supreme Court to rule on McCutcheon v. FEC, which would strike down aggregate campaign contribution limits, a series of stories have come out highlighting how much damage money is doing to our democracy and our economy. In short: a lot.

Conventional wisdom among some liberals, conservatives, and moderates is that a "polarized Congress" will never update the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act bill introduced today in Congress (summary here, bill text here), however, shows that a bipartisan update is possible.

The SEC should require companies to disclose their political activities.

Two major stories of corporate misconduct toward employees hit the headlines yesterday: in the morning, low-wage federal contract workers filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor alleging that more than 100 employees in the food court of federally-owned Union Station had been victims of wage theft—paid less than the minimum wage or denied overtime pay.

Eugenio Proto and Aldo Rustichini have written a new column for VOX in which they argue that once GDP per capita reaches a certain level, it actually begins to correlate with lower life satisfaction.

If you ask Cato's Michael Tanner, inequality is a non-issue for a bunch of reasons, including because it has nothing to do with unfairness. Tanner writes:

most wealthy Americans earned their wealth through talent and hard work. Roughly 80 percent of millionaires in America are the first generation of their family to be worth that much — they didn’t inherit their money.

Could Massachusetts become the next state to enact Election Day Registration? If today’s passage by the Commonwealth’s Senate chamber of omnibus voting bill S.1975 serves as indication, it very well could.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes rejected a proposal by Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to pay off a complex financial deal that was originated in 2005 and turned catastrophic for the city during the recession.