Media

Just three days before Kevyn Orr, the Emergency Manger appointed by Michigan Governor Snyder to run the fiscally strapped City, filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in history, he signed a Forbearance Agreement with UBS and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch establishing a process to settle possible claims on default of $800 million of interest rate swaps.

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.

 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:

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.

Monday is the national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., and Tuesday marks the fourth anniversary ofCitizens United, the case that dramatically widened the flood of big money in elections. Their confluence is opportune, for while each seems to invite reflection on a different core social problem—respectively racial inequality and the power of concentrated wealth—each teaches lessons relevant to the other.

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.