Media

North Carolina lawmakers are dangerously constricting access to the ballot, torpedoing years of progressive expansion.

Once upon a time, it was a given that Republicans were the friends of business. Lately, though, the picture has grown far murkier. While Congressional Republicans are still the dutiful servants of business on any number of issues, such as their endless campaign to gut Dodd-Frank, the past five years has seen a growing chasm between big business and the new libertarian populist right that commands the heart of the Republican Party. 

The fast food worker strikes have become an occasion to repeat age-old arguments that raising pay for low-skilled jobs will result in fewer such jobs. In effect, the advice to fast-food workers—many of whom work full-time but still live in poverty—is to endure low wages because lousy pay is better than no pay. 

Forty eight years ago today President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law what would become the most effective civil rights provision in the history of the country: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Back in June, that law was rolled back by a conservative Supreme Court majority who argued that the country had moved beyond discrimination in the voting process. This despite an election year rife with states introducing voter suppression legislation, which continues unabated, most recently in North Carolina.  

Democracy North Carolina put together a one-page report that summarizes HB-589, the bill the General Assembly passed in late July despite the mass demonstrations outside the capitol that came to be known as Moral Mondays.

A new report from NonProfit VOTE shows the incredible impact non-profit service providers can have on voter registration and turnout. Under a program called Track the Vote, Nonprofit VOTE tracked 33,741 individuals who had registered to vote or signed a pledge to vote at 94 nonprofit service providers.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has, ironically, found that exploiting children turns a profit. It has been doing so since its creation in 1984 under Ronald Reagan, who created the quasi-governmental agency. It enjoys liberal funding from the Department of Justice and a level of privacy other non-profits don’t have.

The horrifying subject of missing children often obscures questions of budget allocation, employee compensation, and the accuracy of statements the organization releases.

Low wage workers and their advocates have been pushing for a paid sick leave bill for almost eight years in Massachusetts, where it’s still legal for an employer to fire workers for taking time off due to sickness or injury. The latest bill, introduced by Democratic State Senator Dan Wolf was presented to the senate’s Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development in January, where it’s been stuck ever since.