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Easthampton, MA – Today, more than 200 civil rights, voting rights and criminal justice organizations sent a letter calling on the U.S. Census Bureau to seize a timely opportunity to research alternative ways to count incarcerated people in the decennial Census.

President Obama's proposal last night to raise the Federal Minimum Wage to $9 (from $7.25) is sure to rekindle the perennial debate about whether such an increase will stall hiring for low-skilled workers, or whether small businesses will be able to sustain their payrolls with higher wage requirements. 

President Obama came out strongly for tax reform in his State of the Union address, casting this challenge as crucial for raising for new revenue and avoiding harsh cuts. Obama argued that the U.S. could:

save hundreds of billions of dollars by getting rid of tax loopholes and deductions for the well-off and well-connected. After all, why would we choose to make deeper cuts to education and Medicare just to protect special interest tax breaks? How is that fair? How does that promote growth?

New York, NY -- In his State of the Union last night, President Obama hit on four key issues where Demos is engaged and where progress is long overdue: voting reform, the minimum wage, universal pre-K, and higher education.

On the bipartisan voting commission, Brenda Wright, Vice President of Legal Strategies:

President Obama’s State of the Union Address included an important call to fix the long lines and other problems that plagued voters in 2012. 

State tax systems, according to a new report from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, take a far larger share of income from their lowest income residents than they do from the wealthy, exacerbating income inequality within and between states, encouraging the wealthy to move to low tax states, and even worse, threatening the effectiveness of federal and state programs designed to ease the tax burden for the poorest families.

Obama gave the country a glimpse of his new pre-K initiative in last night State of the Union address—and reason to hope that he’ll bring the rest of the country toward the national models set by states such as Georgia and Oklahoma.

After a campaign season marked by climate silence, the President’s inaugural call for action on climate change left hope that the administration was serious about making climate a priority. And, there were parts in last night’s State of the Union that were promising, beyond the simple fact that he addressed the issue at length. First and foremost, the President tied extreme weather events to climate change.

“I’m trying to think of another industry where a 20 percent error rate would be acceptable.” says 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, in a new exposé of the credit reporting industry. “That’s a pretty high error rate.”

To say the least.