Media

NEW YORK -- Nearly 9 in 10 Americans agree that there is way too much corporate money in politics, and 51 percent strongly agree, according to a new poll released today by the Corporate Reform Coalition. The survey, conducted by Bannon Communications, found overwhelming support for strong, common sense reforms to ensure transparency and accountability for corporate political spending.

Apple has the largest market capitalization of any corporation in the U.S.

Small business owners, it turns out, are like everybody else. They are Democrats and Independents as well as Republicans. A few make a lot of money; others not nearly so much.

Tomorrow’s GDP numbers will likely show a growth rate around 1.9 percent. Economists predict that an increase in consumer spending will be what helps boost this quarter’s GDP growth rate, which is higher than last quarters’ increase of 1.3 percent. The quarterly GDP release is also a time when we again ask, what exactly are we measuring?

Heather McGhee on how our exceptionalism lies in maintaining social cohesion in our multi-origin, multi-racial democracy.

Happy Food Day! The Center for Science in the Public Interest has designated October 24 as a day “to address issues as varied as health and nutrition, hunger, agricultural policy, animal welfare, and farm worker justice.” It’s a good idea, and to mark the occasion, I’d share an organic apple from my CSA if I could.

The new Gilded Age is roaring down on us – an uncaged tiger on a rampage. Walk out to the street in front of our office here in Manhattan, look to the right and you can see the symbol of it: a fancy new skyscraper going up two blocks away.  When finished, this high rise among high rises will tower a thousand feet, the tallest residential building in the city.

The credit reporting industry has given us plenty to complain about:  credit reports too often contain errors,  the errors are fiendishly hard to fix, reports and scores are not accessible enough to consumers, and credit information is increasingly being used for a variety of extraneous purposes, among numerous other problems (for the full bill of complaint, see my paper