Media

It's hard to know what audience members will ask the candidates in tonight's debate, but here's a prediction: Issues like gay marriage, abortion, crime, and affirmative action will barely come up, if at all.

If I had one question to insert into tonight’s presidential debate, I would ask the candidates what they propose to do about child poverty.

In a single sentence order the Supreme Court today rebuffed a plea by Ohio state officials to close early voting in the final three days before the election. 

This is a big win for democracy in Ohio. Like we've seen around the country, it's been the courts, and for the first time the Supreme Court, that have halted efforts to restrict the vote. 

Nearly every politician says they want tax reform, but it's hard to imagine many having an appetite for curtailing today's biggest tax expenditures -- particularly the home mortgage interest deduction.

Or maybe that's wrong.

This week marks the fortieth anniversary of the Clean Water Act (CWA). In 1972, Congress overhauled the Federal Water Pollution Act and provided the basic structure for regulating the discharge of pollutants from point sources. The CWA gave the EPA the authority to set effluent limits on an industry-wide basis and on a water-quality basis. It also required anyone who wanted to discharge pollutants to first obtain a permit, or else the discharge would be considered illegal.

As a politician who cut his teeth on the South Side of Chicago, Barack Obama was positioned to become the first urban president in decades, even since Teddy Roosevelt.

His stimulus plan promised billions of dollars for infrastructure projects, including public transportation and multi-family housing, which are particularly beneficial to cities. Obama even went as far as establishing an Office of Urban Affairs, and tapping former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion to lead it. 

So how have things turned out for cities over the past few years?

The 4th OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Power begins tomorrow in New Delhi, India and will bring together roughly 1,000 participants to talk about alternative metrics beyond GDP. The theme of this year’s conference is, “Measuring Well-Being for Development and Policy Making.” The conference will build on the Better Life Initiative, which looks at 11 metrics beyond GDP to measure well-being across countries.

The Pew Research Center issued a deeply troubling study last year which found that black and hispanic households had suffered a much bigger decline in their net worth as a result of the Great Recession than white households. The net worth of hispanics went down by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009, blacks by 53 percent, and whites by just 16 percent.