Media

WASHINGTON, -- Eighteen pro-democracy groups - Open Debates, Common Cause, Public Citizen, Rock the Vote, Judicial Watch, Public Campaign, FairVote, Demos, Democracy Matters, League of Rural Voters, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Essential Information, Personal Democracy Media, Reclaim Democracy!, Center for Study of Responsive Law, Citizen Works, Free & Equal Elections Foundation, and Rootstrikers - call on the Commission on Presidential Debates to make public the secret debate contract that was negotiated by the Obama and Romney campaigns.

Our long, national nightmare is over. Well, for NFL fans at least. After a protracted negotiation, NFL referees will maintain access to their defined pension plans...for a few more years. When a union wins the support of noted laborphobe Scott Walker, you'd think they'd be on their way. Alas:

Hundreds of non-partisan organizations came together for National Voter Registration Day to ensure that hundreds of thousands of Americans will be able to exercise their freedom to vote and make their voices heard this upcoming November.

One article of faith in contemporary political life is that conservatives side with business and progressives are far less friendly to the private sector. 

In many ways, this is true -- judging by the battle lines in Washington, where groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses nearly always back the Republican Party. 

A new study finds that climate change is already contributing to 400,000 deaths per year and costing the world more than $1.2 trillion, or 1.6 percent of global GDP. The report was commissioned by 20 governments and written by more than 50 scientists, economists and policy experts. In the report, the authors detail how the vast majority of deaths occur in developing countries and that the world’s poorest communities within lower and middle-income communities are most exposed to climate change risks.

Thomas Edsell has a column in Sunday's New York Times -- "What's Wrong With Pennsylvania?" -- that explores how various factors have conspired to make the state uncompetitive for Mitt Romney. 

A new report from the Congressional Research Service looks how a carbon tax could be used for deficit reduction or other fiscal measures. The CRS projects that a tax rate of $20 per metric ton of carbon dioxide would generate approximately $88 billion in 2012 and up to $144 billion by 2020. This would be enough to cut the 10-year budget deficit in half under the 2012 baseline CBO projection.

NEW YORK – Governor Jerry Brown signed California Assembly Bill 1436 providing for future implementation of Election Day Voter Registration, also known as “Same Day Registration,” a reform that Demos and over two dozen voting rights organizations supported.

What's wrong credit card companies?

Here is an industry that has been repeatedly chastised and penalized for all sorts of bad behavior -- an industry that abused its customers so badly for so long, with hidden fees and usurious interest rates, that one of the first things Democrats did when they took control of the White House in 2009 was to enact legislation to rein in credit card issuers.