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NEW YORK – Almost two out of five American Indians and Alaska Natives eligible to vote are not registered, but according to a new report by national policy center Demos, designating Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities as official voter registration agencies under the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) would go a long way toward addressing this civic crisis.

“Our democracy is stronger when all of our citizens participate, and this is all the more true in the case of American Indians and Alaska Natives.”

As we all sit around waiting for the Supreme Court to hand down decisions on a whole handful of whoppers — the Affordable Care Act, the Arizona "Papers, Please" law — it was something the Court didn't do this week that may be the most overlooked matter of all. It has before it a case from Montana whereby that state's supreme court upheld Montana's 100-year-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case.

Most of the coverage last week of the Fed study on household wealth focused on the gigantic financial hit taken by nearly all Americans since 2007. Dig deeper into the report, though, and it makes for even scarier reading, as many of those people losing lots of wealth are older and don’t have much time to recover before retiring.

There’s been a lot of fighting the last several months about new restrictions on the right to vote. We learn that these laws, including voter ID, rules around registration, and limits on early voting disproportionately impact African Americans, Latinos, youth and other groups, many of which already have lower participation rates than the white population.

We’ve talked often about how true sustainable development cannot be achieved without adopting new metrics for progress beyond GDP. Without valuing things like natural capital and work done within the home, GDP is unable to accurately reflect the true growth of our economy and, more importantly, our progress. Yesterday, at the Rio+20 conference, a new metric was launched that offers a much more nuanced picture of growth and progress.

Call the cops — your pocket’s been picked.

American workers are being ripped off by excessive retirement plan fees — which may force them to work longer or live less comfortably in their golden years, according to a recent study.

For the average US household, the high fees drain about $155,000 from their 401(k) accounts over their lifetimes, the study found.

In one example highlighted in the study, a two-wage-earner household with a median income for their age group contributed an average of 7 percent a year to their 401(k) plan over 40 years.

Malloy wrote in his veto message that he believed parts of the bill to be unconstitutional, potentially infringing on individuals' free speech protections under the First Amendment. Other parts of 5556, he argued, "represent poor public policy choices." He went on, "While I have advocated for transparency in the elections and campaign finance process for a long time, and could certainly support sensible reform in this area again, I cannot support the bill before me given its many legal and practical problems."