Media

Among the biggest complaints about the financial industry is that it always seems to do well, even when disaster strikes for everyone else. Investments bankers, venture capitalists, and even stock analysts (like Henry Blodget) made millions during the dotcom boom, getting rich and then getting out before that bubble crashed. Wall Street did even better during the real estate bubble, bundling subprime mortgages, with many key villains in this story walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars before everything fell apart.

The Court continued down its recent path of manipulating the rules for corporations and the one percent.

(Flickr/JBrazito)

One reason that major institutions in U.S. society end up being distrusted by Americans is that they can seem to have their own self-interested agenda that disregards the public's needs or what makes sense.

Washington, D.C. – Today, the United States Supreme Court summarily reversed the Montana Supreme Court decision to uphold a state law restricting corporate spending in elections, squandering a chance to review the disastrous consequences of Citizens United.

Washington, DC – The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of Maryland’s groundbreaking “No Representation Without Population Act,” which counts incarcerated people as residents of their legal home addresses for redistricting purposes. The 2010 law was a major civil rights victory that ended the distortions in fair representation caused by using incarcerated persons to pad the population counts of districts containing prisons.

Forget those jumbo checks Sheldon Adelson wrote for Newt Gingrich in the GOP primary, or even the big money that Romney is pulling in now from wealthy bundlers. The most dramatic illustration of how private wealth is perverting elections can be found in Ohio, where Senator Sherrod Brown is being pummeled by inaccurate negative ads funded by conservative outside groups and super PACs.

Aaron Skirboll has a great article on Alternet that details the history of renewable energy policy and why we are unable to move away from fossil fuel. Skirboll’s article details how President Carter encouraged conservation and a move towards energy independence by, among other things, increasing solar funding from $75,000 in 1970 to $261 million in 1977.

We have written a lot here at Demos about how the 401(k) system as been a total flop, leaving millions of Americans without enough money to retire. Holders of 401(k)s have gotten hit from nearly every direction: hurt by stock market meltdowns, ripped off by high administrative fees, and hurt by financial needs that lead them to withdraw money from their accounts.