Media

Credit: Helen Slottje for ShaleshockNPR is currently running a series on the fracking boom that highlights the vast landscape of unanswered questions.

The youngsters filed into the large conference room at the Community Service Society in Manhattan. Each picked up a slice of pizza and a can of soda from a small table that had been set up along one wall, then took a seat at the large table in the center of the room. They were from a public school in the Bronx, about 20 of them, 13 and 14 years old, and they’d agreed to talk to me about their lives.

It’s hard to imagine that an industry that has spent over $28 million on federal and state campaign contributions this election cycle alone would be victimized by government regulation, but that is the cry coming from the oil and gas industry. Well, more accurately, that is the cry coming from politicians in the pockets of those industries.

Hartford, CT. – A coalition of good government groups including Common Cause, Demos, People For the American Way, Public Citizen, Credo Action and others are calling on Connecticut Governor Dannell Malloy to sign H.B. 5556, “Changes to Campaign Finance Laws and other Election Laws,” which just passed the General Assembly. The bill would require public disclosure of major corporate and individual donors to Super PACs and other independent groups, bringing increased transparency and accountability to Connecticut’s elections.   

The debate over the NYPD's controversial stop and frisk policy is an important reminder about the unjust reality young male African American men face. Stop and frisk has been thrust back into the media with new findings by the NYCLU that in 2003, the NYPD stopped 266 people for every gun recovered, but in 2011, cops had to stop 879 New Yorkers to recover a single gun

Pres. Obama signs Dodd-Frank in July of 2010Everyone with a sufficiently strong constitution to follow the Republican primary campaign and Mitt Romney’s sequel is well-versed on the theory that burdensome regulation hangs around the neck of the economy like a millstone.

Being in favor of strong government means being forward-thinking. Literally. In expanding our current government, we are constantly looking ahead to the future of our country, to the repercussions of our actions, and to the best possible version of the United States that we can build. But this week, let’s set our obsession with the future aside.

Let’s not only focus on building stronger and larger government, but let’s laud the existing government employees who make do with our current system.

Mother’s Day won’t arrive until Sunday, but the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is already looking beyond it.

Every single working day of the year, American women pay a 22.6 percent gender tax on their income.  By gender tax, I mean a negative transfer imposed upon women’s wages which reduces the wealth they control and increases the amount of time they work. Feminists know the gender tax as the pay gap (in 2010, the median full-time, year-round woman earned $10,784 less than her male counterpart) as well as Equal Pay Day (to earn his income of $47,715, she had to work until April 17, 2011—an extra 15 weeks on the job).