The problem of American democracy isn't solely that there's too much money in our politics. It's that the money comes from a narrow (and extremely rich) slice of the electorate.
1. The government has collected less in taxes as a proportion of the economy in the past three years than it has in any three-year period since World War II, and tax rates are at historic lows.
By now it's pretty clear that Mitt Romney's recent claim about female job losses during the Obama presidency has more to do with selective number fudging and electoral pandering than factual accuracy.
TheWall Street Journal ran a disingenuous and misleading opinion piece on Sunday evening titled "The Corporate Disclosure Assault," arguing that “[u]nions and liberal activists are using proxy rules to attack business political speech.” The piece—exactly like the undisclosed corporate money it’s pandering to—doesn’t even have an author listed.
Eliza Carney has an interesting piece in Roll Call observing that in light of Congressional inaction, several federal agencies have now moved to center stage in the fight over unrestricted campaign money.
A Vermont Partnership Bank will generate new revenue for Vermont, save local governments money, and make our small businesses, farms and consumers less vulnerable to cutbacks in lending in our state.
NYPIRG released a report last week of the largest donations in New York state politics over the past year. The numbers, while no longer surprising, mirror the disturbing state of campaign spending at the federal level, and they raise some important questions about the underlying institutions necessary for democratic elections and political accountability.
For decades, GDP has enjoyed supreme status as the predominant benchmark of our economic and social progress. In reality, GDP obscures or ignores essential aspects of Americans’ economic and social welfare, as well as important social and environmental dimensions of our national welfare and future well-being.