Climate change poses a tremendous threat to Florida. Sea level rise, more intense precipitation, and stronger hurricanes increase the risk of natural disaster and imperil the state’s economy and its citizens’ safety.
Public financing of elections, as a state and local democracy reform, can help enhance the political voice and power of working-class people and people of color. It is an effective antidote to the outsized influence corporations and major donors currently have on both politics and policy.
The extent of the money in politics problem, how we got here (from a legal perspective), and what we can do to create a democracy in which the strength of a citizen’s voice does not depend on the size of her wallet.
In 2012, just 61 large donors to Super PACs giving an average of $4.7 million each matched the $285.2 million in grassroots contributions from more than 1,425,500 small donors to the major party presidential candidates.
Outside spending organizations reported $1.11 billion in spending to the FEC through the final reporting deadline in the 2012 cycle. That’s already a 200% increase over total 2008 outside spending.
This memo outlines how the Justices lined up on the issues in Randall v. Sorrell, provides some analysis of the opinions, and touches on the implications for future reform efforts.
Our data sets were provided and cleaned by Public Campaign. For the purposes of this report, Public Campaign used federal campaign contribution data made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and then refined and augmented by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).
The Contract for College would unify the existing three strands of federal financial aid — grants, loans and work-study — into a coherent, guaranteed financial aid package for students.
America's students are facing a serious threat from subprime private loans, and the situation could worsen unless Congress votes to close a potential loophole in the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Demos conducted a nationwide survey of low- and middle-income households in early 2012. The findings in this brief summarize the relationship between college costs and credit card debt, and its impact on students and their parents.