It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Senior Fellow Wallace C. Turbeville, a beloved member of the Demos family since 2012. Wallace “Wally” Turbeville was among our country’s most respected and influential thought leaders and advocates for systemic financial reform as a core fight in the struggle for economic and racial justice.
Judge Neil Gorsuch is no champion for democracy, and his record on money in politics suggests he would continue the Court’s trajectory of expanding the power of the donor class.
An all-star team of ethics experts and constitutional scholars sued Donald Trump today for immediately violating the Constitution’s prohibition on government officials receiving payments from foreign powers.
As he's packed his proposed Cabinet with wealthy white men, President-elect Donald Trump has been criticized for assembling an administration that doesn't look like America, much less the "forgotten men and women" on whose behalf he claimed to have campaigned.
Washington, D.C., is the latest jurisdiction to consider legislation to prevent employers from conducting credit history screens for most job applicants.
Currently 11 states, New York City and Chicago have passed legislation limiting the use of credit checks in the hiring process. The states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
D.C. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie said he will introduce emergency legislation to bar contributions to political action committees during non-election years in an effort to close what some view as a major campaign finance loophole before the start of 2017.
“It’s important that we address the issue as soon as possible, before Jan. 1,” McDuffie (D-Ward 5) said. “There’s a lot of support for it from what we’ve seen from the public in general.”[...]
Imagine a rich person. For most Americans, the image that comes to mind is a wealthy white man. While white men certainly make up a disproportionate share of the wealthy, there is growing diversity among the wealthiest members of society. Given the increasing political salience of racial justice and gender equity, this diversity could have impacts on policy. I find that there are indeed large differences between rich men and rich women (defining that group as those earning more than $150,000 a year), as well as between rich white people and rich people of color.
Campaign finance reform crusaders on Wednesday lauded a D.C. Council measure that would forbid political action committees from raising unlimited funds in nonelection years and ban businesses from donating to candidates who could influence their contracts with the city.
The “Campaign Finance Transparency and Accountability Amendment Act of 2016” is part of a bevy of bills aimed at increasing the political distance between candidates and businesses in the District.[...]
Aside from the personal costs of running for office, and the structural problems stemming from the way we elect representatives, money is a major issue when it comes to the representation of people of color. While personal resources play a role in the decision to pursue elective office, it also takes money, sometimes a lot of money, to run for office.
Our city governments make decisions that affect us most, yet we know very little about the ways that money influences them. In a previous post I explored new evidence that people of color are not well represented by their councils. One possible reason is the overwhelmingly white municipal donor classes.
Federal deficit hawks in Congress, driven by ideology and the campaign donations of, for lack of a better term, millionaires and billionaires, held yet another hearing last week about the national debt — but U.S. lawmakers continue to ignore the debt that is causing real trouble for the nation.
The debt danger Americans should really worry about comes from credit cards and student loans.[...]
Amid soaring inequality and stagnant wages, consumers in the United States collectively accumulated a stunning $34.4 billion in credit card debt during the second quarter of 2016 alone, according to a new report from the personal finance website WalletHub.
A Miami-Dade lobbyist [Eric Zichella] on Monday joined the court fight against a ballot item that would sharply limit campaign donations as advocates release a study claiming smaller donors to local races better reflect the county’s diversity.[...]
When environmentalists speak of climate change, they often talk of “future generations.” But generations already here are poised to suffer long-term consequences. Climate change will affect millennials drastically—including in their wallets.
BREAKING CAMPAIGN UPDATE: The 127K petitions sit untouched, Mayor Gimenez refuses to act, and the campaign coalitions have begun holding direction actions and have filed a lawsuit in attempts to get the county to do their job and count the petitions.
There's no one reason for the routine neglect of African-American areas, but a study released today by the civil rights advocacy group Demos pinpoints a huge government-access problem in South Florida: Black people, the study says, can't keep up with the deluge of campaign money coming from Miami's cadre of rich lawyers, lobbyists, investors, and real-estate tycoons.
Black people make up one-fifth of Miami-Dade County's population. It doesn't exactly take a Nobel Laureate to see the county hasn't always treated its majority-black neighborhoods with a ton of respect. (See: Beckham, David.)