The Montana Supreme Court in Helena stands just off the main drag, dramatically called Last Chance Gulch Street. The picturesque setting is fitting for an institution that has just challenged the U.S. Supreme Court to a legal showdown on the enormously important question of whether corporations should have an unfettered right to dominate elections or whether citizens have the right to adopt commonsense protections to defend democratic government from corruption. Get the kids off the streets, because this could be an epic confrontation.
The Montana Supreme Court in Helena stands just off the main drag, dramatically called Last Chance Gulch Street. The picturesque setting is fitting for an institution that has just challenged the U.S. Supreme Court to a legal showdown on the enormously important question of whether corporations should have an unfettered right to dominate elections or whether citizens have the right to adopt commonsense protections to defend democratic government from corruption. Get the kids off the streets, because this could be an epic confrontation.
Occupy Wall Street has, in the words of John Paul Rollert, “come to embody a common sense that something is wrong with American capitalism.” The problem Rollert points to is not with capitalism itself, but with a particular American version that has ceased to work for broad cross-sections of its population. Given America’s Depression-level income inequality and near-record levels of public and private indebtedness, it is extremely tempting to focus on bad outcomes as the problem.
Occupy Wall Street has already accomplished a great deal by shifting public discourse in this country. Instead of focusing on the need for austerity and deficit reduction, attention is rightly being directed at economic disparities and the deep structural problems that the United States faces.
Today, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary passed, on a party-line vote, one of the most sweeping attacks in decades on government protections.
The Rules from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) bill would require that any major regulatory rule issued by a federal agency be affirmed by a majority vote in both the House and Senate. The vote would have to take place within 70 days.
One grievance of the protesters targeting Wall Street is that financial elites wield way too much power in our democracy. That complaint is hardly new, but the latest figures on money in politics tells a truly troubling story about the vast resources that Wall Street has put into shaping both the legislative process and elections.
Last month, the White House introduced a program that would effectively overhaul the tax code and, as Robert Kuttner put it, "locked [Obama] in as a defender of social insurance and working Americans." The five-pronged tax plan would cut rates and inefficient and unfair tax breaks, increase investment and growth in the United States, reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and -- most contentiously -- institute the "Buffett rule."
A photo voter ID law signed by Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is unnecessary, unfair, restrictive and intentionally discriminates against African-American and Latino voters, a coalition of civil rights groups will argue in a letter to the Justice Department on Wednesday.
Law that tries to exclude human judgment of right and wrong always veers towards unintended places - as with the Rockefeller drug laws, or "three strikes" laws that send petty criminals to jail for life.
ALBANY — Cleanup of hard-hit areas in New York from Tropical Storm Irene is expected to take months because roads and bridges have to be rebuilt, farms restored and infrastructure reconstructed.
While experts say the flooding was impossible to prevent, the storm that ravaged upstate wasn't initially expected because most of the original focus was on New York City and its suburbs, which ultimately didn't get hit as badly as rural areas.
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In the past 15 years the ramifications of poor credit have grown, as credit score "mission creep" has set in, said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst with the New York-based think tank Demos and author of the recently released report "Discrediting America." Credit scores determine not just the interest rates paid on material goods, such as a cell phone or car, but also the pricing of utilities and insurance. Approximately 60 percent of employers use credit reports to screen job applicants.
Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at watchdog group Demos, says that credit-based insurance scores hurt lower-income people more because they are more likely to have lower scores. She noted a study that showed while those with lower scores made more claims because they couldn't swallow the costs, the cost of those claims were not necessarily greater.
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a pair of decisions affirming campaign finance disclosure provisions in Maine and Rhode Island. I let out a sigh of relief when I read them.
In its bombshell of a report “Discrediting America,” the nonpartisan public policy research group Demos sums up the problem for black and Latinos:
Credit reports largely mirror racial and economic divides, with African Americans and Latinos disproportionately likely to have lower scores. In turn, these communities are more likely to be offered high-priced loan products, which may contribute to more defaults, maintaining and amplifying historical injustice.
“If you’re out of work for a long time, you have difficulty paying your bills,” says Amy Traub, coauthor of a June report from the think tank Demos that calls for reform of the credit reporting industry. “If potential employers are looking at credit scores, how on earth are you going to pay your bills then?”
What’s more, the credit bureaus themselves acknowledge there is no proof of a link between a person’s credit report and their suitability as an employee.
Why is it important for civil rights and good government groups to to be granted status as intervenor defendants in a lawsuit about counting prisoners in redistricting?
Because the legislative commission charged with drawing the lines, LATFOR, hasn't exactly been vigorous in defending itself in a lawsuit filed about the issue, they say.