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.
And, says Anastasia Christman of the National Employment Law Project, "his focus on putting young people to work is critical for communities of color." The plan contains funding for summer job and youth work programs.
In their new book, "Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone," Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman argue that the United States needs to worry about not just creating millions more jobs but also ensuring that the jobs are good ones.
On Thursday, President Obama will deliver a major speech on America's employment crisis. But too often, what is lost in the call for job creation is a clear idea of what jobs we want to create.
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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A Silverton think tank said Tuesday that Oregon's middle class faces big issues in coming years.
The Oregon Center for Public Policy, in a report called The Fraying of Oregon's Middle Class, contends that well-paying jobs are in short supply as the cost of maintaining a family continues to increase. The center compiled the report with New York-based researcher Demos.
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 public is overwhelmed by budget deficits, shrinking public supports, and the inability of its government to compromise. In this climate, so-called minority issues seem like a distraction. But black and Latino men between the ages of 16 and 24 are profoundly more likely to be poor than whites, more likely to be unemployed or the victims of violent crime, and less likely to graduate from high school.
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.
“The middle class is not on the same solid footing that it once was,” said Jennifer Wheary, who cowrote a study on the recession’s impact on middle-class African Americans and Latinos with Brandeis University and the New York think tank Demos.
“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.
"College graduates are less likely to get a job," said Anna Pycior, a spokeswoman for Demos. "If you do manage to get a job, it is getting less and less likely you will be provided with health benefits and you will face the increasingly bleak prospect of a retirement plan.
"All of it while trying to address your $27,000 on average in student debt."
Why a Massachusetts Partnership Bank will generate new revenue for Massachusetts, save local governments money, and make our small businesses, farms and consumers less vulnerable to cutbacks in lending in our state.