The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Monday a lower court's ruling upholding Maryland's new congressional redistricting plan, which counts inmates as living at their last-known addresses instead of in their prison cells. But it may not be the last word on the matter.
Some Republican lawmakers opposed to the map, drawn once each decade based on U.S.
One of the main reason alternative indicators are important is that they take things that we value on a visceral level, like the environment, and put them into the universal language of capital.
As we all sit around waiting for the Supreme Court to hand down decisions on a whole handful of whoppers — the Affordable Care Act, the Arizona "Papers, Please" law — it was something the Court didn't do this week that may be the most overlooked matter of all. It has before it a case from Montana whereby that state's supreme court upheld Montana's 100-year-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case.
Malloy wrote in his veto message that he believed parts of the bill to be unconstitutional, potentially infringing on individuals' free speech protections under the First Amendment. Other parts of 5556, he argued, "represent poor public policy choices." He went on, "While I have advocated for transparency in the elections and campaign finance process for a long time, and could certainly support sensible reform in this area again, I cannot support the bill before me given its many legal and practical problems."
Ahead of Rio+20, advocates are coalescing around the idea that we need to change the way we measure what is important to achieve true sustainable development. Currently countries measure economic growth, which is often equated with progress, through GDP. However, growth in GDP is increasingly not resulting in progress.
The Boston Review recently hosted a forum titled, How Markets Crowd Out Morals, in which Michael Sandel wrote the lead essay, arguing that we as a society should be questioning which institutions we allow to be defined by market norms.
Last summer, a Western Beef store in the East Tremont section of the South Bronx became the first supermarket in the city to receive funding through the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) program. The FRESH initiative provides financial and zoning incentives to entice supermarket chains to build new stores in neighborhoods that lack access to fresh, wholesome foods.
Last summer, on her final day as the Chairman of the FDIC, Shelia Bair decried the short-termism that has overtaken both Wall Street and Washington, where “[o]ur financial markets remain too focused on quick profits, and our political process is driven by a two-year election cycle and its relentless demands for fundraising.” This short-termism has taken hold of the reins of our larger political system and increasingly characterizes policy initiatives at every level of government.
In 1907, Congress banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in the wake of the robber baron-era scandals. In 1947, the ban was formally applied to corporate expenditures and extended to cover labor unions.
The difference is obvious, Potter replied. Because 527 groups were legally shady, they attracted far less money from fewer donors. True, the FEC didn’t enforce the law, but donors couldn’t be sure that would be the case, and some were unwilling to take the risk.
The U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision unleashed the specter of unlimited corporate political donations in U.S. elections. So far, however, it's mostly rich individuals doing the donating.
A new report from two public-interest groups confirms fears "that the cash for big-ticket campaign spending like TV advertising is increasingly controlled by an elite class of super-rich patrons not afraid to plunk down a million bucks or more for favored candidates and causes."
One of the effects of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is that it allowed corporations to give unlimited amounts to independent expenditure political action committees capable of supporting or opposing political candidates.
But a new report from the non-profit group Demos shows that the majority, 55.6 percent, of donations to super PACs in 2010 and 2011 still came from individuals rather than for-profit entities.
A joint analysis by Demos and US PIRG released today takes a detailed look at the increasing (and deleterious) impact that so-called Super PACs are having on elections in the United States. Super PACs are independent political action committees that can accept unlimited and often undisclosed financial contributions from donors to campaign for or against candidates or issues during an election.