Citizens United has opened the door to what one report is calling the auctioning of democracy. Much of the money being donated through Super PACs is keeping their source secret and the money is untraceable.
If what these Super PAC donors are doing is nothing to be ashamed of, then why are they hiding their identity?
Today Illinois PIRG Education Fund and Demos released a new analysis of the funding sources for the campaign finance behemoths, Super PACs. The findings confirmed what many have predicted in the wake of the Supreme Court’s damaging Citizens United decision: since their inception in 2010, Super PACs have been primarily funded by a small segment of very wealthy individuals and business interests, with a small but significant amount of funds coming from secret sources.
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.
“It’s a disgrace that this is happening in a country as rich as ours,” former New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert said, describing what he called a “massive employment crisis” in the U.S.
Herbert, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the economic equality think tank Demos, delivered his lecture on “A Call to Civic Engagement” as part of SIPA’s Weston lecture series.
State government should offer a retirement plan to the increasing number of people whose companies don't provide a pension or a 401(k) savings program, labor groups and other advocates this week told a legislative panel.
The Labor and Public Employees Committee has raised a bill that would create a task force to study that concept and report back when the 2013 General Assembly session convenes next January.
Some youngsters want to grow up to become artists or athletes or firefighters. Some want to be doctors or dancers. Charles Walker wanted to own a supermarket.
“Ever since I can remember, I wanted my own grocery store,” he said over lunch on a quiet afternoon in snowbound Detroit last year. To Walker, “grocery store” meant a gleaming, well-run supermarket, not necessarily huge but well stocked and scrupulously clean, with fresh meats and produce and first-class customer service.
Say you’ve got a booming industry, one that already employs 2 million workers in the U.S. and is poised to add 1.3 million additional jobs by 2020. Imagine that the jobs cannot be off-shored, that the work helps decrease federal deficits, and millions of Americans depend on the industry just to get through their daily lives.
While the attention of Connecticut's legislature has been occupied by the recent budget battles, an even larger crisis has been brewing: retirement security.
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.
Every single working day of the year, American women pay a 22.6 percent gender tax on their income. By gender tax, I mean a negative transfer imposed upon women’s wages which reduces the wealth they control and increases the amount of time they work. Feminists know the gender tax as the pay gap (in 2010, the median full-time, year-round woman earned $10,784 less than her male counterpart) as well as Equal Pay Day (to earn his income of $47,715, she had to work until April 17, 2011—an extra 15 weeks on the job).
In the latest unfortunate news at the intersection of motherhood and politics, stay-at-home moms are doing worse emotionally than their working counterparts.
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.
If you think your employer knows more about your 401(k) plan's fees than you do, think again. Sponsors of some 401(k) plans don't understand the fees they're paying toward plan administration, says a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The GAO reported on one case, in fact, where a relatively large plan underestimated its recordkeeping costs by $58,000. And more than 90 percent of plan sponsors don't use free tools the government supplies to help compare costs among 401(k) plan providers, the report says.
Mutual fund fees in 401(k) plans can look tiny—a median of 1 percent of assets per year, says financial-data provider Morningstar. But over a lifetime of saving, they can really scramble your nest egg. A recent study by Demos, a research and advocacy group, found that an American household of two median-income earners will pay, on average, almost $155,000 in 401(k) fees over 40 years. Yes, you read that right.
Your retirement account statement likely does not tell you this, but fees are adding up on your IRA or 401(k) over time – and they can be substantial, as much $155,000 for a median income, two-earner family over a lifetime.
That was not a misprint. In many areas, that amount will buy you a nice home.
The research and advocacy group, Demos, outlines the cost of retirement funds in a new report.
Yikes! The advocacy group Demos reports that a two-income couple — earning a median income over their careers — spends an average of $154,794 during their working lives on 401(k) fees. Fees, Demos says, eats up nearly one-third of their investment returns.
A higher income couple pays even more in fees: $277,969.
The average American couple could pay nearly $155,000 in fees for their 401(k) plans over their careers, reducing their eventual nest eggs by more than 30%, according to a new report.