Los Angeles lawmakers were expected to vote Wednesday on a proposal to renegotiate or terminate an interest rate swap deal from the mid-2000s that critics say now costs the city millions of dollars a year in fees. If successful, the initiative could make the city the nation's largest to challenge ballooning Wall Street levies that accompany similar interest rate swap deals throughout the nation.
Medical debt is different. Typically when consumers borrow money, they can consider how much they’ll owe, shop around for the best interest rate, and usually have at least a little breathing room to reassess whether the goods or services they want to purchase are worth going into debt for in the first place. All that goes out the window, however, if your child is rushed to the emergency room in need of life-saving treatment.
Reformers in Washington are looking for a few good scandals.
Watergate led to the biggest overhaul of campaign finance law in the past century. Outrage over donors sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom and Enron influence peddling helped spur the 2002 McCain-Feingold overhaul. And the Jack Abramoff affair got Congress to act quickly on lobbying and ethics reform.
Earlier this week Vox gave welcome attention to whether CEO pay would benefit workers, but it didn’t go far enough in examining the company's wage inequality. In response to recent news of a college president giving up part of his compensation to give lower-wage workers a raise, Danielle Kurtzleben pivoted to Walmart, asking "what if Walmart's CEO took a pay cut for his workers?"
Every rule of government budgeting — not to mention common sense — says using a one-time windfall to finance ongoing commitments is a very bad idea.
It’s the political equivalent of hitting the lottery for $1,000, then rushing to put a down payment on a Ferrari.
So it was disturbing that Gov. Cuomo — when asked how he would spend an unprecedented $4.2 billion in legal settlements flowing into state coffers this year — threw out the following list of options:
In New England, the Market Basket supermarkets are known for their low prices and friendly staff. But Market Basket's lines are short and the parking lot empty today, due to an a two-week old worker-led strike and an ongoing customer boycott.
One of the most unnoticed labor trends in the past few decades has been the rise of “just-in-time scheduling,” the practice of scheduling workers’ shifts with little advance notice that are subject to cancelation hours before they are due to begin.
(PHOENIX, AZ) – Citing clear evidence that numerous low-income Arizona residents have been denied the opportunity to register to vote, the League of Women Voters of Arizona and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) sent official notice today to Secretary of State Ken Bennett, as well to the heads of three Arizona public assistance agencies (the Department of Economic Security, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, and the Department of Health Services), that the State is violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
A year after a conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority gutted the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), the nation’s foremost voting rights attorneys say that racial discrimination in voting is rampant, especially in southern states where the the VRA helped to ensure access to the ballot.
Today, President Obama will sign an Executive Order that will encourage federal agencies to not contract with companies that violate labor laws, and require federal contractors to disclose any record of wage, labor and anti-discrimination law violations.
The White House took an important step today to protect millions of Americans who work for federal contractors from illegal wage practices and health and safety risks in the workplace. The Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order establishes a screening system to identify whether prospective federal contractors have serious labor law violations and to subject those that do to a review process that could disqualify them from receiving federal contracts.
Today’s economy doesn’t contain a lot of good news for working people. While the Great Recession officially ended five years ago, millions of Americans are still out of work and wages continue to lag. Yet this week, working people made some hugely significant gains as the fruits sowed by organizing efforts, lawsuits, legislative action—and above all, workers standing up for themselves despite tremendous risk—began to be visible.
Sticker price matters because sticker price inflation dictates how much the federal government spends. High sticker price is one of the main reasons the feds dole out almost $170 billion in grants, student loans, tax incentives, and work study money each year.
When Walmart pays its workers so little that they need food stamps to survive, they're also investing in a steady profit stream. Even though their prices are roughly the same or even more than their local competition, Walmart's excessive marketing of "low prices" makes them a first-choice supermarket for people living in poverty, including their employees.
Once upon a time, America invested in its young people so that they could enter the world without debt. College was meant to provide opportunity and strengthen the overall economy by creating a better- educated workforce. Looking at the numbers today, I can only think that our current system has failed this generation.
The water war in Detroit has taken a new turn. The emergency manager (the virtual city dictator appointed by the governor) shut off thousands of customers of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department for non-payment. Some were undoubtedly taking advantage of the chaos caused by the State takeover and the bankruptcy but most are unable to pay because of the city's economic crisis. Massive protests and the intervention of an overtly outraged bankruptcy judge prompted 15-day moratorium on shutdowns.
