As we mentioned during the rollout of Paul Ryan's poverty plan last week, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit is one of the few anti-poverty measures both parties can agree about (even if they can't come to an agreement on how to fund it).
It's fair to say most people think of giving to charity as a good thing to do. If we have extra resources, it feels right to help people who are less fortunate.
"The steady erosion of state investment in public higher education over the last few decades reflects a stunning abdication of responsibility on the part of states to preserve college affordability."
The fall out continues over whether Governor Cuomo's top aid interfered with an ethics commission probe, with some now saying that the state's Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, could have done more to protect the integrity of the investigations, and whether any actual crimes were committed.
Nate Silver has already dubbed the 2014 election as "the least important in years." But this year's midterms are still breaking records for at least one thing: Secret political spending.
Eliminating poverty seems like an impossibly utopian goal, but it's actually pretty easy: we can just give people enough money that they're above the poverty line. That idea, known as a basic income, has been around forever, but it's made a comeback in recent years.
Demos Policy Analyst Robert Hiltonsmith testifies before the Congressional Progressive Caucus on wage theft and its effects on the earnings of low-income workers.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara vowed that he has the “fearlessness and independence” needed to investigate Albany corruption as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is accused of interfering with his own corruption commission.
“If other people aren’t going to do it, then we’re going to do it,” Bharara said on the PBS’ program “Charlie Rose."
If being a parent often feels like a constant juggling act, it can be that much more challenging for single parents. Between work and parenting, it can feel like there’s never enough time, energy or money for the things you want to do. And that feeling may extend to your credit too. You may barely have time to check your credit, much less fix it.
Whether or not you attended the ninth annual Netroots Nation convention at Cobo Hall last weekend, you may have heard about downtown’s large demonstration against Detroit’s water shutoffs.
Embedded gender and racial discrimination and lack of bargaining power are major causes of not only low pay for home health care aides but for many of the country’s low-wage, fast-growing occupations.
As fourth anniversary of the enactment of the Dodd Frank financial reform legislation passes, we are once again revisiting whether “too-big-to-fail” is in our past. The perennial discussion has become a distraction that gets in the way of the real issues of the financial system that persist to this day.
At this year’s Netroots Nation conference, where speakers included Democratic luminaries like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vice President Joe Biden, the honor of delivering the opening keynote address went to Rev. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP and the driving force behind the state’s Moral Mondays demonstrations.
If one speech captured the tenor of this year’s Netroots Nation, it was Barber’s.
“Movements never came from D.C. down,” he bellowed. “Movements always come from Birmingham up, from Montgomery up.”
Mary Ziegler, Director
Division of Regulations Legislation, and Interpretation
Wage and Hour Division
U.S. Department of Labor, Room S-3510
200 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20210
Re: RIN 1235-AA10 - Proposed Rule – Establishing a Minimum Wage for Contractors
Dear Ms. Ziegler:
Three years ago today the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened its doors. It was a new government agency produced by the Dodd-Frank Act: part of Congress’ attempt to address the rampant misconduct by banks, mortgage lenders, ratings agencies and other financial institutions that brought on the 2008 financial crisis and started the Great Recession.
More than 1,000 people took to the streets of downtown Detroit to protest against the city’s ongoing water shutoff initiative, while a number of civil rights organizations formally called for a moratorium on the practice.
Writing recently in The New York Times, Thomas Edsall linked race, genes and political ideology. Edsall, a journalism professor at Columbia University who writes a weekly online opinion piece for the Times, has been one of the leading voices covering race and politics in the United States for the last quarter century — and his latest piece strongly suggests that he fundamentally misunderstands race, missing that race reflects social dynamics rather than genetics.
