It's no secret that when the wealthy speak, the powerful listen. What else would you expect when the average cost of winning a House seat has soared by 344 percent since 1986? But the other side of this coin tends to get less attention: How do the powerful respond to the voices of ordinary people -- those who aren't part of the "donor class?"
NEW YORK— Yesterday, New York joined ten states and the District of Columbia to enact a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) proposal. NPVIC, if enacted, would award all of a state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, ensuring the winner of the popular vote wins the presidency. NPVIC, which takes effect when enacted by states representing a majority of electors, has now received over half of the state laws it needs to be realized.
New York adopting the National Popular Vote proposal is a victory for democracy
A newly-released study by Demos, a think-tank, shows that there is a correlation between income and voter turnout in presidential elections. Using the 2008 presidential election as a reference for the study, Demos found that the richer an individual is, the more likely they are to vote.
Even if Paul Ryan's latest draconian budget plan gets safely filed away and forgotten, all forms of discretionary government spending face a relentless squeeze over the next decade. President Obama's own most recent proposed budget would bring such spending down to levels not seen since Eisenhower. Why all the pain? Because many Democrats would rather cut crucial programs than mount a fight to raise taxes.
The same day President Obama was at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference deriding and lambasting voter ID laws, I was on a plane with the pro-voter ID blogger J. Christian Adams. Between the two of us, you won’t find two people at farther opposing ends of the voting rights spectrum.
Michael Lewis’ new book, “Flash Boys,” relates a real-life techno thriller in which a trader who identifies and ultimately thwarts a scheme deployed by piratical “High Frequency Traders” to squeeze a relatively small amount out of many stock transactions being executed electronically. As our hero’s trade bounced around hyperspace looking for the best price, the HFTs would detect its path, use their speed to get in front of the trade, and buy up the inventory so that the price of our hero’s trade could be dictated.
At the heart of the social contract lie three pretty simple propositions: First, that if you work hard and play by the rules, you'll lead a secure life. Second, that everyone gets a say in how the rules are made. And, third, that whoever breaks the rules, however high and might they are, is held accountable.
A victory in the civil rights battle for voting was registered in Florida last week over those with an agenda to purge voters from rolls. The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on April 2 that when Congress declared in the National Voter Registration Act that voters’ names could not be systematically removed from rolls within 90 days of a federal election, that that’s exactly what they meant. Therefore, the voter purging program that Florida Gov.
Over the past 15 years, Brooklyn went from being a place known for cheap real estate and long subway rides to a place where professionals jockey to find a decent two-bedroom for under $4,000 a month. Something similar can be said about a lot of other once-marginal neighborhoods in major U.S. cities like Washington, LA, and Boston, where gentrification has also spread fast.
Weighing in at more than $1 trillion, student loan debt is now larger than total credit card debt. Morning Editionrecently asked young adults about their biggest concerns, and more than two-thirds of respondents mentioned college debt. Many say they have put off marriage or buying a home because of the financial burden they took on as students. [...]
“How can you pay your debt, if you can’t get a job?” That’s the straight-forward question Council Member Debi Rose asked on the steps of New York’s City Hall this morning, as she stood up as a lead sponsor of legislation which would ban discrimination against job applicants and employees based on their personal credit histories.
One big problem with the U.S. economy is that sectors that should exist to facilitate the productivity and success of American society have been turned into profit centers that do the opposite, funneling resources in the wrong direction. Finance is the leading example, of course: Wall Street should be a boring place that mobilizes capital to serve the real economy, kind of like a utility.
What does it take to change the business model of a multinational corporation that brings in nearly half a trillion dollars in revenue each year? You’d have to ask Walmart workers.
A new paper by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page sheds more light on the influence that elite economic interests have on policymaking and policy outcomes. Building on their previous work, Gilens and Page test the influence different interest groups- average citizens, economic elites and interest groups, both mass-based and business-oriented—have over policy.
Most Americans are clueless about just how much government makes their lives bearable. When they think of government, they often think about high-profile programs like the Affordable Care Act -- as opposed, say, to how water comes out when they turn the faucet on. In fact, waterworks may be the single best example of a public good that people take totally for granted.
NYC Council Members will join community, labor, and civil rights groups to call for passage of “The Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act,” a bill to eliminate the unfair and discriminatory use of credit checks by employers. If passed, the Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act would be the strongest law protecting workers from unfair employment credit checks, in the nation. New Yorkers denied jobs based on information in their credit reports will tell their stories and will be available for interviews.
The Supreme Court just decided an incredibly important case called McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (FEC). The Court's ruling will allow unprecedented amounts of money to flow directly into our political system. [...]
McCutcheon struck down the limit on the total amount that one wealthy donor is permitted to contribute to all federal candidates, parties, and political action committees (PACs) combined.
When the McCutcheon ruling came down I was sitting in a room with several young African American men and women East Harlem talking about their struggles with employment in a world they said was stacked against them. They constantly talked about race, class, and power—but ultimately believed they couldn’t do much about it. All too often in fact, they shrugged off the notion that they any agency to change the system, with one guy noting, “we’ve just gotten the short end of the stick.”
If you're looking to buy a home in nearly any metro area on either coast of America, you know that the real estate boom never actually ended. Sure, prices fell a bit here and there, but the cost of buying a place is still way higher than it was before the boom -- and, for many people, prohibitively high.
