Any doubts about the determination of an activist United States Supreme Court to rewrite election rules so that the dollar matters more than the vote were removed Wednesday, when McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission was decided in favor of the dollar. [...]
In the past four years, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has made it far easier to buy an election and far harder to vote in one. [...]
The Supreme Court on Wednesday released its decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the blockbuster money-in-politics case of the current term. The court's five conservative justices all agreed that the so-called aggregate limit on the amount of money a donor can give to candidates, political action committees, and political parties is unconstitutional.
Just days after 2016 GOP hopefuls traveled to Las Vegas to kowtow to billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, the Supreme Court has made it even easier for the ultra-rich to control elections. In McCutcheon v. FEC, the five conservative Justices ruled that aggregate limits in campaign contributions are unconstitutional. [...]
I've been complaining about the deduction for home mortgage interest for years, so it's hard to say to something bad about this tax break that I haven't said myself.
Talk about a missed opportunity. Last night, the New York State legislature passed a $137.9 billion budget for the upcoming year. Senate Deputy Republican Leader Thomas Libous lauded the effort and said, “We, at least, have done our job and the budget is complete." Not quite. The budget may be complete, but legislators certainly did not do their job.
Today's Republican Party does a great job of sticking up for rich people, which is ironic given that most wealthy Americans live in states and congressional districts that are represented by Democratic lawmakers -- which, of course, helps explain why Democrats also do such a good job of sticking up for rich people.
Think of it this way: The GOP is ideologically committed to defending the rich, even as it increasingly speaks for white voters of modest means, while the Democratic Party -- which represents much of affluent Ame
Roughly half of all U.S. families have no money set aside for retirement, Federal Reserve data show. Not a cent. But even that alarming savings deficit doesn't fully capture the emerging socioeconomic crisis facing what is, after all, a rapidly graying nation. [...]
Did you hear that one of the biggest banks in America just agreed to one of the biggest penalties ever for committing one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history? It happened just the other day and, no, chances are you didn't hear because the story was buried in the business section.
The bank is Bank of America. The penalty is $6.3 billion.
Despite the fact that Tennessee has one of the most restrictive photo ID requirements for voting in the nation, the state is rarely discussed when voter ID is the topic. However, Tennessee’s law will now allow college students to use their university identification cards to vote, just like in Texas and North Carolina, the poster children of voter ID. In each case, it seems, students decided they were tired of being unseen and unheard.
Remember when the Democrats won both houses on Congress in 2006, and everyone predicted that committee chairs like Henry Waxman would launch far-reaching investigations of the Bush Administration? It never happened, and not because of a lack of potential scandals to dig into. Democrats apparently didn't see much point in burying an already unpopular administration in subpoenas. Instead, they stayed relatively positive and won the presidency in 2008 by a healthy margin.
Our political class is feuding about whether Rep. Paul Ryan is a racist. Rather than fearing that this donnybrook degrades political discourse, we should welcome it.
Ryan sparked the controversy when he blamed poverty on “a tailspin of culture” in our “inner cities,” while invoking for support Charles Murray, notorious for postulating the genetic inferiority of blacks. Within hours, Rep. Barbara Lee rebuked Ryan for launching “a thinly veiled racial attack.”
McDonald's has come under fire lately for cheating workers out of wages they were owed, and this is just the latest example of the spotlight being shined on the bad treatment of workers by some of America's biggest employers.
If you ask many progressives what changes they'd like to see long-term, and encourage them to think big, they might imagine an America that looks something like Denmark. Indeed, last year Bernie Sanders traveled around Vermont with the Danish ambassador to the United States to tout all the great things that that country does. As Sanders wrote in an article after the road trip:
New York is on the cusp of adopting a campaign finance reform that would amplify small donations with matching funds, reducing the power of big special interest money over the state's politics. It would also allow New Yorkers to claim the mantle of the first state to take back their democracy in the era of Citizens United and unprecedented campaign spending.
But adopting Fair Elections would accomplish something else badly needed in our democracy: more diverse representation in our political leadership.
A frustrating thing about the minimum wage debate is that it often plays out in a theoretical void. Some economists tout models that say pay hikes are a jobs killer, others present models that show the opposite.
SACRAMENTO – In a victory for voting rights, the state of California has agreed to mail voter registration cards to nearly 4 million Californians who have signed up for health insurance through the state health exchange, Covered California, and to ensure that Californians who apply for health benefits through the exchange going forward are provided voter registration opportunities.
While attention focuses on Paul Ryan’s remarks about inner city culture, another dog-whistle theme continues its slow roil: food stamp abuse. More even than Ryan’s twisting narrative, the brouhaha around food stamps helps make clear that conservatives seek to conjure a much bigger bogeyman than “lazy” minorities.
