Whenever new jobs data is published, as it was today, I take a quick look at the unemployment rate for construction workers. No group of workers got whacked harder by the housing crash and financial crisis, and it's only when these people are back on their feet can we say that the worst is over.
Economist Kenneth Boulding famously said, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” But it's not just economists who believe that anymore. Such ideas are still widely accepted by thought leaders, journalists, and politicians who, together, form a strong consensus that the U.S. recovery should be bolstered by natural gas exploration and production.
Biola Jeje, 22, graduated Brooklyn College last May with a degree in political science and a mission: Force lawmakers to address the $1.2 trillion student debt crisis. [...]
Jeje left college with $9,500 in student loans, less than half the $29,400 national average for four-year college graduates. She and her fellow activists are mobilizing support to march on Albany, New York state’s capital, to deliver a message to legislators. [...]
A coalition of progressive groups on Thursday formally began a new campaign aimed at curbing rising student debt and reducing the price of college.
The group of think tanks, student organizations, consumer advocates, and unions is targeting the country’s “increasingly dysfunctional system of higher education,” said Anne Johnson, executive director of Generation Progress, the youth division of the Center for American Progress, which is an organizer of the campaign. [...]
The new budget put out by the Obama administration has been depicted by Republicans as a liberal wish list, filled with endless spending paid for by higher taxes.
Yesterday, the New York State Assembly voted overwhelmingly in support of paid family leave legislation. The bill was part of a package put forward by Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver. And with its 84-40 passage, the old idea of providing workers paid time off to care for sick relatives or a new baby entered a new phase. Now, with Silver’s bill and another introduced by Sen.
Much of the rancor around why they opposed Debo Adegbile for heading the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been about Mumia Abu-Jamal. But it seems from their line of questioning that there’s also an agenda to undermine the Civil Rights Divisions’ duties to enforce voting rights and protect Americans against discrimination.
NEW YORK, NY—Today, national public policy organization Demos released a new report detailing the impact of state disinvestment in higher education since the beginning of the Great Recession. The report release coincides with the launch of Higher Ed, Not Debt, a campaign with over 60 organizations dedicated to supporting borrowers, addressing unfair lending practices, and reining in soaring costs in higher education.
NEW YORK—Yesterday, the U.S. Senate voted to block consideration of the nomination of Debo P. Adegbile to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Justice. Demos Vice President of Legal Strategies Brenda Wright issued the following statement in response:
For higher education and student debt, this year’s budget mostly includes proposals we’ve seen from the Obama administration in previous budgets, speeches, or elsewhere.
Shaun McCutcheon doesn’t like that there is a cap on the total amount of money that one person is permitted to contribute to federal candidates, parties, and political-action committees. And he is hoping that, someday soon, the Supreme Court will grant his wish by striking these limits when it rules on his case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
Should moral judgment be stripped out of social policy? Eduardo Porter argues yes today in the New York Times, calling for an end to the demonization of deadbeat dads -- a stance he says hasn't worked and shifts attention away from the economic reasons that low-skilled men find it so hard to be effective breadwinners these days.
Today, Senate Republicans and Democrats voted to block President Obama's pick for Justice Department Civil Rights Division head Debo Adegbile, the former lead attorney on voting rights for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Republicans opposed him mostly because of his involvement as an LDF lawyer in the appeal for the imprisoned human rights activist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Adegbile's assistance in that case was filing a brief claiming that the jury in Abu-Jamal's trial—where he was convicted for killing a police officer—received improper instructions for their deliberations.
"No one who works full-time should have to raise their children in poverty," Senator Barbara Boxer said. She was talking about raising the minimum wage during aspeech to the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition to citing the moral reason the federal minimum wage deserves a second look, she also made an economic argument. "When working people have a little more in their paychecks, they spend a little more in their communities. So that's what we're trying to do," she added.
The credit reporting industry has a profound and growing impact on Americans' economic lives—from whether you can rent an apartment to how much your car loan costs to whether you get hired for a job—yet the entire system falls dangerously short on basic goals of fairness and accuracy. That was the conclusion of Demos’ 2011 foundational study on credit reporting and we called for urgent reforms.
Like other progressives in the think tank arena, I've spent a lot of time envying how supportive conservative foundations and wealthy individuals have been of places like Cato and the Heritage Foundation. The huge impact of the conservative policy infrastructure stands as one of the greatest success stories of philanthropy in modern times -- with relatively small foundations like Bradley, Scaife, and Olin clearly moving the needle in key debates through their think tank investments.
"Obamacare." The right loves to hammer the Affordable Care Act with this tagline, and even the rest of us tend to us it. But we should not, for the label works at least partly as a racial provocation.
President Obama has taken a lot of flak for his race-neutral policies (including from me), but he deserves praise for following up on his pledge made just over a month ago during the State of the Union. Today, President Obama announced My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative aimed to make sure that young men of color are given a more equitable shot at success. It’s a moment that I’ve been waiting for for years. Since Philadelphia.
