Dear Mr. President: Thank you for your leadership in enacting the Affordable Care Act, and for your commitment to helping all Americans access quality, affordable health care, a goal that the undersigned strongly support.
WASHINGTON, DC – Yesterday, in a letter to President Obama, leaders for nonprofit voting rights organizations Demos and Project Vote alerted the White House that the application process for benefits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) currently violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
In the letter, the groups urge the Obama Administration to take immediate steps to bring federally facilitated health benefits exchanges (FFEs) into compliance with federal law.
One way to think about politics today is that we have a bunch of public servants making chump change who spend an inordinate amounts of time hanging out with rich people, their noses pushed up against the window of an affluent lifestyle that they can't afford. Bad things happen in this situation.
"Relative mobility" measures how a child’s ranking in the income distribution compares to her parents'. “Absolute mobility” measures how your income compares with your parent’s income.
There are two market ways to reduce C02 emissions (the other options, like “command and control” would involve more overt government intervention). The first is cap and trade. The U.S. tried, and failed to pass a cap and trade bill in 2009 (Waxman-Markey). In a cap and trade system, the government puts a “cap” on the amount of carbon that can be emitted and allows companies to trade permits that allow them to emit, say a ton of CO2, on a market. The idea is that companies that can cheaply reduce emissions will do so, and then sell their permits to those who can’t do so cheaply.
What I learned from an Al-Jazeera America news segment last night: 16- and 17-year-olds in North Carolina could be arrested and charged as adults, in one of just two states in the nation where this is law.
"I really enjoyed my time at Oberlin and I felt like I was learning, but I wasn't progressing towards a job at the end of graduation," said Ned Lindau, a 2011 graduate from Oberlin College in Ohio. He noted that his liberal arts education focused on students exploring subjects that they were interested in learning, not the practicality of a job after college.
When millions of Americans stood in lines for hours to vote yet again in the 2012 elections, President Obama recognized that “we need to fix that.” Today, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration released a report with their recommendations on ways to improve election administration. The Commission’s recommendations are welcome but much more work remains to be done to ensure every eligible voter can exercise their right to vote.
As more states across the U.S. (and more countries across the world) begin adopting alternative measures they find that while GDP has been increasing, other measures of well-being have remained flat.
Two days ago, thirty-two people were arrested -- including 10 elected officials -- during a protest against low wages at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. As with so many airports, the agency that runs LaGuardia, the Port Authority, along with the airlines, contract out a lot of the jobs that make the place run.
Today is the fourth anniversary of Citizens United and in the wake of record electoral spending, the need for an antidote is even more pressing than ever. Luckily, there is one: public financing of elections. We’ve shown how once Connecticut adopted public financing, the legislature passed a slate of policies to help working families. And now, New York State looks to be the latest to see the benefits and adopt a public financing program.
Just three days before Kevyn Orr, the emergency manager appointed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to run the fiscally strapped city, filed thelargest municipal bankruptcy case in history, he signed a forbearance agreement with UBS and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch establishing a process to settle possible claims on default of $800 million of interest rate swaps.
Some of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dreams have certainly come true. But when it comes to closing the economic gap between black and white Americans, we've got a long way to go.
New Legislation Is Important Step Forward; Bill Can Be Strengthened
Representatives James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), John Conyers (D-MI), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Spenser Bachus (R-AL), John Lewis (D-GA), Sean Duffy (R-WI) and others have introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, offering common sense fixes designed to modernize the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Demos President Miles Rapoport issued the following statement in response:
