When the Supreme Court in Citizens United allowed corporations to spend money in elections they thought that shareholders would be able to monitor the use of corporate funds “through procedures of corporate democracy.”
On the eve of National Voter Registration Day, California has taken a huge leap forward in reducing the barriers to voting. Governor Brown signed into law a Same Day Registration program, making California the 11th (and largest) state – plus Washington, D.C.
As a practical matter, government largely functions through bureaucratic regulations. But controversy is growing around the seemingly benign requirement that regulators consider costs and benefits when adopting new rules. Despite the rationality implied by the words “costs and benefits,” those who champion greater attention to these factors are, in fact, mounting an insidiously dangerous attack on government.
NEW YORK – National public policy organization Demos is joining hundreds of non-partisan groups for National Voter Registration Week, beginning September 24, to help counter attacks on the freedom to vote and ensure that the nation’s elections are free, fair, and accessible. Next week, for the first time ever, concerned citizens across the nation are coming together, pulling out all the stops, to make sure that every eligible voter is registered and able to vote in this critical election year.
Election integrity is impaired when eligible Americans are prevented from exercising their fundamental right to vote and having their voices heard on the issues that affect their lives. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania just said the same thing when considering a new voter ID requirement, writing “if the Law is enforced in a manner that prevents qualified and eligible electors from voting, the integrity of the upcoming General Election will be impaired.”
As we’ve written, New York is considering allowing fracking in limited areas of the state, despite the environmental and economic damage that comes with the practice.
Since 2005, the gambling industry has spent at least $9.5 million on lobbying and $1.5 million in campaign contributions per election cycle in New York. Compare this to the banking and financial service sector, which spent $16 million on lobbying each election cycle, and the energy sector, which spent $1.4 million in campaign contributions in 2010 alone.
The afternoon before early voting began in the 2010 midterm elections, a crowd of people gathered in the offices of a Houston Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots. They soon formed a line that snaked out the door of the Patriots’ crumbling storefront and down the block, past the neighboring tattoo parlor. The volunteers, all of whom had been trained by the Patriots to work as poll watchers, had come to collect their polling-place assignments.
Is there a “state of emergency” over voting rights in America? That was the declaration of a coalition of civil rights, faith-based and social justice organizations and groups representing communities of color in a conference call on Wednesday, just in time for National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25.
You’re going to hear “both sides do it” on this issue and that’s not true, so I thought I’d compare what voter protection lawyers and others actually do on the ground in Ohio with what True the Vote has done in past elections in Texas and Massachusetts:
As a New Yorker, the idea of surviving in Manhattan on less than $10,000 a year is pretty much unfathomable. But that's the harsh reality that the poorest fifth of Manhattanites face, according to new data from the New York Times.
The wealth gap in this infamous borough is now so large that it rivals rates in notoriously impoverished sub-Saharan Africa:
Mitt Romney’s complaint that nearly half of us are untaxed government dependents, poisoning the country with an “entitlement” mentality, is the strangest yet to emerge from the twisted moral universe of America’s most government-dependent class, the financial elite.
Conservatives are trumpeting a new video in which a younger Obama embraces the dreaded socialist sin of redistribution. His earlier words will no doubt hurt Obama among some segment of the electorate -- even though most voters in both parties, whether they realize it or not, actually favor a host of redistributive policies.
Outreach and leadership will strengthen worker rights, but a cultural shift is needed in the way we think and talk about work, panelists said Sept. 12 at the launch of the ILR School's Worker Institute. The event, moderated by MSNBC political analyst Chris Hayes, drew an audience of 300 to hear representatives of community organizations, unions, academia, business and other sectors talk about "Strengthening Worker Voice, Advancing Economic Fairness" at the headquarters of Service Employees International Union 32BJ in Manhattan.
In a 4-2 decision issued yesterday, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court vacated a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed the state’s controversial voter ID law to go into effect for this November’s elections.
The ruling, which sent the case back to the lower Commonwealth Court for further consideration, is not the end of the legal fight over Pennsylvania’s Voter ID laws, but the decision is being celebrated as an important step in the right direction.
Last Friday a Circuit Judge in Dane County, Wisconsin ruled that certain portions of the Wisconsin law known as “Act 10” was unconstitutional under the state and federal constitution. Act 10 is the controversial law passed by the Wisconsin legislature in the March, 2011, that practically stripped most of Wisconsin’s public sector workers of their rights to engage in collective bargaining.
Last week you may have seen my brother Dave grimacing on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek. He was the posterboy for Peter Coy's cover story, "Student Loans: Debt for Life," about the more than $1 trillion in student loan debt owed by US borrowers.
David Callahan has already posted a comprehensive analysis of Mitt Romney's recently revealed assertion that 47 percent of Americans are entitled freeloaders, and it's well worth a read.
So I'm going to tackle another, related question: Why is there such a persistent, pernicious tendency to beat up on the poor? What psychological needs are filled by this all-too-common feature of our political discourse?
A mid-September sunny day in New York City draws those with the day off to go to the parks and laze along the avenues, walking by the workers on call, cleaning up after tourists, holding together a city that always seems held together by the sweat of its massive workforce and a dose of city pride. Beneath the massive Washington Arch, a woman in a wheelchair, beside other men and women in wheelchairs and other prosthetic devices, holds a sign that says, “Occupy Wheelchairs.” The Occupy Wall Street Disability Caucus is holding an assembly to proclaim its presence at Occupy, Year 2.
