The movement has drawn some support from financial circles. Wallace C. Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs banker who now is a senior fellow at Demos, a public policy research organization in New York,submitted testimony last month for the Senate Banking Committee in favor of more banking regulation.
In its May 2012 Plastic Safety Net survey, research and advocacy company Demos surveyed 997 low- and middle-income American households that carried credit card debt for three months or more — and looked at how the recession and the Credit CARD Act of 2009 have affected American households.
Forget those jumbo checks Sheldon Adelson wrote for Newt Gingrich in the GOP primary, or even the big money that Romney is pulling in now from wealthy bundlers. The most dramatic illustration of how private wealth is perverting elections can be found in Ohio, where Senator Sherrod Brown is being pummeled by inaccurate negative ads funded by conservative outside groups and super PACs.
Aaron Skirboll has a great article on Alternet that details the history of renewable energy policy and why we are unable to move away from fossil fuel. Skirboll’s article details how President Carter encouraged conservation and a move towards energy independence by, among other things, increasing solar funding from $75,000 in 1970 to $261 million in 1977.
We have written a lot here at Demos about how the 401(k) system as been a total flop, leaving millions of Americans without enough money to retire. Holders of 401(k)s have gotten hit from nearly every direction: hurt by stock market meltdowns, ripped off by high administrative fees, and hurt by financial needs that lead them to withdraw money from their accounts.
One of the main reason alternative indicators are important is that they take things that we value on a visceral level, like the environment, and put them into the universal language of capital.
By 2007, the top 1 percent of earners took home 35 percent of all income earned in New York state, according to a study done by Demos, a policy research firm based in New York City.
That compares with just 10 percent of all income for this group in 1980.
Steep declines in skilled manufacturing jobs and a huge uptick in shorter-term, lower-paying jobs.
The political heat had been building for months on the Obama administration to provide a solution, even if only partial, to the plight of young people who came to the U.S as children, and were raised as Americans but had little chance to make it in this country.
Defenders of unregulated capitalism argue that markets tend to police themselves, as bottom feeders and cheaters get punished by consumers who take their business elsewhere. But this assumes that consumers know they are being victimized in the first place, which often they don't.
Despite continual claims that renewable energy will never be able to replace fossil fuels, its development and expansion continues at an impressive pace. A new report shows that not only is global renewable energy production increasing, investment in renewables is also increasing. In 2010, renewable energy sources supplied nearly 17 percent of all global final energy consumption. Investment in renewables rose 17 percent to $257 billion, despite the debt crisis in Europe.
NEW YORK – Almost two out of five American Indians and Alaska Natives eligible to vote are not registered, but according to a new report by national policy center Demos, designating Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities as official voter registration agencies under the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) would go a long way toward addressing this civic crisis.
“Our democracy is stronger when all of our citizens participate, and this is all the more true in the case of American Indians and Alaska Natives.”
As we all sit around waiting for the Supreme Court to hand down decisions on a whole handful of whoppers — the Affordable Care Act, the Arizona "Papers, Please" law — it was something the Court didn't do this week that may be the most overlooked matter of all. It has before it a case from Montana whereby that state's supreme court upheld Montana's 100-year-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case.
Philly has more than 40,000 vacant properties, 10,000 of which are under the city's control, and 30,000 of which are owned by private landowners. Some 20,000 of these properties are long-term tax delinquent.
Yesterday, I wrote about some of the new indicators coming out of the Rio +20 conference, including a corporate initiative to value natural capital. On first glance, I have to admit that I couldn’t get past the idea that it was an exercise in advanced greenwashing.
Here's a day that many of us thought we'd never see: Hot button topics like immigration and contraception operating as wedge issues -- but in ways that benefit Democrats.
Start with the awkward spot that the White House has placed Mitt Romney in with its policy shift on the deportation of young immigrants.
American workers are being ripped off by excessive retirement plan fees — which may force them to work longer or live less comfortably in their golden years, according to a recent study.
For the average US household, the high fees drain about $155,000 from their 401(k) accounts over their lifetimes, the study found.
In one example highlighted in the study, a two-wage-earner household with a median income for their age group contributed an average of 7 percent a year to their 401(k) plan over 40 years.
Malloy wrote in his veto message that he believed parts of the bill to be unconstitutional, potentially infringing on individuals' free speech protections under the First Amendment. Other parts of 5556, he argued, "represent poor public policy choices." He went on, "While I have advocated for transparency in the elections and campaign finance process for a long time, and could certainly support sensible reform in this area again, I cannot support the bill before me given its many legal and practical problems."
According to all available data, the voter participation rate of the first Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, is among the lowest of any ethnic group in the country. There are complex historical and cultural reasons that make the issue of voting among American Indians and Alaska Natives unique.
Most of the coverage last week of the Fed study on household wealth focused on the gigantic financial hit taken by nearly all Americans since 2007. Dig deeper into the report, though, and it makes for even scarier reading, as many of those people losing lots of wealth are older and don’t have much time to recover before retiring.
There’s been a lot of fighting the last several months about new restrictions on the right to vote. We learn that these laws, including voter ID, rules around registration, and limits on early voting disproportionately impact African Americans, Latinos, youth and other groups, many of which already have lower participation rates than the white population.
