State attorneys general are directly elected by voters in nearly every state and if politics made sense, the 26 AGs that have filed suit against Obamacare would be booted out by voters. Why? Because these AGs represent states that stand to disproportionately benefit from the law. Meanwhile, many AGs from states that won't see big benefits -- but will foot much of the bill for the law -- are sitting on the sidelines.
For going on 14 years, the Florida Republican Party has fiddled and belittled the middle class. It isn't an act of God that's destroying the American Dream; it's petty, self-serving, greedy acts of Man, justified by a perversion of capitalism that's the equivalent of economic rape. Relentlessly, a political, ideological mind-set has been robbing generations of their "pursuit of happiness."
A lesson in how not to reduce gas prices: the White House is backing TransCanada’s bid to build the southern portion of the controversial pipeline Keystone XL pipeline. The section to be built will run from Cushing, Oklahoma to Texas and carry crude oil pumped in the Midwest to refineries in Texas and be completed by late 2013—so it will have virtually no impact on the current high gas prices.
NEW YORK - Yesterday, civil rights legend John Payton passed away suddenly, stunning the civil rights and voting rights community. Demos issued the following statement to honor his historic work and the legacy he leaves behind:
Few trends in human history have been more environmentally destructive than the rise of America's car culture starting in the 20th century. Americans drive their cars more than people in any other country and drive less fuel-efficient cars. There are 808 cars in the United States for every 1000 people, a rate 50 percent higher than most European countries.
The Federal Reserve Board of Dallas released a report from its chief researcher, Harvey Rosenblum, which has caused quite a stir. The report cites Fed statistics showing that the five largest US banks hold a remarkable 52% of all bank assets:
Today is the second anniversary of Obama’s healthcare reform being signed into law, but he’s not commenting on it. He may be afraid of touching this new third rail of politics that the right has created, but there are some reasons young Americans should be celebrating today.
Say you’ve got a booming industry, one that already employs 2 million workers in the U.S. and is poised to add 1.3 million additional jobs by 2020. Imagine that the jobs cannot be off-shored, that the work helps decrease federal deficits, and millions of Americans depend on the industry just to get through their daily lives.
While the attention of Connecticut's legislature has been occupied by the recent budget battles, an even larger crisis has been brewing: retirement security.
As the Supreme Court takes up the Affordable Care Act and its most controversial provision, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, legal analysts are busily debating how the ruling might go -- looking back decades for precedents.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the first ever survey of green jobs today with some very promising numbers. In 2010, 3.1 million jobs were Green Goods and Services jobs (GGS) with 2.3 million in the private sector and 860,300 in the public sector. These numbers are even higher than the Brookings Institution estimates released last fall. Brookings estimated that 2.7 million people were employed in the green economy.
We are seeing the results of a radical shift in employer-provided retirement benefits. In the past decade, the percentage of private-sector Connecticut workers whose employer offers a retirement plan has fallen from 68 percent in 2001 to 58 percent today, effectively shutting nearly 650,000 workers out of any workplace retirement plan to supplement Social Security.
And while the quantity of benefits was declining, the quality of those benefits was deteriorating as well.
Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" created by "madmen." Real WMD have rarely been used. However, derivatives are used quite a lot, a $600 trillion per year market dominated by a narrow oligopoly of mega-banks. It appears that Italy got hit by the derivatives WMD in January.
State governments are in for a rough year, according to a recent report from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "For fiscal year 2013, the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2012, 29 states have projected or have addressed shortfalls totaling $47 billion."
TheWall Street Journal ran a disingenuous and misleading opinion piece on Sunday evening titled "The Corporate Disclosure Assault," arguing that “[u]nions and liberal activists are using proxy rules to attack business political speech.” The piece—exactly like the undisclosed corporate money it’s pandering to—doesn’t even have an author listed.
