Here’s another reason to not like Wall Street, as if we needed more: Gas prices are rising right now not just because of instability in the Middle East, but as a result of Wall Street speculators and traders. Recent reporting indicates that speculators and traders are holding on to a record number of gasoline contracts, equal to roughly 44 percent of U.S. inventories of gasoline.
Few would disagree that the United States needs to stay on the cutting edge of science and technology in order to remain a global economic powerhouse. Stop innovating in today's high-tech era and we'll be left behind by those countries that do.
Where there is ever less agreement, though, is what the proper role is for government in helping to spur innovation. No surprise there, since everything government does is now being fiercely contested.
At the University of Virginia, 17 students (now including a member of the school’s beloved athletic program) are entering the 7th day of a hunger strike, calling for living wages for all campus employees.
Physically large and in charge, Mike Daisey’s performance style suggests a peculiar combination of the late Spalding Gray and Lewis Black of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He sits at a table on a bare stage with some notes and a glass of water and simply tells his story; at times hysterically funny, at others, poignant, withering and accusatory. Some might find his manner a bit loud and overbearing: the night we were there last fall, media moguls Barry Diller and David Geffen were sitting a couple of rows in front of us and walked out after the first fifteen minutes or so.
In November of 2010, New York state’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights—the first such law in the nation—went into effect, giving some 200,000 nannies, health aides, housekeepers, private cooks, and other at-home workers considerable power to address the poor conditions they often encounter in their unusual workplaces. Around the same time, the Urban Justice Center began holding a monthly legal clinic to help domestic workers file complaints.
Here is a question you shouldn't have to think on too hard.
What is a more likely scenario in the next ten or twenty years: A) the United States economy is dealt a grievous blow by an energy crisis that, say, is brought on by a disruption of oil supplies from the Persian Gulf; or B) the U.S. faces a military showdown with a foe that possesses more advanced weaponry than we do?
“It’s a disgrace that this is happening in a country as rich as ours,” former New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert said, describing what he called a “massive employment crisis” in the U.S.
Herbert, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the economic equality think tank Demos, delivered his lecture on “A Call to Civic Engagement” as part of SIPA’s Weston lecture series.
Ahead of the 20th UN Conference on Sustainable Development in June, Oxfam has released a discussion paper that presents a model that could help eradicate poverty while at the same time is environmentally sustainable.
The federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the State of New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD) violated Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) by improperly withholding voter registration applications from certain public assistance clients.
Thank you, members of the Committee for this opportunity to present testimony. I am a Senior Policy Analyst in the Economic Opportunity Program at Dēmos. We are a national, non-partisan research and advocacy organization, established in 2000 and headquartered in New York City. The Dēmos Economic Opportunity Program works to achieve a more equitable economy with opportunity for all.
Here we go again. Another holiday, another sale-explosion/shopping extravaganza. Can we stop and ask ourselves: Is buying more stuff, which we probably do not need and may very well not use, the best way to honor our Presidents?
A Vermont Partnership Bank will generate new revenue for Vermont, save local governments money, and make our small businesses, farms and consumers less vulnerable to cutbacks in lending in our state.
School in New York is probably going to get a little more dull. Yesterday the United Federation of Teachers and Governor Cuomo struck a compromise on the issue of teacher evaluations that will probably mean less focus on creative assignments and more on standardized testing.
During the fight over national healthcare reform, I often made the point that it was deeply backward how members of Congress were lining up on this debate. The healthcare law promised to redistribute wealth from affluent coastal and metropolitan areas represented by Democrats to poorer, more rural parts of the country that send Republicans to Congress.
Work-study for students and institutions alike is an invaluable program, especially given the high unemployment rates for college age students (some 15 percent of 18-24 year-old-students are still having a hard time finding work) and the unflagging rise in college tuition. As far as institutions go, a Financial Aid Director from a community college in Pennsylvania summarizes well the benefits of the program: “I’m a big fan of work-study.
In 1907, Congress banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in the wake of the robber baron-era scandals. In 1947, the ban was formally applied to corporate expenditures and extended to cover labor unions.
