Critics love to beat up on government for its screw-ups and misfires -- as if these mistakes prove the point that the public sector can't do anything right. Exhibit A of late is the failed loan to Solyndra, which has been seized on as evidence that Washington can't create green jobs or do industrial policy more generally.
Today the average college grad leaves school with just over $24,000 in debt, an amount that eats up $276 every month if you stretch the payments out over ten years and it’s a government loan with a 6.8 percent interest rate. Of course, one out of five students also carries more costly private loans, where interest rates are in the double digits and fees add to the balance. This debt-for-diploma system is what counts as opportunity in America today.
One of the most frustrating things about the present moment is that public distrust of government is surging at exactly the moment when we need a bold and effective public sector. Worse, while Americans now seem ready to tackle the biggest problem of recent decades -- rising inequality -- it's easy to derail such action in the face of widespread distrust of government.
Today, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary passed, on a party-line vote, one of the most sweeping attacks in decades on government protections.
The Rules from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) bill would require that any major regulatory rule issued by a federal agency be affirmed by a majority vote in both the House and Senate. The vote would have to take place within 70 days.
NEW YORK— On Wednesday, November 2, policy center Demos and youth advocacy organization Young Invincibles will release a new report revealing the profound economic challenges facing America’s young people – and how these challenges threaten the future of the middle class. “The State of Young America” also includes the results of an exclusive national poll of young people on their economic outlook, conducted by Lake Research Partners and Bellweather Research & Consulting.
They say it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. But a month or two from now, I expect media outlets to look at their outlays for coverage of Herman Cain's campaign -- the thousands of dollars shelled out for plane fare, rental cars, hotels and so on -- and be appalled. In the age of contraction, political coverage is increasingly a zero sum game.
A two-hour “teach-in” Monday afternoon prompted by the Wall Street protest produced an array of ideas from economists and their students about how to counter big-monied interests and nurture a more egalitarian society that values genuine wellbeing over raw growth.
The forum, organized by the Gund Institute of Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, drew more than 200 people to the Ira Allen Chapel and offered a mix of rousing rhetoric and lower-key policy-speak.
It's no secret that the technology industry is gung-ho about a corporate tax repatriation holiday. After all, many big tech firms do a huge amount of business abroad and have piled up a mountain of foreign profits that they are now itching to bring home during a one-time holiday where they would pay a fraction of the usual tax rate. In fact, no other industry now holds more cash overseas.
Thank you, Members of the Minnesota Judicial Special Redistricting Panel, for providing the opportunity to submit written testimony. Dēmos is a national, non-profit, non-partisan research and policy organization. The Dēmos Democracy Program works to ensure high levels of voting and civic engagement, and supports reforms to achieve a more inclusive and representative democracy.
Here's a data point that slipped under the radar when the U.S. Labor Department released its latest job numbers earlier this month: Layoffs of public sector workers accounted for the biggest chunk of pink slips handed out overall in September.
The latest attack on green jobs attempts to portray the U.S. Department of Labor’s green jobs training program as a failure and claims that President Obama failed on his promise to create 5 million green jobs by the end of the decade.
AUGUSTA-- This week, national voting rights organizations, the ACLU and Demos, as well as the local ACLU of Maine call upon the Secretary of State to cease and desist actions that threaten and intimidate legitimate voters, particularly students singled out by the Maine Republican Party earlier this year. The ACLU and Demos expressed concern that Secretary of State Charlie Summers has violated the United States Constitution and federal laws, including the federal Voting Rights Act.
NEW YORK— The national public policy center Demos welcomes the expanded availability of language assistance for limited-English-proficient voters in future elections, as announced yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The increase was occasioned by the Census Bureau’s recalculation of Latino, Asian American, Native American and Alaskan Native citizens needing such assistance, as provided for under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act.
A few decades ago, it also would have been difficult to imagine how such a Kol Nidre service could have come together. Like Occupy Wall Street and its growing number of spin-offs, these events happen because of the extensive use of social media by savvy organizers who don’t need or seek the blessings of communal leadership.
