"It's unbelievable, probably half the states in the country have bills in play and more than a dozen are seriously in the pipeline," Tova Wang of the left-leaning think tank Demos told TPM in an interview. "It's really unprecedented in terms of geographic scope. I've never seen anything like it certainly since I've been working on voting rights issues that voter suppression bills would be introduced in so many places at the same time."
Redistricting too often succumbs to gerrymandering. Instead of the people choosing their elected officials, the elected officials choose their constituents.
Wherever the final line is drawn, Democrats appear willing to accept a deal close to Republican leaders’ original plan. White House aides say that such a deal could pay political dividends when the bigger fights start because the agreement would establish the president as the most reasonable politician in Washington. Progressives are not happy, however, even if Democrats are able to remove controversial GOP policy riders, such as those that eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood and hamper the implementation of the health care law.
Among the other states taking up the issue are Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas and Ohio. In all four of those states, Republicans advanced their Voter ID bills last week. Those states look to join the eight states that require photo ID and the 19 that require some form of ID, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The state attorney general wants federal regulators to take enforcement action against the Indian Point nuclear plant for what he called the company's failure to comply with fire safety requirements.
"In the wake of Japan's crisis, our country's nuclear facilities should be bolstering their safety measures, yet Indian Point is looking to weaken its precautionary measures," Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Monday.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has written his last New York Times column, but I hope and expect he will stay in the debate. He lived up to the venerable injunction that journalists should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. We need his passion.
Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline.
So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.
But Richard Brodsky, a former long-time New York legislator and lawyer who has done battle with Indian Point on a range of issues, argued in an interview Tuesday that the NRC has been no tougher a regulator than the Securities and Exchange Commission and other federal agencies that allowed the financial meltdown of 2008 to happen.
If you really want to improve the education of poor children, you have to get them away from learning environments that are smothered by poverty.
One of the most powerful tools for improving the educational achievement of poor black and Hispanic public school students is, regrettably, seldom even considered. It has become a political no-no.
Worst-case scenarios unfold more frequently than we’d like to believe, which leads to two major questions regarding nuclear power that Americans have an obligation to answer.
First, can a disaster comparable to the one in Japan happen here? The answer, of course, is yes — whether caused by an earthquake or some other event or series of events. Nature is unpredictable and human beings are fallible. It could happen.
On March 4, Manhattan Federal Judge Loretta Preska upheld an NRC decision to let Indian Point operator Entergy use insulation that withstands fire for only 27 minutes.
The crisis in Japan has reignited intense debate among lawmakers about the safety of U.S. nuclear-power plants; nowhere more so than at Indian Point, where two aging reactors are 24 miles north of New York City.
Rates for basic landline telephone service would probably go up if a bill moving rapidly through the Legislature becomes law, according to a report to be released today by two interest groups.
The report, by the left-leaning New Jersey Policy Perspective and Demos, cites a 2009 survey by the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates that found rates rose in 17 of 20 states that deregulated the service. The increases ranged from 8 percent to 100 percent.
