More than 1,000 people took to the streets of downtown Detroit to protest against the city’s ongoing water shutoff initiative, while a number of civil rights organizations formally called for a moratorium on the practice.
As Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his appointed “emergency manager” were steering Detroit into bankruptcy last fall, the public-policy think tank Demos released a groundbreaking report on the city’s financial circumstance—and how to address it.
The state-appointed Detroit Emergency Manager has commenced a program of shutting off the water of a large portion of the 138,000 delinquent accounts, up to 90,000 of which are poor households and largely African-American.
EMPLOYEES IN NYC CAN USE SICK LEAVE STARTING JULY 30. That’s the simple message New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs was spreading on street corners and subway stops this morning in English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and four other languages common to the city.
Introduction In March 2013, acting under a controversial statute that authorized extraordinary action, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to replace the elected government of Detroit. By July, the emergency manager had filed for bankruptcy of the city.
In pledging $50-million to strengthen America’s "flailing democracy," the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has stirred criticism among liberal groups that in doing so it has jettisoned some of its core values. In its three-year "Madison Initiative," named after James Madison, an American founder
President Barack Obama recently defied Republican threats to file suit against him for his use of executive orders. "If House Republicans are really concerned about me taking too many executive actions, the best solution to that is passing bills," the president said. "Pass a bill, solve a problem."
Citibank settled the Justice Department’s mortgage market investigation yesterday, agreeing to pay $4 billion in civil penalties, $500 million in penalties to various states and $2.5 billion in “soft dollars” to aid consumers damaged by their pre-financial crisis shenanigans. To reach agreement, the
Nathan Kelly is an associate professor of political science at the University of Tennessee. His book, The Politics of Inequality in the United States, examines how politics affects the market distribution of income, as well as government redistribution. Kelly and I discuss the implications of his
In his HBO show last night, John Oliver had an astute segment on the growth of inequality in our democracy. His segment echoes our Stacked Deck analysis, hitting on American attitudes toward class and echoing our argument about the striking political saliency of repealing the estate tax. He even
