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Yesterday, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) introduced The Degrees Not Debt Act. This legislation would create a state-federal partnership program with the Department of Education, states, and public colleges or universities in order to ensure college affordability becomes a reality for all Americans.
Settlement Ensures Low-Income New Jerseyans Will Be Offered the Chance to Register to Vote
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY and WASHINGTON, D.C, July 14, 2016 — Voting rights advocates and New Jersey officials announced today that they have reached a settlement to ensure low-income citizens are provided voter registration services through public assistance agencies, as required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). New Jerseyans will be able to access these registration options in advance of the 2016 presidential elections.
Today, Congressman Robert Brady, the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, introduced the “Automatic Voter Registration Act of 2016.” A companion bill has also been introduced in the Senate. In response, Brenda Wright, Demos’ Vice President of Policy and Legal Strategies, offered the following statement of support:
Despite lore from parents and grandparents about the caddying jobs or serving gigs they used to pay for school, today’s young adults know the idea of working your way through college is about as antiquated as milk delivered daily in glass bottles or Mad Men-era martini lunches.
More bosses are weighing the credit worthiness of job candidates before making a hire — a practice that some lawmakers say unfairly keeps people with bad credit from landing a job.
On Thursday, the Senate takes up a proposal to restrict employers in most cases from using financial information such as credit scores to decide whom to hire, promote or fire. [...]
Black people make up one-fifth of Miami-Dade County's population. It doesn't exactly take a Nobel Laureate to see the county hasn't always treated its majority-black neighborhoods with a ton of respect. (See: Beckham, David.)
Today, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton announced major new additions to her plan to provide debt-free public college and reduce the burden of student debt for those struggling to repay. Clinton’s plan would eliminate tuition and fees for working- and middle-class students, which combined with expanded Pell Grants will allow millions of students to graduate with no debt.
There's no one reason for the routine neglect of African-American areas, but a study released today by the civil rights advocacy group Demos pinpoints a huge government-access problem in South Florida: Black people, the study says, can't keep up with the deluge of campaign money coming from Miami's cadre of rich lawyers, lobbyists, investors, and real-estate tycoons.