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Cecilia Tkaczyk’s victory is the latest sign that New Yorkers want a different campaign system and they want it now. Tkaczyk challenged a millionaire Assemblyman in a GOP-gerrymandered district and yet, despite a cash disadvantage and little name recognition, she managed to win by 19 votes. And, she managed to win based on her support for publicly financed elections.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — One of the biggest surprises in President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address this week was the prominence given to climate change, marking it as a signature issue for his second term.
The president spoke of the need to preserve the planet for future generations. But he also couched climate change in more immediate economic terms, with leadership on the issue as a necessary component for the U.S. to maintain its economic preeminence.
Washington, DC: Today, a petition on the White House website urging President Obama to “use the State of the Union to call for a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics” exceeded the 25,000 signatures necessary to guarantee an official White House response. The petition, launched by the groups Free Speech For People, Avaaz, People For the American Way, and Demos on January 8 took less than two weeks to cross the threshold.
Annapolis, MD – A coalition of government reform groups praised efforts by Governor Martin O’Malley and Delegate Kiril Reznik that would help Marylanders vote and make sure every vote is counted. The groups also encouraged the Governor to further strengthen his voting package and fix the range of problems Marylanders encountered last year at the polls. Those would include an increase and fair distribution of early voting sites and funding for a new voting system.
NEW YORK - Today, Demos and O’Melveny and Myers LLP filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of respondents in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (No.
A year and a half ago, at the Iowa State Fair, Mitt Romney told a protester, "Corporations are people, my friend." This line, ferociously derided by Democrats and weakly defended by Republicans, will likely play a significant part in the historical lore of the most recent Presidential election. The line is, on a pretty basic level, nonsensical -- x is not y -- and imbues corporate behemoths with a far greater beneficence than they deserve. That said, it has acquired some resonance now as John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods, is essentially making an argument for Romney's position.
Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz made some critically important observations in the Sunday New York Times. He pointed out that income disparity is a cause of the maddeningly slow recovery from the effects of the Great Recession, not merely a consequence of it. He drew parallels to the income disparity that predated the Great Depression.
The standard conservative rap on the social safety net is that it turns people into slackers by providing a comfy hammock and discouraging work and initiative.
Yesterday, President Obama offered a diametrically opposite analysis: Programs like Social Security and Medicare, he argued, actually enable people to reach higher:
these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.