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The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday called "The Citizens United Court and the Continuing Importance of the Voting Rights Act." At first glance, this may seem a strange title. Citizens United, after all, was a (flawed) decision about the role of money in politics.
Today, Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed would launch another round of $40 billion dollar a month quantitative easing, a decision that analysts expected after his pessimistic appraisal of the recovery in Jackson Hole last week. Bernanke's not only doubling down on quantitative easing, but, unlike in past rounds, the program will be open-ended. The Fed's pledged to continue purchasing until the recovery strengthens.
Here’s one especially for the folks who, while vehemently attacking the Chicago teachers’ strike, insist that they generally love and support organized labor. Warehouse employees in southern California would greatly benefit from your outpouring of solidarity.
POLITICO led this morning with a piece arguing that Mitt Romney's clay feet on the subject of national security threaten to turn him into John Kerry. I don't quite buy the comparison, however Kerry-like Mr Romney may be in his stiffness and aloofness; Mr Romney never claimed national security as a core competency, as Mr Kerry did.
A common perception of the upcoming presidential election is that it will pivot on whether voters credit the recent uptick in employment as indicative of an economic turnaround, and thus support the President. Or whether they view record unemployment as a sign that a new approach to the economy is called for, even if the downward trend has been arrested.
This is consistent with academic models of presidential elections in which high unemployment at election-time, at least in the past, has predicted defeat for the party in power.
A new report from the World Business Council for Sustainable Business details the importance of environmental accounting. As the report highlights that while every business depends on ecosystems, these resources are being rapidly depleted. The impact that resources depletion has on businesses is multi-layered:
Accurately described as "One of the Worst Ideas from Congress in Decades," plans to advance the Independent Regulatory Analysis Act were this week delayed until November by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
A very different kind of organizing campaign than AFSCME’s is going on in states across the country with a single undemocratic purpose: to keep voters away from the ballot box.