As the White House prepares to launch a major economic opportunity effort, record high unemployment among black and Latino youth underscores how essential it is to create job opportunities for young people of color.
The critical issue here is that the ages of 16 to 24 are make or break years for lifelong earning potential. With one out four blacks and one out of six Latinos under the age of 25 without work, a generation of youth of color risks falling behind.
Staging imaginary competitions between cities and their elected leaders certainly makes for catchy headlines: “Step Aside, New York City. Los Angeles's Populism Is for Real” asserts the title of Nancy L. Cohen’s recent piece in the New Republic.
Today's progressive coalition -- the one that elected Obama twice and just put Bill de Blasio in power -- looks a bit like a barbell: Lots of poorer voters on one side and lots of highly educated professionals on the other. Obama won the high school dropout vote by a landslide and also won post-grads by 13 points -- but lost to Romney among voters with a college degree. Likewise, de Blasio commands strong support among the upper middle class and the poor alike.
Miles Rapoport, who led Demos through a period of extraordinary growth as President, will step down on March 10th to become the President and CEO of Common Cause, a grassroots organization dedicated to restoring the core values of American democracy.
"Demos has never been a job. It has been a mission, a family, and an organization that has grown to have national reach."
Let's say that we could wave a magic wand and get rid of all private spending on elections and campaign activity tomorrow. And then, the day after tomorrow, stymied conservative billionaires and corporate donors put their money into strengthening right-wing media outlets -- while progressive donors put their money into left-wing media.
Would money have any less influence over public policy outcomes in this new world?
Carter adopted an emerging technique in the 1970s, hiding references to whites behind talk of ethnic subpopulations, and he also presented blacks as trying to preserve their own segregated neighborhoods. Notwithstanding these dissimulations, few could fail to understand that Carter was defending white efforts to oppose racial integration, and many liberals criticized Carter for doing so.
If there is one thing that every smart and practical progressive knows it is that you should never, ever talk about "equality of outcomes" in the United States of America.
During his Senate hearing yesterday, Debo Adegbile, President Obama’s pick for Justice Department Civil Rights Division chief, was asked by Sen. Chuck Grassley if he would block state voter ID laws if confirmed. In his previous capacity, Adegible served as attorney and one-time acting president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has been in litigation with Texas over its voter ID law for the past three years. Adegbile also twice argued before the U.S.
What separates Congress from people like you and me? About a million dollars, among other things. A new report from the Center for Responsive Politics finds that for the first time in history, a majority of Congressional members have a net worth exceeding $1 million.
Millionaires occupy the majority of seats in Congress for the first time since ethics laws mandated personal financial disclosures, according to a new Center for Responsive Politics report.
Out of 534 members of Congress -- there was one vacant seat -- 268 have an average net worth of more than $1 million.
JP Morgan Chase has now been hit with a total of $20 billion in fines and restitution for a variety of misdeeds over the past decade -- a record total by far for any business. Is the bank reeling in shame and pain? Has it gotten rid of the CEO who incurred all those penalties? Has its stock sunk to historic new lows?
No, no, and no.
The bank's stock price is actually higher now that it was before this avalanche of fines began -- indeed, the stock is near a five-year high.
In a speech at AEI today, Senator Marco Rubio outlined a broad vision for reducing poverty and increasing opportunity. Here's the most important thing that Rubio said:
Montgomery, AL – The Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, represented by attorneys from Project Vote, Demos, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the law firms Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP and Copeland Franco, signed settlement agreements with the Alabama Secretary of State, the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR), and the Alabama Medicaid Agency addressing deficiencies in the state agencies’ provision of voter registration services and setting out procedures intended to guarantee compliance with Section 7 of the National Voter Registratio
Not only is the U.S. far from achieving a post-racial society, but dog-whistle politics is reinforcing the role of race and contributing to the decline of the middle class as whites vote against their own best interests.
Imagine there are two ways to fight poverty: Option A, we accept an economy where a third of all jobs pay near-poverty wages, but we spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on transfer payments to lift millions of Americans technically above the poverty line. Or Option B: we do what it takes to transform the economy so enough good jobs exist that anyone who works hard can afford a decent life and save enough for a secure retirement.
Betty McCray, 53, has moved around a bit in her lifetime. She’s worked as a chef, a nursing home attendant and a welder. Throughout, she says proudly, she has “worked union,” even in states with anti-labor right-to-work laws, such as Tennessee, where she moved in 2010 to be closer to her son.
There was little merry or bright this holiday season for millions of unemployed Americans who are losing their extended unemployment benefits.
Many depend on these meager payments, a federal extension of state unemployment programs that expired as of the last Saturday of 2013, to stay afloat. After tapping out their savings, downsizing their living space, and draining their retirement funds, one-time managers and MBA grads bought Christmas gifts secondhand and worry over what the new year will bring. [...]