Sec. Hillary Clinton correctly noted the importance of the next president’s power to appoint Supreme Court justices. On no issue is this more true than on money in politics.
Bernie Sanders rang in the New Year with a rally in downtown Manhattan renewing his call to break up the big banks and jail executives who break laws. He also distilled the damage done by a predatory unconstrained economy into a single theme: for a long time, the rich have been getting richer as everyone else is mired in wage and wealth stagnation or worse.
Heather McGhee, the president of the leftist think tank Demos, kicked off the proceedings. “You ain’t seen nothing yet from the Working Families Party,” she said. “We’re electing leaders, we’re winning on issues, and most importantly, we’re changing what’s politically possible.”
Robert Hiltonsmith, a researcher at the think tank Demos, has estimated that the average household loses $155,000 in potential gains as a result of unnecessary fees.
When diversity activists began campaigning a few years ago for tech companies to disclose their employee demographics, the truth was revealed. What resulted was a lot of handwringing over the state of diversity in tech and some commitment from companies, including Twitter to do better. Sadly, few companies have moved the needle. But for Twitter, that failure could be its undoing. Worse, for would-be tech workers, if a company with Twitter’s user profile can’t get diversity right, there’s little hope for the sector overall.
In the waning days of 2015, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced bold plans to extend paid parental leave to 20,000 municipal employees. The initiative will certainly aid city workers and their families, who will now have time to bond with a new child without giving up a paycheck.
“We’ve already had a lot of states use student debt relief as a carrot to entering certain professions,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. “Now that most professions have student debtors in them you’re going to see broad-based relief plans,” like New York’s, he said.
New York’s is it’s linked specifically to income, so anyone making a relatively low salary — whether it’s an artist working out of a loft space in Bushwick or a nonprofit researcher toiling away in midtown — qualifies.
America could elect its first woman president next year, but even that would be a hollow sign of progress in a country mired in gender inequity.
The Supreme Court may well gut Roe v. Wade. Access to abortion and contraception has regressed dramatically, and clinics face increasing intimidation. The pay gap is stubbornly broad.
Last month, President Obama inaugurated yet another way to encourage Americans to save for retirement. In the new myRA accounts, workers can save up to $15,000 in a low-fee investment plan that, like a government savings bond, guarantees the principal. The accounts are a small step toward helping households save, but they are not an effective solution to the coming retirement crisis.
Starting in 2020, the numbers of very low-income elderly will rise sharply as the retired population soars to almost 56 million.
Does the arc bend, slowly, towards justice? Or is the course that was set at our nation’s founding so deeply misguided that progress towards true justice is asymptotic? Must we, in fact, break the arc and create a new structure?
⌗BlackLivesMatter is a young movement, literally and demographically. Democrats need young black voters, a key part of “the rising American electorate” that twice propelled Barack Obama into the white house. As Donovan X.
Sandra Bland’s arrest after a routine traffic stop was a terrible injustice; her death three days later was a tragedy; the fact that no one will be held accountable is beyond comprehension but, unfortunately, all too familiar.
Yesterday, a Texas grand jury failed to indict any of the officers or jail workers who came into contact with Sandra Bland.
Now that’s a holiday gift! On Tuesday, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that approximately 20,000 employees of New York City would be guaranteed paid parental leave—giving mothers and fathers critical time off to bond with a new baby, adoptee, or foster child without giving up a paycheck.
The Democrats need young black voters. But the political party of our parents doesn’t seem to know how to reach us — the black millennials they can’t afford to lose — this time around.
Nia Mirza, an international student from Pakistan, organized a petition earlier this year demanding NYU lower the cost of attendance after the annual price tag of attending the school suddenly rose from $64,000 to $71,000.
Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen is living in a bubble because the Fed just doesn’t see that. Perhaps the Fed wants to put the brakes on an economy already struggling up a hill on low fuel? Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos, believes the Fed’s interest-rate hike is a “small step toward slowing down the economy.”
Although the Paris Climate Deal certainly represents a step forward for the international community, there are still many potential pitfalls to addressing climate change. New data suggest that the overwhelmingly white donor class may be one such obstacle.
Advocates of automatic voter registration won two legislative battles in Oregon and California this year, and lost another in New Jersey when GOP Governor Chris Christie vetoed automatic registration legislation last month.
As the Republican presidential candidates gather tonight, it’s worth noting where they’re debating. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the biggest outside spenders in the 2012 election, own the casino where CNN will host the debate, and have been meeting with several of the candidates to decide who to endorse. They’ll certainly be watching tonight.