The student loan default rate is soaring, and it's flying highest among for-profit schools.
The U.S. Department of Education reports that across the nation, the share of borrowers who default within two years after college loan payments become due has risen nearly a full percentage point to 10 percent, while the rate for people who default within three years is up to 14.7 percent.
WHAT: Press call about upcoming SCOTUS Case McCutcheon v. FEC featuring NAACP, Sierra Club, Communications Workers of America, People For The American Way Foundation, Greenpeace, Main Street Alliance, OurTime.org, Rock The Vote, American Federation of Teachers, Working Families Organization, U.S. PIRG and Demos.
The Census Bureau has steadfastly resisted calls to end the practice of counting inmates as “residents” of their prisons instead of the cities and towns where they lived and to which they typically return. The bureau’s new director, John Thompson, seems at least open to ending this wrongful practice.
For some recent college graduates, this fall’s back-to-school season marks the beginning of the back-to-living-at-home stage of their lives. But with careful financial planning, that stage doesn’t have to last long, advisers say.
Delano Wingfield, 22, has been grilling up food and cleaning dishes at Roti Mediterranean Grill in Washington D.C.’s Union Station for almost a year. Struggling to get by on $9 an hour, he started encouraging coworkers to strike with him. His manager found out, he said, and slashed his hours.
“It was hard with 35 hours, and now I don’t know what I’m about to do with the 20 hours they gave me,” he said Wednesday. “I’m out here to make myself and everyone else more money.” (Wingfield’s manager did not respond to a request for comment.)
In a speech last July, President Obama vowed that “whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I’ll use it.” On Wednesday, an estimated 175 workers who serve food, sell mementos or do maintenance work in federal buildings in Washington D.C. went on strike for the day. Instead of showing up at their jobs, they showed up in front of the White House, where they urged President Obama to live up to his word.
Americans are coming to face the hard reality that they live in a new Gilded Age, with inequality at levels not seen since before the Great Depression. Even worse: Uncle Sam is subsidizing this lopsided economy.
Here’s an easy way for the government to save about $7 billion a year: Tighten the cap on the lavish salaries paid to executives at government contractors.
The cap is currently at $760,000 per contract per executive per year. That’s almost 15 times greater than the average household income – meaning that the federal government is helping to worsen the same income inequality President Obama has decried.
Courtney Shackleford is one of two entry-level employees at the Ben and Jerry’s in Washington, D.C.,’s Union Station, where she makes $8.25 an hour. Like many workers in America’s growing low-wage economy, she struggles to make ends meet: Between her pregnancy and her tuition fees at Trinity Washington University, Shackleford doesn’t make enough to cover basic expenses.
NEW YORK, NY – Following the Census Bureau’s release of poverty numbers verifying the country’s growing income gap, national public policy center Demos has published a new report illustrating how the federal government promotes inequality through its contracting policies.
Cleaning and concessions workers plan to walk off their jobs in federal buildings Wednesday and march on the White House, where they’ll demand President Obama wield his executive authority to raise the labor standards for their taxpayer-funded jobs. Organizers expect turnout for the work stoppage to outstrip the fledgling union-backed group’s first strike May 21, which drew just over a hundred Washington, DC workers. [...]
So much has been accomplished by Occupy and other social justice movements in the past two years that it is incredible the corporate media and their pundits do not report on what is happening around them. Despite the lack of corporate media coverage, the movement is deepening, creating democratic institutions, stopping some of the worst policies from being pushed by the corporate duopoly and building a broad-based diverse movement. [...]
The American dream has become the American debt trap.
During the economic downturn, millions of cash-strapped Americans relied on credit cards to pay unexpected medical bills or to weather unemployment.
Now, in an economic recovery enjoyed mainly by the wealthy, ordinary Americans can’t earn enough to pay off their debts or break their reliance on credit for basic needs, new studies show.
Credit has become so essential to survival that 20 million American households do not expect to ever live debt-free, according to a new survey by consumer research firm Mintel.
If you're going to have a raucous, costumed march in New York City, Midtown makes for a great setting. Nurses and HIV activists in Robin Hood hats took the streets yesterday, blocking traffic as they called for a financial transaction tax to fully fund healthcare and other public services. Chants of “People, not profits! Medicare for all!” filled rush-hour streets as business-suited professionals dodged through the crowds.
Today, the Obama administration extended minimum wage and labor protections to nearly two million home care workers, ensuring that these employees will now be covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Last year, Demos submitted a public comment to the Department of Labor urging this regulation.
There’s a line in Johnny Paycheck’s 1977 hit song that goes “I’d give the shirt right off my back, if I had the guts to say ... Take this job and shove it, I ain’t working here no more.” In the past year, fast-food, retail, and warehouse workers have shown they do have the guts—but instead of quitting, they’re fighting back. From New York to California they’re taking to the streets. They’re fighting for a living wage, for respect from their bosses, and in some cases, for the right to form a union.
Like so many young Americans, Derek Wetherell is stuck.
At 23 years old, he has a job, but not a career, and little prospect for advancement. He has tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, but no college degree. He says he is more likely to move back in with his parents than to buy a home, and he doesn't know what he will do if his car—a 2001 Chrysler Sebring with well over 100,000 miles—breaks down.
Progressive groups are warning that the Supreme Court may be on the verge of allowing federal candidates to collect multi-million dollar checks from donors.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, attorneys and representatives from the campaign finance watchdog groups Democracy, Public Citizen and Demos all raised the specter of candidates hosting $1 million-a-plate fundraisers in the near future if the Supreme Court strikes down a key provision of campaign finance law.
Why are social justice organizations up in arms about an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case involving political contribution limits? It might have something to do with America's widening income inequality, which in many ways is being financed by wealthy campaign donors. A ruling in favor of lifting limits on the amount individuals can contribute would allow the wealthiest of the wealthy to control parties in ways that would make the Great Gatsby proud.
NEW YORK, NY – Today Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray caved to the ultimatum issued by Walmart and vetoed a living wage bill that was passed by the D.C. City Council. The bill would have required retailers with corporate sales of $1 billion or more and operating in spaces of 75,000 square feet or larger to pay employees no less than $12.50 an hour.
In response to the veto, Demos Vice President of Policy and Outreach Heather McGhee issued the following statement: