The Montana Supreme Court in Helena stands just off the main drag, dramatically called Last Chance Gulch Street. The picturesque setting is fitting for an institution that has just challenged the U.S. Supreme Court to a legal showdown on the enormously important question of whether corporations should have an unfettered right to dominate elections or whether citizens have the right to adopt commonsense protections to defend democratic government from corruption. Get the kids off the streets, because this could be an epic confrontation.
The constitutional challenge to the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) draws much of its rhetorical force not from the Commerce Clause, but from the perception that the insurance mandate infringes on individuals’ private liberties.
How long do working mothers stay home after having their first child? If you guessed the answer might be 12 weeks (not an unreasonable assumption, since that’s the amount of time allotted by our national family leave law), you’d be sadly mistaken. According to recently released census numbers, a majority of mothers who worked during pregnancy go back before that, some way before. More than a quarter are at work within two months of giving birth and one in 10—more than half a million women each year—go back to their jobs in four weeks or less.
When someone from another country goes through the difficult process of becoming a naturalized American citizen, he or she should be entitled to full participation in our nation's democracy.
Despite what critics say, the DoE’s guaranteed loan program is a successful program and government investment to further develop clean energy is the right thing to do.
Youth leaders and policy experts cited rising costs in education, health care, child care, and housing as key issues for winning the young vote in 2012.
The existence of the U.S. middle class is in peril. Young people between the ages of 18 and 34 are living in a more fragile economic environment than 30 years ago. If something isn't done to help them lead more economically stable lives, they'll never make it into the middle class.
That's the conclusion of a new report "The State of Young America" from Demos, a combination think-tank and advocacy organization based in New York.
Blatant redistribution, the argument goes, may fly in Europe with its strong class identity, but is a non-starter here, where the value of individual self-reliance is dominant. Is this really true?
Occupy Wall Street has, in the words of John Paul Rollert, “come to embody a common sense that something is wrong with American capitalism.” The problem Rollert points to is not with capitalism itself, but with a particular American version that has ceased to work for broad cross-sections of its population. Given America’s Depression-level income inequality and near-record levels of public and private indebtedness, it is extremely tempting to focus on bad outcomes as the problem.
Poverty in America is a national emergency. Last Wednesday the Department of Agriculture announced that 45 million Americans were participating in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. That’s 15 million more American adults than the 30 million who are currently estimated to be below the official poverty line. And today the Census Bureau is reporting that roughly 49 million Americans are impoverished—2.4 million more than the official estimate released in September.
The citizens of Maine will be voting tomorrow whether to keep the same-day registration system that they’ve had for nearly four decades. Since 1973, Maine voters have been able to walk into a polling place or a municipal clerk’s office on Election Day and register to vote.
By virtually every measure, the fortunes of America’s young people are falling under a deluge of debt, shrinking opportunity, rising costs of living and lack of access to health care. Writing with members of the Young Invincibles think tank, the authors write:
Occupy Wall Street has already accomplished a great deal by shifting public discourse in this country. Instead of focusing on the need for austerity and deficit reduction, attention is rightly being directed at economic disparities and the deep structural problems that the United States faces.