On Monday, President Obama ordered federal agencies to stop asking most prospective employees about their criminal histories at the beginning of the application process.
For too long, Americans seeking to re-enter the workforce and make an honest living have had job opportunities taken away because of an honest answer on an application--an honest answer about a crime for which they have already paid the price.
Yesterday, voters from coast to coast fought back against big-money politics. Voters in Maine and Seattle resoundingly approved ballot measures aimed at empowering the voices of ordinary citizens in the political process.
Discussion about the working class, who make up the majority of American families and would benefit most from such a raise, has all but disappeared from popular conversation.
Scandal introduced general audiences to the practice of dog-whistle politics, but it’s also important to know the political consequences of dog-whistle appeals.
The voting rights groups say that among other things, the federal exchange should be offering to help applicants complete a voter registration form. Although many applicants use the exchange independently, others turn to its call center or to “navigator” groups that have federal grants to help people apply for coverage.
“The navigators aren’t receiving any training or direction that they have to offer voter registration services,” said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, senior counsel at Demos.
"The Administration strongly supports the goals of the NVRA and is committed to enforcing its requirements, as applicable,” Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the HHS' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in an email.
But the current configuration doesn't meet the specific requirements in the law regarding language and other administrative mandates, the groups say.
Of course, the vast majority of Americans will never come close to earning a million dollars. Perhaps more tellingly, many of the people politicians think they’re speaking to by talking about the “middle class,” don’t define themselves as such. They view themselves as working class, and basically hear none of the candidates reflecting their lived experiences.
On a late evening this past summer and without warning, one of the oldest buildings in Atlanta caught fire. Gaines Hall — a former dormitory on the campus of Morris Brown College — had been shuttered for years, closed when the school fell on hard times. After firefighters extinguished the two-alarm blaze, what was essentially left of the building was a charred red brick shell.
Parents and students enter into an often complicated and opaque process when trying to secure financial aid, making some kind of financial discussion essentially a requirement for anyone hoping to successfully pay for college, said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.
How has the rise of big donors affected our policies? In a recent post, political scientist Seth Masket, whose work I deeply respect and have read for years, argues that “what's not happening here is the superdonors skewing American politics rightward.”
His argument is that so far in the 2016 election, superdonors have tended to be Republican, because that’s where the interesting contest is. Here, I have no qualms.
Critics — and even some supporters — of the program say its designations are arbitrary, and raise questions about whether the benefit should be rethought, expanded, or even eliminated.
Adding farming to the list could introduce further complexity, since farmers in the U.S. work mainly for for-profit business.
In America, chief executive pay is now 300 times more than the average worker. That’s a high enough ratio that presidential candidates are taking note on both sides of the aisle.
Finally, automatic voter registration is good politics for the Democratic Party. "Among eligible voters, some 30% of African Americans, 40% of Hispanics, 45% of Asian Americans and 41% of young adults (age 18-24) were not registered to vote in the historic 2008 election," according to the progressive think tank Demos.
“There are political advantages to saying we’re not going to provide aid to students who aren’t putting in the effort for their education,” said Mark Huelsman, a policy analyst at Demos, a think tank that has been promoting debt-free college.
We have an exciting update about what has happened since we reached our comprehensive settlement in Oklahoma to improve voter registration services for citizens across the state.
Robert Hiltonsmith, senior policy analyst at Demos, a progressive think tank, expects the positive trends to continue -- even if Tuesday’s survey suggests employers overall aren’t relenting on tough and irregular scheduling demands. “I think it’s a slow burn, but the pressure’s mounting,” he says.
Either way, the drawdown is a worry in the huge US retirement industry, which managed total assets of $24.8 trillion as of June 30. Massive withdrawals will crimp the lucrative fee income for administrators. And another concern is market performance, with fewer US buyers and sellers available to potentially prop up assets.