The Supreme Court’s rulings on marriage will not lessen the everyday – sometimes subtle, often not – ways that many LGBT people get treated as less than equals.
Today, a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, upending a law that has been central to our nation’s commitment to eradicating the shameful legacy of racial discrimination in voting, especially in the deep South. The Court declared that the so-called “coverage formula” used to determine which states should be required to obtain preclearance for changes in voting laws was unconstitutional, but that Congress retains the authority to update the coverage formula.
"The Fisher case invites us all to acknowledge the role public policy has played in widening racial disparities in college access over the past generation, and to press the need for robust policies, from diversity considerations in admissions to debt-free college, to ensure that higher education remains a fair pathway to a diverse middle class in America."
Workers at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center filed a complaint with the Labor Department on Monday alleging a slew of labor violations against their employers, including not being paid the minimum wage and working as many as 80 hours a week without overtime pay.
The Reagan Building is a federal property, but the workers who lodged the complaint are employed by private businesses in the building's food court, like a Subway sandwich shop, a Quick Pita franchise and a Smoothie King location.
When employers check credit as part of their hiring it creates a vicious cycle: out-of-work Americans can’t pay down their debts because they don’t have a job, but they can’t get a job because would-be employers hold their consumer credit history against them.
NEW YORK -- At a gathering of state leaders in Baltimore, Maryland, last week, Maryland GovernorMartin O’Malley made a strong case in support of the growing movement to rethink and re-orient how we measure economic performance and social progress, which he argues is a crucial step forward in meeting twenty-first century economic challenges. The “GPI in the States Summit” was organized by Demos and brought together public officials, researchers, and advocates representing twenty states from Maine to Hawaii.
One of the most pernicious myths of the past half century is that guaranteeing healthcare for all Americans would strike a mortal blow against this country's system of free enterprise.
When people talk about corporations spending money in politics, it’s commonly assumed that the corporation is a single thing with a clear position on any given issue. This masks the fact that corporations are complex, state-created entities with their own governance structures and a multitude of conflicting interests.
In a keynote address last Friday in Baltimore, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley broke down the reasons behind his administration’s decision to make Maryland the first state in the union to employ a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), a quantitative assessment that integrates both the costs and the benefits of economic development into a monetary measure of whether growth is truly enhancing the welfare of individuals and communities.
NEW YORK -- Today, the Supreme Court released its decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (No. 12-71), striking down an Arizona law that created unnecessary barriers to voter registration in violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
In a 2011 speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, civil rights hero and Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) eloquently described attacks across the country on Americans' access to the ballot box: "Voting rights are under attack in America.
First, the American Pediatrics Association noted that poverty was the number one danger facing children today. If that wasn’t bad enough, it seems the elderly are just as vulnerable, especially in the light of potential entitlement cuts.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo spent his career cultivating the image of a man who gets what he wants. In 2011, he rammed same-sex marriage legislation through the legislature, even with a Republican-controlled Senate. In 2012, when he wanted New York to be the first state to pass gun-control laws after the Newtown shooting, he was similarly productive. This year, Cuomo has said he wants to make state elections fairer, by lowering contribution limits and supplementing small donations with public dollars to give them more weight.
The retail sector has been a star of recent jobs reports. May's numbers from the Department of Labor say it was responsible for adding 28,000 positions to the overall economy. It's on an upward trend – the monthly retail employment number has averaged 20,000 for the past year.
Considering one in nine Americans work in, for or in stores ranging from the corner grocery to big box behemoths, this should be great news. And it would be – if these jobs paid anything resembling a living wage. But all too many of them don't. [...]
Borrowing a line from Tolstoy, Gar Alperovitz’s latest book, What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution, seeks to resolve a troublesome political puzzle: How do we eradicate systemic problems like inequality, climate destruction, and poverty when these problems seem to get worse and worse, year after year, despite the good efforts of social reformers, progressives, and radicals of all stripes? Good question.
For lawmakers in Washington, the daily chase for money can begin with a breakfast fundraiser in the side room of a Washington restaurant.
At noon, there might be a $500-per-plate lunch with lobbyists in a Capitol Hill town house. The day might wrap up in an arena sky box in downtown Washington, watching a basketball game with donors.
Yesterday, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) got off to an auspicious start as chair of the Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy by doing something that is all too novel—inviting people with the most at stake in economic policy decisions to testify in Congress.