Friedrichs v. CTA, is ostensibly about one teacher’s right to not join her teachers union, but that choice is already available to any worker everywhere in America. This case is really just another attack on workers’ ability to join together and make their voices heard.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
Demos and the ACLU of Ohio, on behalf of the civil rights-labor organization the Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), sent a pre-litigation notice letter to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted demanding that the State stop illegally removing voters from its voter registration rolls.
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.
The state of North Carolina is being sued over state’s violations of Sections V and VII of the National Voter Registration Act
GREENSBORO, N.C.–Widespread disenfranchisement and a steep decline in voter registration activity have led a coalition of civic organizations and voters to file a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina for violation of an important federal voting rights law.
Next year won’t just mark the most expensive and big money-dominated election in U.S. history--it is also the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court case that set the basic structure of campaign finance law. In Buckley at 40, Demos Counsel and Senior Advisor Adam Lioz examines how 1976’s Buckley v. Valeo launched a vicious cycle of political, economic, and racial inequality that endures today.
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.
The elections board said registration activity is back to levels from previous odd-numbered years. Part of the issue, the board said, was local social service agencies had been printing registration forms that were not coded as coming from these agencies. Issues related to DMV's online address updates also are being addressed, Strach said.
Unfortunately, more and more retirees are falling into debt at the exact point in their lives when they should be free from financial worries. Whereas older people paid off their mortgages in generations past, now nearly half of all senior citizens still owe a house note.
But for many, even landing a job was not enough to make ends meet: of those 5 million job openings, nearly half paid less than $15 per hour, leaving only 2.7 million that paid $15 or more per hour. And for workers able to secure only part-time employment, wages were even more inadequate: in 2014, more than one in five part-time workers wanted full-time employment but were unable to find it.
The core finding: there are not enough living wage jobs to go around. And women and people of color are especially impacted by low wages and part-time work.
In my latest at Salon I explore a new working paper by political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and Brian Schaffner, the most comprehensive examination of voters and nonvoters that has ever been performed. As I note my piece, studies of non-voters have been difficult because of small samples and because people often misrepresent whether they voted.