Fittingly, perhaps, Cuomo’s single biggest misstep in office can be tied to the power of moneyed interests. After fighting long and hard, the governor was forced to abandon a scheme to build a $4 billion convention center in Queens, as part of a joint venture with the Genting Group, a Malaysian corporation.
NerdWallet underlies its findings with a report by public policy organization Demos from last summer, which added the further frightening fact that among folks investing in 401(k) plans, a full two-thirds had no idea they were payinganything at all for their 401(k) (which actually makes all of the folks who guessed wrong in NerdWallet's poll look pretty smart by comparison).
The drumbeat for public financing pounded loudly on Monday when good government groups and Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill visited the Capitol to make the case for campaign finance reform.
As some New York state lawmakers consider publicly financed campaigns to thwart public corruption in state politics, a liberal-leaning public policy think tank has released a report showing how a voluntary public financing system in Connecticut has contributed to a more "representative and responsive" Legislature there since its implementation in 2008.
A group of activists and politicians from Connecticut came to Albany Monday to promote their brand of public financing, which has been in place since 2008. According to supporters, including Sec. of State Denise Merrill, public financing for the legislature and statewide offices has led to a number of (mostly progressive) policy breakthroughs including an unclaimed bottle bill (sound familiar?) higher minimum wage and most importantly, a deeper, more diverse pool of candidates, with a 41 percent increase in the number of contested seats.
ALBANY, N.Y.—With the recent indictment of New York politicians like Senator Malcolm Smith and Assemblyman Eric Stevenson, many wonder, can they trust state lawmakers?
"We do a random sample of more than 800 registered voters and our sample looks like the New York electorate both in terms of geography, bipartisan break up, gender, age, income etc. so we do it very carefully to ensure we get a representative sample," said Greenberg. "Voters don't feel really strongly about that legislature and don't have great confidence in them right now."
Bet if I asked, the odds are good that many people could tell me to the penny what they just paid for a gallon of gas.
So how much did it cost you to invest in your 401(k) last year? I don't know myself. And you likely don't know either.
Over the years, most of us have heard that if we just start saving a few hundred dollars a month in our 20s, we can retire a millionaire. Compound interest is your best friend.
I watched the disturbing Frontline documentary on PBS,The Retirement Gamble, and not surprisingly, I got to thinking about the fees I pay for investing in my retirement accounts.
This effort could be a game-changer, a way to begin reversing the dangerous concentration of wealth and political power in the U.S. Naysayers will complain that proposals like this are doomed from the start because of the current makeup of Congress, especially the House. But that’s not so. Enhancing the impact of small donors is an important component of a broad, long-term effort to reduce the toxic impact of big money in an era of super PACS, Citizens United and rising inequality. Democrats in the House should be commended for pushing this initiative along.
The shocking allegations against four more elected officials in New York are depressing — but they provide an opportunity for bold action by our state leaders. Gov. Cuomo has proposed a new, comprehensive campaign finance law, including the creation of a voluntary, small-donor public financing system and an independent enforcement unit.
Collusion — and conflicts of interest — between politicians and billionaires now operate across borders. When he was president, Nicolas Sarkozy reserved special favours for the Qataris (including a tax exemption on their highest-value property purchases). Qatar is now prepared to back him in starting a private equity fund.
Murphy suggested two ways out of this trap. One is crowd-sourced fundraising, which is already occurring over the Internet. Murphy stated that his Senate campaign raised $4 million of its $10 million total from donors giving online. That meant he did not have to call wealthy donors to raise 40 percent of his campaign haul.
Lucila Ramirez, 55, has been cleaning the bathrooms and tables at Washington, D.C.’s Union Station for 21 years. Despite her long record of service, Ramirez says she makes only $8.75 per hour, and receives no benefits or sick days.
“I work in a federal building doing work on behalf of the government and if I was paid a living wage, I wouldn’t have to go looking for a second job in order to support my family,” Ramirez, 55, told The Huffington Post in Spanish via an interpreter.
The vacuous, cheerful expression of the Walmart smiley face has long been associated with the paradoxically dark reality of low-wage work. With the recent fast-food worker walkouts in New York, the golden arches may go down, too, in the annals of class-war symbology.
Even with a freeze on basic pay rates and unpaid leave days and repeated attacks on the federal workforce, being a federal employee means you have a good, though as of late, a less-lucrative job.
That can’t be said by everyone in the federal workplace.
Big businesses, such as Wal-Mart and McDonalds, get a bad wrap for providing low-wage jobs. But, Americans may be surprised to know that they're funding a low-wage labor pool larger than both of these companies combined do, a new report by Demos, a public policy organization, shows.
The IRS is under siege for investigating conservative political groups applying for tax-exempt status. But the real problem wasn’t that the IRS was too aggressive.
Previous research has found that the majority of the jobs added to the economy since the end of the recession pay low wages. Middle-wage and high-wage jobs haven’t seen nearly the same rate of growth, meaning that the economy has traded comfortable jobs for those that merely allow workers to scrape by.