Nate Silver has already dubbed the 2014 election as "the least important in years." But this year's midterms are still breaking records for at least one thing: Secret political spending.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara vowed that he has the “fearlessness and independence” needed to investigate Albany corruption as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is accused of interfering with his own corruption commission.
“If other people aren’t going to do it, then we’re going to do it,” Bharara said on the PBS’ program “Charlie Rose."
At this year’s Netroots Nation conference, where speakers included Democratic luminaries like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vice President Joe Biden, the honor of delivering the opening keynote address went to Rev. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP and the driving force behind the state’s Moral Mondays demonstrations.
If one speech captured the tenor of this year’s Netroots Nation, it was Barber’s.
“Movements never came from D.C. down,” he bellowed. “Movements always come from Birmingham up, from Montgomery up.”
In pledging $50-million to strengthen America’s "flailing democracy," the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has stirred criticism among liberal groups that in doing so it has jettisoned some of its core values.
In its three-year "Madison Initiative," named after James Madison, an American founder who warned against the "mischiefs of faction," the foundation says it will support groups looking to make adjustments to the legislative process so Congress can perform its basic tasks like passing annual spending bills, says Daniel Stid, who will lead the effort for Hewlett.
DALY: Our mismeasured economy. "Today's polarized debates about the role of government often boil down to a single issue: the size of government compared with the size of the overall economy, as measured in gross domestic product....But such comparisons are not very meaningful: The way we measure government’s role in the economy is limited, inaccurate and unrealistic....We make the case that, in at least four critical ways, this G.D.P.
Today's polarized debates about the role of government often boil down to a single issue: the size of government compared with the size of the overall economy, as measured in gross domestic product.
To Bene’t Holmes, the White House Summit on Working Families was personal, not just another event designed by President Obama and his fellow Democrats to draw a policy or political contrast with Republicans this election year.
“I believed everything he said,” the 25-year-old single mom said of the president’s pitch.
Stymied by the partisan gridlock, President Obama’s recent directives to bar federal contractors from discriminating against gay employees and to cut carbon pollution are bold examples of how presidents have used their executive powers to address critical issues when Congress has failed to adopt much-needed legislation.
This week, President Obama ordered changes to the federal student loan program that could help millions of borrowers make their payments more affordable starting in December 2015.
Heather McGhee, president of Demos: When Sheryl Sandberg and Jill Abramson—women leading powerful institutions in male-dominated industries—ignite our most robust media conversations about gender equality, we feminists face a quandary. Of course feminists want women who are tantalizingly close to the top to break through, and of course we know that the paucity of women leading our institutions is a glaring symbol of enduring gender hierarchy. But women will not succeed in dismantling one hierarchy by climbing to the top of another.
President Obama signed an executive order Monday that could extend student debt relief to an additional 5 million people — a move aimed in part at better educating young borrowers of their rights while jumpstarting a moribund debate on the issue in Congress.
As the nation’s trillion-dollar student debt continues to rise, a new analysis of public higher education’s funding finds dwindling state support is the key factor driving rising tuition costs and deepening student debt.
College is the gateway to the middle class for most young people, but the price has never been higher. And a new study shows that New Jersey has actually exacerbated the student debt crisis by shifting the costs of college onto students and families.
According to the national think tank Demos, funding for higher education in New Jersey has dropped by 17 percent since 2006. That has forced every public college and university in the state to raise tuition and fees, far outpacing financial aid packages.
There is a tendency among elite opinion makers to believe that debt accrued while gaining a college degree is “good debt” that isn’t problematic because, as the thought goes, those with college degrees tend to make enough money to recoup their debt over a lifetime. Student debt is supposedly an equalizer—a way for students to gain access to credit in order to get a degree that will give them an equal chance to enter the middle class and achieve the American Dream.
WASHINGTON, DC – Citing a recent report which found an alarming 1000-to-1 pay disparity between fast food CEOs and their front line workers, Senator Menendez again called on Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White to finalize its rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose the ratio between the compensation of their CEO and median worker, as directed by Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank “Wall Street Reform Act”.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced legislation on Tuesday to tackle the nation's over $1 trillion student loan crisis. "Exploding student loan debt is crushing young people and dragging down our economy," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement.
In response to yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, which upheld a Michigan state law banning the consideration of race or ethnicity as a factor among state college admissions, Demos President Heather McGhee issued the following statement:
The country should be recommitting to diversity and inclusion, not retreating.
(New York, NY) – Today, national public policy organization Demos will release a new report examining the latest CEO-to-worker compensation ratios of the largest publicly traded fast food companies and shows that the fast-food industry has the greatest pay disparity in our economy, with ratios exceeding 1,000-to-1.