About half of all public companies are incorporated in Delaware, and that state has long been synonomous with a race to the bottom when it comes to corporate responsibility. So many companies incorporate in Delaware because it has famously lax standards for corporate behavior. And tiny Delaware has no incentive to raise those standards because incorporating companies is a key part of the state's economy.
In every society, the marketplace—the physical marketplace—brings people together not only to exchange goods and services, but to meet one another, socialize, and exchange ideas. Markets are the places from which communities arise, and where people of different strata and clans converge.
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.
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.
One motivation for this hearing is the recent study by the Federal Trade Commission finding that one in five American consumers identified material errors on their credit reports that were substantiated by the credit reporting agencies.
Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the Deep Horizon explosion that spilled 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill fouled 1,110 miles of beaches and marsh along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Three years later, the cleanup continues and crews continue to find oil buried and tar balls washing ashore.
The furor over President Obama's proposed cuts to Social Security benefits has obscured a key fact about his latest 10-year budget plan: Which is that, despite those cuts and even bigger cuts to Medicare, the plan only modestly slows spending on seniors even as it proposes significant cuts to nearly every other government function over the next decade.
Representative Keith Ellison held a press conference yesterday outside the Capital building in Washington, D.C. to announce the reintroduction of a bill that would tax financial transactions on Wall Street. The Inclusive Prosperity Act, which was first introduced last year and is supported by many economists, would implement a 0.5 percent tax on speculation and derivates and would reel in more than $300 billion a year in revenue.
In North Carolina you can buy a gun without a background check, but according to a bill recently passed by the state legislature, the same shouldn't be true for receiving food stamps and other forms of government assistance.
A few weeks ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act was motivated by a "perpetuation of racial entitlement."
A few weeks ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scaliasaid that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act was motivated by a "perpetuation of racial entitlement."
The President’s attention in his proposed budget to the challenges faced by unemployed young workers is encouraging. His proposal for a “Pathways Back to Work Fund” would make $12.5 billion available to create and/or subsidize jobs for younger as well as older unemployed workers.
It’s been a good week for the 23,000 people who work for one U.S. retail chain. Even as the national economy continued to plod along and the unemployment rate remained disturbingly high, Hobby Lobby announced it is upping its minimum hourly wage to $14 for full-time employees and $9.50 for part-time workers.
After a bruising election in which their standard-bearer became a symbol of wealth and privilege, Republicans are emerging as born-again champions of the common people. The latest proposal in the House, the “Working Families Flexibility Act,” is billed as a pro-worker proposal that will let mom bank comp time so she can take a family vacation later. But for such a worker-friendly idea, the bill has attracted support from strange quarters.
A new report from the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) is advocating a 36 percent interest cap rate that would alleviate the personal debt crisis in the United States.
One of the main arguments used to justify fracking is that due to the increased supply of natural gas, the price of natural gas is falling and electricity generation is shifting towards using natural gas and away from using coal. Fracking proponents also point to a decline in overall greenhouse gas emissions as a result of natural gas use. But, if natural gas really is so cheap and we are producing more of it, why aren’t electricity prices decreasing?