This morning saw a big victory for Pennsylvania’s voters when a judge partially enjoined Pennsylvania’s strict new voter ID law in advance of next month’s elections. Pennsylvania’s voters will not have to show a photo ID in order to vote a regular ballot this November. This victory will remove an unnecessary burden that threatened the freedom to vote for tens of thousands of voters this fall.
How would the 2012 election be different if many more young, poor and minority citizens paricipated? We would find out if we were to modernize our elections system. In most parts of the country, our elections system is stuck in the 19th century. Often intentionally, the patchwork of laws at the state and local level makes it difficult for voters to know how, when, and where to register.
Perhaps the volume hasn't been quite as loud as it was in 2008, perhaps a lot of the discussion has been subsumed into coded language, but the 2012 presidential election is still very much about redistribution: when it's fair, when it isn't, and, perhaps most importantly from a political perspective, whether Americans like it.
One of the few things that President Obama and Mitt Romney are likely to agree on when they debate next week is the need for tax reform. Both candidates have backed streamlining America’s crazy-quilt tax code, and both have said that reforms could boost economic growth. Meanwhile, two key congressional committees held a rare bipartisan hearing last week – with lawmakers from both parties saying that tax reform is needed to rev up the economy.
For years, many thoughtful people -- progressive thinkers, anti-hunger advocates, and business executives at the mercy of energy and food prices -- have appealed for relief from rampant speculation that distorts the commodities markets. Such speculation makes traders rich, but burdens American households, hurts businesses, and leads to empty bellies in areas throughout the world that are dependent on food imports.
It is always nice when a major newspaper points out one of the most obvious facts in Washington today: Which is that the main stumbling block to deficit reduction lies on the right, where ideologues won't give an inch on taxes and thus doom any realistic compromise to reduce the deficit -- compromise that must include a combination of spending cuts and additional revenue.
In other words, it is precisely the people who complain loudest about rising debt who most obstruct any solution to this problem.
The historic elections taking place this November will not just decide what candidates win or lose, or even "just" what policy directions our states and country will take. They will also be a test for democracy itself.
Say you want to buy a house or a car and you need a loan to do it. You do what every personal finance site recommends and obtain a free copy of your credit report from annualcreditreport.com.
Our long, national nightmare is over. Well, for NFL fans at least. After a protracted negotiation, NFL referees will maintain access to their defined pension plans...for a few more years. When a union wins the support of noted laborphobe Scott Walker, you'd think they'd be on their way. Alas:
America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy, a new book from Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow James Gustave Speth, examines the grave and interconnected challenges facing Americans -- joblessness, failing schools, declining health, intractable poverty, income inequality, a poisoned environment, dwindling natural resources, indebtedness, climate change, war – and outlines the urgent changes we must embrace now in order to leave a prosperous, secure and healthy nation for future g
WASHINGTON, -- Eighteen pro-democracy groups - Open Debates, Common Cause, Public Citizen, Rock the Vote, Judicial Watch, Public Campaign, FairVote, Demos, Democracy Matters, League of Rural Voters, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Essential Information, Personal Democracy Media, Reclaim Democracy!, Center for Study of Responsive Law, Citizen Works, Free & Equal Elections Foundation, and Rootstrikers - call on the Commission on Presidential Debates to make public the secret debate contract that was negotiated by the Obama and Romney campaigns.
Hundreds of non-partisan organizations came together for National Voter Registration Day to ensure that hundreds of thousands of Americans will be able to exercise their freedom to vote and make their voices heard this upcoming November.
One article of faith in contemporary political life is that conservatives side with business and progressives are far less friendly to the private sector.
In many ways, this is true -- judging by the battle lines in Washington, where groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses nearly always back the Republican Party.
A new study finds that climate change is already contributing to 400,000 deaths per year and costing the world more than $1.2 trillion, or 1.6 percent of global GDP. The report was commissioned by 20 governments and written by more than 50 scientists, economists and policy experts. In the report, the authors detail how the vast majority of deaths occur in developing countries and that the world’s poorest communities within lower and middle-income communities are most exposed to climate change risks.
Thomas Edsell has a column in Sunday's New York Times -- "What's Wrong With Pennsylvania?" -- that explores how various factors have conspired to make the state uncompetitive for Mitt Romney.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service looks how a carbon tax could be used for deficit reduction or other fiscal measures. The CRS projects that a tax rate of $20 per metric ton of carbon dioxide would generate approximately $88 billion in 2012 and up to $144 billion by 2020. This would be enough to cut the 10-year budget deficit in half under the 2012 baseline CBO projection.
Here is an industry that has been repeatedly chastised and penalized for all sorts of bad behavior -- an industry that abused its customers so badly for so long, with hidden fees and usurious interest rates, that one of the first things Democrats did when they took control of the White House in 2009 was to enact legislation to rein in credit card issuers.
Each major election, thousands of volunteers fan out in communities all across the nation to register their neighbors to vote. You may see some of them in your travels today, National Voter Registration Day. Community voter registration drives like these provide an essential service, adding many thousands of unregistered citizens to the voter rolls.