If you consider yourself part of the middle class, you could be forgiven for not standing at the ready after President Obama called for you to be reignited.
Easthampton, MA – Today, more than 200 civil rights, voting rights and criminal justice organizations sent a letter calling on the U.S. Census Bureau to seize a timely opportunity to research alternative ways to count incarcerated people in the decennial Census.
New York, NY -- In his State of the Union last night, President Obama hit on four key issues where Demos is engaged and where progress is long overdue: voting reform, the minimum wage, universal pre-K, and higher education.
On the bipartisan voting commission, Brenda Wright, Vice President of Legal Strategies:
NEW YORK – National public policy organization Demos announces experts available for commentary on and around President Obama’s State of the Union address.
Demos has produced a very important document about our austerity crisis. I don't think its conclusions will surprise many of you, but it certainly should be eye-opening to general public. It discusses the well-known fact that austerity is counter-productive in an economic down turn and that unemployment remains our greatest barrier to a full recovery. And it lays out the time-line of the politicians' obsessive focus on deficits at exactly the wrong moment.
High unemployment and underemployment forced one in four Americans to pull money out of a retirement plan to make ends meet.
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A separate study on credit-card debt done by Demos, which surveyed some 997 households, warns that middle-income households of those nearing retirement are running up huge credit-card bills.
According to the study, “Older Americans now have higher overall credit-card debt than younger people — a reversal of the trend Demos found in its 2008 survey.”
Alfred Carpenter, 52, was working for a high-end shoe store in 2007, when the recession put the company out of business. A long-time salesman, Carpenter wasn't worried about getting another job, but then broke an ankle a few months later and ended up in the hospital. With no insurance and a $50,000 emergency room bill, he filed for bankruptcy protection.
Then his troubles got worse. One employer after another rescinded job offers after checking his credit report, he says. He finally found work, but at a fraction of his usual pay.
A new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office adds to the mounting evidence that spending cuts have held back America’s economic recovery. According to the CBO’s budget and economic projections for the next decade, released on Tuesday, middling GDP growth over the past year is partially attributable to “scheduled automatic reductions in federal spending.”
Perla Saenz went back sore and exhausted just four weeks after giving birth—and two weeks after the incision from her C-section reopened. She had heard her older child cough in the night and instinctively tried to pick him up, forgetting for a moment her doctor’s warning against lifting anything heavier than ten pounds. Weak and sometimes feverish, she often found herself clutching the counter for support.
Democratic lawmakers say allowing voters to register and cast ballots on the same day would increase election participation, but some county officials worry that it would further complicate the voting process.
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States with same-day registration have turnout rates nearly 6 percent higher than states that don’t offer it, according to Demos, a progressive public policy research group.
Which is better for a country’s well-being: $10 million spent constructing a jail, or $10 million spent producing a line of smartphones? How about clear- cutting rain forests to produce $10 million in lumber? Or a storm that requires $10 million in repairs?
It falls into the good-luck-with-that category, but nevertheless the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group and nine other organizations have announced they’re forming a coalition aimed at getting the Wisconsin Legislature to put an advisory referendum on the ballot about the growing problem of unlimited campaign spending.
A scheme under consideration in Virginia to rig the Electoral College in Republicans’ favor could well violate a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, experts on the law say. But that very provision is itself under challenge by the GOP, and could be struck down by the Supreme Court later this year.
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Brenda Wright, a top lawyer at Demos and an expert on voting rights, agreed. “I think there would be strong arguments” that the change harmed minority voters, she said.
Washington, DC: Today, a petition on the White House website urging President Obama to “use the State of the Union to call for a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics” exceeded the 25,000 signatures necessary to guarantee an official White House response. The petition, launched by the groups Free Speech For People, Avaaz, People For the American Way, and Demos on January 8 took less than two weeks to cross the threshold.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — One of the biggest surprises in President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address this week was the prominence given to climate change, marking it as a signature issue for his second term.
The president spoke of the need to preserve the planet for future generations. But he also couched climate change in more immediate economic terms, with leadership on the issue as a necessary component for the U.S. to maintain its economic preeminence.
Annapolis, MD – A coalition of government reform groups praised efforts by Governor Martin O’Malley and Delegate Kiril Reznik that would help Marylanders vote and make sure every vote is counted. The groups also encouraged the Governor to further strengthen his voting package and fix the range of problems Marylanders encountered last year at the polls. Those would include an increase and fair distribution of early voting sites and funding for a new voting system.
NEW YORK - Today, Demos and O’Melveny and Myers LLP filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of respondents in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (No.
New York, NY – Over 300 citizens rallied today at New York University and Federal Hall to denounce “those who are trying to buy or steal our democracy” and to call for overturning Citizens United, enacting Fair Elections campaign finance reform in NYS, and expanding the vote.