The Justice Department on Thursday redoubled its efforts to challenge state voting laws, suing Texas over its new voter ID measure as part of a growing political showdown over electoral rights.
The move marked the latest bid by the Obama administration to counter a Supreme Court ruling that officials have said threatens the voting rights of minorities. It also signaled that the administration will probably take legal action in voting rights cases in other states, including North Carolina, where the governor signed a voter ID law this month.
The post-recession party line at the American Bankers Association (ABA) is something like, “Hey Jane/Joe Briefcase. We're just as mad at gosh darn Wall Street as anyone. But only some bankers are evil. A lot of us are honest and work hard, just like you.” Maybe. But this isn’t a reason to lose track of ABA’s political agenda and who pays to set it: Wall Street, coincidentally.
In June, five Supreme Court Justices rolled back the Voting Rights Act, widely considered the most effective tool in preventing discrimination in our nation's history. Section 5 of the act required that certain states and localities "preclear" proposed election changes with federal officials to ensure the changes were not discriminatory. The Court ruled that the formula used to determine which jurisdictions needed to get preclearance was outdated and unconstitutional. For those of us who care about voting rights, the question now is how do we respond?
While a college degree may give graduates a leg up in their careers, students who graduate with high student loan debt can find that ticket to be a costly one.
According to a study by the public policy research organization Demos, student loan debt may be more detrimental to your financial future than was previously thought.
About two-thirds of the 20 million people who attend college every year borrow money to do so. We’ve heard a lot about how growing educational debt loads — the average student borrower now graduates owing $26,600 — can be a detriment to someone just starting out in life, and to the health of the broader American economy. Student debt loads are crowding out other things that young people historically spend money on, forcing them to delay marriage, home ownership, auto and other big-ticket purchases, investments in start-up businesses, and retirement savings.
The huge trading losses suffered by JP Morgan last year—and the cover-up of those losses—stand as just one example of that giant bank's long record of excess, criminality, and deception.
And when you think of who should be held accountable for the London Whale fiasco, one name comes to mind. It's a name that should be on the lips of every regulator and ordinary citizen who wants justice for years of financial malfeasance by JP Morgan.
Imagine Michael Bloomberg being stopped on the street by police and ordered in contemptuous tones to spread his arms and legs wide and lean over the hood of a car so he could be patted down.
New York City’s billionaire mayor would be outraged, to say the least, and so would his constituents. But such humiliating treatment by the police has been a daily reality for staggering numbers of young black and Latino New Yorkers whose only crime has been waking up each morning in the wrong colored skin.
When politics is dominated by the wealthy, the interests of the wealthy are advanced while the interests of lower income and working families are ignored.
Texas didn’t discriminate against minority voters. It was only because they were Democrats. And even if it did, the racial discrimination Texas engaged in is nowhere near as bad as the stuff that happened in the 1960s.
Credit cards. Mortgages. Car loans. These are the types of things that typically come to mind when thinking about your credit. But a bad credit history can do more than ruin your chances of getting a loan or landing a great interest rate -- it can cost you a job. [...]
So you aced the job interview. But can you pass the credit check?
That’s right, a growing number of employers are checking job applicants’ credit reports, even when the job doesn’t involve financial responsibilities and management.
About six in 10 employers conduct credit checks on at least some of their job applicants before deciding whether to extend an offer; 13 percent conduct them on all candidates.
Once upon a time, we invested in our young people so that they could enter the world without debt. Now, we turn them into deadbeat debtors before they're old enough to legally buy a drink, left far behind their financial betters.
Americans are taking advantage of greater credit availability without a heavy reliance on plastic, a trend economists say bodes well for a healthy recovery in consumer credit.
The Federal Reserve reported Wednesday that consumer borrowing, excluding mortgages, surged ahead by $13.8 billion to $2.8 trillion in June, a 5.9 percent annual rate increase. Non-revolving credit, the category that includes student loans and auto financing, shot up $16.5 billion for the month, offsetting a $2.7 billion decline in credit card spending.
One of the sorriest American myths these days is that getting into enormous debt will secure a better financial future for today’s students.
Not only is debt a manacle for future generations, it’s not good for the country at large — a $4 trillion burden on future earnings and wealth.
When politicians make a stink about student loan rates, they’re smelling a rotten fish, but not the most obvious one. They should be berating colleges and our own broken higher education-funding system for not providing more grants — and less loans.
Forty eight years ago today President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law what would become the most effective civil rights provision in the history of the country: the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Back in June, that law was rolled back by a conservative Supreme Court majority who argued that the country had moved beyond discrimination in the voting process. This despite an election year rife with states introducing voter suppression legislation, which continues unabated, most recently in North Carolina.
Democracy North Carolina put together a one-page report that summarizes HB-589, the bill the General Assembly passed in late July despite the mass demonstrations outside the capitol that came to be known as Moral Mondays.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has, ironically, found that exploiting children turns a profit. It has been doing so since its creation in 1984 under Ronald Reagan, who created the quasi-governmental agency. It enjoys liberal funding from the Department of Justice and a level of privacy other non-profits don’t have.
The horrifying subject of missing children often obscures questions of budget allocation, employee compensation, and the accuracy of statements the organization releases.