States are spending less money on public colleges than they did in the past. According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, adjusted for inflation, state support for public colleges and universities has fallen by about 26 percent per full-time student in the last 20 years.
Adjusted for inflation, state support for each full-time public-college student declined by 26.1 percent from 1990 to 2010, forcing students and their families to shoulder more of the cost of higher education at a time when family incomes were largely stagnant, according to a report released on Monday by the think tank Demos.
TheWall Street Journal ran a disingenuous and misleading opinion piece on Sunday evening titled "The Corporate Disclosure Assault," arguing that “[u]nions and liberal activists are using proxy rules to attack business political speech.” The piece—exactly like the undisclosed corporate money it’s pandering to—doesn’t even have an author listed.
Eliza Carney has an interesting piece in Roll Call observing that in light of Congressional inaction, several federal agencies have now moved to center stage in the fight over unrestricted campaign money.
A few weeks ago, Desmogblog.com released a series of internal documents from the Heartland Institute, one of the leaders of the climate denial movement, which shows the Institute’s strategy for pushing their climate denying message.
In 1907, Congress banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in the wake of the robber baron-era scandals. In 1947, the ban was formally applied to corporate expenditures and extended to cover labor unions.
NYPIRG released a report last week of the largest donations in New York state politics over the past year. The numbers, while no longer surprising, mirror the disturbing state of campaign spending at the federal level, and they raise some important questions about the underlying institutions necessary for democratic elections and political accountability.
The difference is obvious, Potter replied. Because 527 groups were legally shady, they attracted far less money from fewer donors. True, the FEC didn’t enforce the law, but donors couldn’t be sure that would be the case, and some were unwilling to take the risk.
The U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision unleashed the specter of unlimited corporate political donations in U.S. elections. So far, however, it's mostly rich individuals doing the donating.