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.
More and more Americans are spending their golden years racking up debt—a trend that if left unchecked could derail entitlement reform and alter the traditional pattern of wealth being transferred from older to younger generations.
For the past several decades, millions of senior citizens have been able to enjoy relatively safe retirements, in part due to a lifetime of savings, private pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and home ownership.
The number of Americans age 60 and over in debt is alarming. A recent report by the AARP’s Public Policy Institute and the research organization Demos revealed that Americans over the age of 50 carried substantially more debt on credit cards — an average balance of $8,278 — than those under 50, whose average balance was $6,258.
Fittingly, perhaps, Cuomo’s single biggest misstep in office can be tied to the power of moneyed interests. After fighting long and hard, the governor was forced to abandon a scheme to build a $4 billion convention center in Queens, as part of a joint venture with the Genting Group, a Malaysian corporation.
The job market has been tough for older workers, but did you ever imagine that you wouldn’t land a job because of your credit report?
It’s possible.
As I wrote about in my Forbes blog, Bad Credit Can Cost You a Job, if you’re looking to change careers, find a new job, get promoted, or just hang onto the one you have, a messy credit report can trip you up.
The affluent tend to hold a different vision of a just society than the public at large, and it is that vision which tops the political agenda in Washington and in state houses across the country.
Middle-income Americans age 50 and older are now carrying more credit card debt on average than younger people, according to a 2012 study released by Demos. This is a reversal of the findings from the Demos survey which took place in 2008.
The economy plummets. You lose your job. Soon, you start to find it hard to make ends meet. You start putting things on your credit card. Then you fall behind in your card payments. All the while you’ve been desperately looking for a new job. Little do you know that being behind on credit card payments may stand between you and a job – the very thing that could get you back on the road to financial health.
Attorney General Eric Holder made it official in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: Some banks are so big that criminal prosecution poses an unacceptable danger to the U.S. and world economies. This is not Holder's opinion alone. In the past, the Justice Department has consulted with the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to assess the consequences of criminal prosecution. This is a government-wide problem.
Emmett Pinkston served in the military for 30 years, first in the Marines, then in the Air Force, then in the Army. He helped coordinate security for President George W. Bush during the G8 Summit on Sea Island, Ga., in 2004, and worked as an intelligence analyst in Iraq from 2005 to 2007, some of the deadliest years of the war.
Ever wonder why the government seems fine with cutting unemployment benefits and welfare programs? Part of the answer may be that the rich vote more than the poor.
The U.S. political system is increasingly gamed against Americans of modest means — a situation exacerbated in recent years by major changes in the nation's campaign laws.
Young adults are pulling back on credit-card debt for similar reasons, said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a public policy research organization. It found that Americans age 25 to 34 cut their credit card debt in half between 2008 and 2012.
All around them, young adults are seeing signs of financial distress -- job insecurity, foreclosures, high college costs. That's making them think twice about applying for loans, she said.
Despite millennials' lingering reputation as financial delinquents, it turns out not everyone drowning in credit card debt has a newly-printed college diploma and a stack of student loan bills.
Harsh, an IT professional from Tuscola, Illinois, is 62, around the age at which a lot of people start actively planning to retire to a white-sandy beach with a frozen margarita in hand.
Harsh's debt snuck up on her as she helped her two daughters with college and living costs. She went back to school after a divorce and dealt with unexpected expenses such as big dental bills. Now she has about $300 a month in minimum payments, spread across three credit cards, and the balance never seems to go down because of all the interest she is paying.
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.
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.
Not since the years before the Watergate scandal has a small cadre of mega-donors influenced our elections as much as wealthy givers such as casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, and Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner did in 2012.