Warren in Minnesota: ‘The game is rigged’ NORTHFIELD, Minn. — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) brought her populist message Saturday to this small college town to rev up the final weeks of Sen. Al Franken's reelection campaign, but also to claim the mantle of the modern liberal movement's political godfather. Speaking before more than 400 people at Carleton College, Warren repeatedly invoked the spirit of the late Paul Wellstone, the fiery liberal senator who died 12 years ago this month in a plane crash during his reelection campaign. Wellstone remains a revered figure in Minnesota politics, and his brand of populism -- out of step in the Clintonian Democratic Party of the 1990s -- is now mainstream among leading liberal activists. Warren has become the most prominent public face of that movement, and the Wellstone disciples in this town 40 miles south of Minneapolis gave their approval Saturday.
"The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it," Warren said to loud cheers. U.S. "She's amazing. Sen. OpenDoors-report.pdf. Wright_schaffner_apsr.pdf. Common Cause – "Gerrymander Standard" Writing Competition. We are pleased to announce the inaugural Common Cause “Gerrymander Standard” Writing Competition. The Supreme Court has long suggested there is a limit for what is acceptable partisan gerrymandering, but like obscenity, so far the line is undefined and left to courts to know it when they see it.
The Court has said that it is willing to hear constitutional challenges to partisan gerrymandering, but existing legal theories have been insufficient to empower citizens with the tools they need to overturn partisan gerrymanders in court. This is your chance to change that. We are inviting legal and social science practitioners, scholars, and students to submit papers proposing a new definition of partisan gerrymandering or further developing an existing standard. Winning papers will be selected by a distinguished panel of former State Supreme Court Justices, litigators, and election scholars. Prizes will be as follows: 1st place – $5,000 2nd place - $3,000 3rd place - $2,000 How to Submit a Paper. If You Support Legal Marijuana, Memorize These 13 Stats.
Regardless of your feelings about legalizing marijuana, it's hard to deny that legal weed would be a bonanza for cash-strapped states, just as tobacco and alcohol already are. With Colorado and Washington starting to tax and regulate recreational weed sales, and medical marijuana legal in 18 other states, we can finally start to put some hard numbers on the industry's value. Numbers like: $1.53 billion: The amount the national legal marijuana market is worth, according to a Nov. 2013 report from ArcView Market Research, a San Francisco-based investor group focused on the marijuana industry. $10.2 billion: The estimated amount the national legal marijuana market will be worth in five years, according to that same ArcView report. $6.17 million: The amount of tax revenue collected in Colorado on legal marijuana sales in just the first two months of 2014.
An employee of The Clinic, a Denver-based dispensary, sells a bag of marijuana and a THC-infused soda. 12-536 McCutcheon v. Federal Election Comm'n (04/02/2014) - 12-536_e1pf.pdf. A Real Step to Fix Democracy. What happens when Congress itself is the problem in politics? The framers of the Constitution thought of a solution for that very problem. Howard Chandler Christy In January, Gallup found that Americans from across the political spectrum picked the failure of “government” as the top problem facing America today.
The vast majority link that failure to the influence of money in politics. Yet more than 90 percent of us don’t see how that influence could be reduced. It turns out the framers of our Constitution thought about this problem precisely. It was an obvious flaw, and it led the drafters to add a second path to amendment that Congress couldn’t control: If 34 states demand it, Congress must call “a convention for proposing Amendments.” In the 225 years since the Constitution was drafted, we’ve never had a federal convention. Still, many fear a convention will “run away” and threaten fundamental aspects of our constitutional tradition. What if? “But isn’t it possible?”
Bill de Blasio, Adam Smith and the Living Wage Movement | Richard Brodsky. "It is but equity that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged. " -- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations Don't let Adam Smith fool you. He wasn't talking about a "living wage. " He was talking about a "minimum wage" that was set at a decent level. The difference matters, and will matter more as America confronts its income inequality problem.
A "minimum wage" is a government-established standard for what a private-sector employer must pay to a private-sector employee. It's been law since the New Deal, varying from state to state. It affects all employers, as defined in law, and is seen as a basic worker protection. A "living wage" is something different, although there's a lot of sloppy verbiage about it and the two are often used interchangeably. The rise in national concern about income inequality has been a little slow to develop workable remedies. The Happiest Countries in the World.
For the second year in a row, 24/7 Wall St. examined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s report on life satisfaction in the developed world. Economic prosperity, health and a strong social support network continue to correspond highly with happiness. Once again, the United States fails to make the top 10 happiest nations in the world, while countries like Australia, Israel and all of the Scandinavian nations do. The OECD measured more than 30 sets of data in 11 different categories, including education, health and employment.
The study also asked residents of each country to rank, on a scale of 1 to 10, their general satisfaction with their lives. 24/7 Wall St. examined the 10 countries with the highest life satisfaction scores to find the strongest factors related to happiness. [More from 24/7 Wall St.: The 10 Most Educated Countries in the World] Economic prosperity appears to be one of the strongest factors that relates to overall life satisfaction. 1. 2. 3. How Christian Were the Founders? Over two days, more than a hundred people — Christians, Jews, housewives, naval officers, professors; people outfitted in everything from business suits to military fatigues to turbans to baseball caps — streamed through the halls of the William B. Travis Building in Austin, Tex., waiting for a chance to stand before the semicircle of 15 high-backed chairs whose occupants made up the Texas State Board of Education. Each petitioner had three minutes to say his or her piece. “Please keep César Chávez” was the message of an elderly Hispanic man with a floppy gray mustache.
“Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world and should be included in the curriculum,” a woman declared. Finally, the board considered an amendment to require students to evaluate the contributions of significant Americans. The names proposed included , , , , and Edward Kennedy. The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Our Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians. "It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others.
" James Madison, "James Madison on Religious Liberty", edited by Robert S. Alley, ISBN 0-8975-298-X. pp. 237-238 . "What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Don't Blame The Supreme Court For Citizens United -- Blame Congress, The FEC And The IRS. WASHINGTON -- The two most controversial campaign financing practices of the post-Citizens United era aren’t actually the Supreme Court’s fault. The court's conservative majority most certainly expected that its 2010 ruling, which granted First Amendment rights to corporations and equated money to speech, would unleash unprecedented amounts of political spending.
But when people rail against Citizens United these days, they’re often complaining about two things in particular: the candidate-specific super PACs that implausibly claim to be independent of the candidates they’re backing, and the political slush funds that can accept unlimited secret donations by claiming to be issue-oriented nonprofits. Neither were inevitable byproducts of Citizens United -- or a subsequent lower court ruling.
They are things that could be fixed either legislatively, administratively, or both. Some reformers are thinking that help could come from an unlikely source: the Court itself.
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