It’s a quiet story that most progressive groups operating out of Washington, DC don’t want to talk about: they can’t attract votes anymore. In two recent primary races, in Illinois and Maryland, the more liberal candidate was overwhelmed by the establishment, despite widespread support from labor and online progressive groups. Since a high-water mark in [...]

The coalition trying to force corporations to disassociate from ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing group responsible for modeling and writing a substantial portion of the bills that come through the Republican side of state legislatures, has notched a couple more victories. First, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which hooked up with [...]

Yesterday I noted the efforts of the activist coalition working on getting corporations to stop underwriting ALEC, the right-wing legislation factory. Today brings news of two more companies dropping their funding. First, Kraft Foods, who told NPR just a day ago that they would continue funding, made the decision to pull out (h/t): We belong [...]

Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all the protest movements and boycott groups, and they get lost in the shuffle. But a quietly successful movement against ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, deserves some attention. As you may know, ALEC is the organization behind much of the right-wing legislation in the states over the [...]

President Obama spoke for the first time on the Trayvon Martin case today, calling it a “tragedy” and that “it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this.” African-American leaders have been calling on the President to speak out about the case which has caused a national outcry. Some noted that Obama personally [...]

When I wrote my story yesterday about the backlash to the War on Women, I added that this has not fully translated into political power yet. So far the victories have been largely defensive actions, and they’ve been scattered. In conservative states, the war continues mostly unchecked. I cited the passage of a mandatory ultrasound [...]

You’ve heard about borrowers getting kicked out of their homes, and you’ve heard about undocumented immigrants getting deported. Rarely do you hear the story that combines the two. Here is one of those stories. The foreclosure defense group of Occupy Los Angeles brings us the story of Blanca Cardenas. Cardenas is undocumented with two US-born [...]

Rush Limbaugh has faced criticism before. But the backlash at the activist feels new. At least eleven advertisers have stopped hawking their wares on his program. Two radio stations have dropped the show entirely. Republican leaders have (sorta) denounced him. Limbaugh has apologized and that didn’t stop the backlash. Nevertheless, to assume that Limbaugh will [...]

A new citizen action site called F the Banks (the F stands for foreclose, I’m told) has kicked off their campaign by taking aim at Bank of America in a series of actions throughout the spring. The first one coincided with Leap Day protests put on by the Occupy movement. At Zuccotti Park, writer Matt [...]

Sometimes it’s hard to find progress in public policy, especially in the energy sector, where a natural gas boom and new nuclear plant construction have been the big stories of late. But I am nothing if not a striver. So I’ve found the genuinely good news that ten more old, dirty coal-fired power plants will [...]

Joe Nocera has a bizarre column today, a riposte to anti-fracking activists, really, that can be summed up in three words: “Get over it.” Fracking isn’t going away. To put it another way, the technique of hydraulic fracturing, used to extract natural gas from once-impossible-to-get-at reservoirs like the Marcellus Shale that lies beneath New York [...]