In an unusual power-sharing agreement that ought to be remembered should Andrew Cuomo ever try to run for President, Republicans and a group of “independent Democrats” will share control of the New York State Senate, despite Democrats running on the Democratic ballot line winning as many as 33 of the 63 seats in the chamber. [...]

The Republican platform is too large a document and covers too many issue areas for one person to dissect entirely. I covered my core competency by going through the housing plank. But for those who did have the time and resources to do a full overview, the picture becomes clear that this is a pretty [...]

July 24, 2009, marks the last time the minimum wage was increased in America, to its current dollar amount of $7.25 an hour. At various times in their recent political lives, both candidates for President have called that figure too low. Both have agreed that the minimum wage ought to be indexed to inflation, to [...]

In 2007, Democrats passed an increase in the minimum wage, and got George W. Bush to sign it by making it the scraps exchanged for more war funding. In the 2008 campaign, most of the Democratic candidates, including the eventual winner, expressed support for indexing the minimum wage to inflation, so it maintained its value [...]

If the Occupy movement has one primary concern, I’m guessing it would be that the expansion of income inequality has had a massive amount of negative consequences for the country. It has created a near-permanent underclass and robbed them of their voice in the political sphere. The overclass, meanwhile, the 1%, has an inordinate amount [...]

Now that we’ve exposed the flaws from cutting welfare so it cannot provide adequate benefits during an historically bad recession, we can gather a new appreciation for the main mandatory spending program on the poor that has served to keep them afloat in these troubled times. That would be the food stamp program, also know [...]

Contrary to the opinion that we’re headed for a consumer-led recovery in 2012, most economic analysts see little movement on consumer spending. Wages have not grown, credit-financed spending has returned and cannot sustain much past where it is, and most of the job growth over the past two years have come in low-wage service sectors. [...]

The Obama Administration will provide wage protections for home care workers via executive order, a promising proposal for over two million workers previously exempted from coverage. The move is another in the “We Can’t Wait” proposals the Administration has been leaking out for a couple months. Twenty-nine states currently exempt home health care workers from [...]

Markos Moulitsas predicted that Michele Bachmann would be the Republican nominee, and it’s hard to argue with his logic. The Presidential nomination is a different animal than state and local elections for Congress, but based on the track record of 2010, the Tea Party is the greatest force in Republican primaries, and they prefer someone [...]

Being in California, I hear a lot from Republican lawmakers in this state about the “Texas miracle.” They claim that businesses are decamping to Texas because of their “pro-growth” policies, and driving a boom time there. This will clearly be a signature of the Rick Perry campaign for President if he chooses to run. Only [...]