Ten organizations, including Public Campaign, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Demos, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG, as well as United Republic, sent a letter to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) endorsing an earlier request by two companies to allow text message campaign contributions to better let small donors participate in elections. The
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In America’s schools, the barrage of standardized testing kids have come under is overwhelming. From the Iowa Test of Basic Standards (ITBS) to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the alphabet soup of bubble-in tests that fill our schools is provoking a backlash from educators and parents who think kids are over-tested and denied
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Last month, Tennessee passed a law that would establish protections for teachers who chose to teach unscientific theories doubting global warming in a science classrooms. (It was somehow attached to a bill also providing protections for teachers instructing about creationism.) The group behind these climate denial laws, which have popped up all over the country, is
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Today, an alliance of superheroes known as The Avengers will entertain American moviegoers from coast to coast with their cosmic powers and witty banter as they unite seeking to save the earth from the film’s villain, Loki. As these superheroes band together thanks to their shared belief in saving humanity, the real-life actors who play them donate
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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) is facing a recall election after he pushed through legislation last year that limited public workers’ bargaining rights. And now a special Wisconsin state law that allows recall targets to raise unlimited amounts of money in the early days of the campaign has helped Walker raise an unprecedented amount of
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The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the biggest oil and gas lobby group in the country, spending millions of dollars each year advocating on behalf of over 400 corporations who work in the petroleum industry. So why is its president, Jack Gerard, speaking on behalf of the Obama administration? The Hill reports that the Interior
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Last week, President Obama made headlines when he signed an executive order designed to protect U.S. troops, veterans, and their families from the predatory abuses of some for-profit colleges. The executive order takes aim at some deceptive recruiting practices by these colleges — which soak up taxpayer dollars with little accountability — and requires them
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“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mitt Romney enthusiastically exclaimed last fall at the Iowa State Fair. Romney was referencing legal principles that give business corporations many of the rights possessed by actual human beings. But Romney is more than the exponent of this idea, he is its embodiment. If Romney wins in November, it will
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