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In a desperate attempt to prevent implementation of the Volcker Rule, representatives of megabanks are resorting to some last-minute scare tactics. Specifically, they assert that the Volcker Rule, which is designed to reduce the risks that such banks can take, violates the international trade obligations of the United States and would offend other member nations of ...

They were young African-Americans and supporters of equality marching peacefully from Selma, Ala. to the state’s capital to protest the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by police and the denial of voting rights when they were attacked by scores of state police and others, spewing tear gas beating the protestors with billy clubs. Those brutal, ...

Over the last 20 years, the percentage of Americans who think our laws regulating the sale and possession of firearms should be made stricter has declined from 78 percent to 43 percent. Over the last 20 years, approximately 260,000 Americans have been murdered by firearms. The firearm homicide rate in the United States is 3.7 for every 100,000 people. ...

Tax hikes for millionaires and Social Security cuts for grannies. Those two divisive issues have dominated media coverage of the “fiscal cliff” debate. But now President Obama is hinting that corporate tax breaks might be in the mix. Big players in the debate have been pushing for this all along. Take, for example, the “Fix ...

In a speech at the John F. Kennedy Library last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made an impassioned case for the present amd continuing need for the Voting Rights Act, in particular the Act’s Section 5, saying,” “This provision has consistently enjoyed broad, bipartisan support – including, most recently, in 2006, when an overwhelming Congressional majority joined ...

The 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller shows definitively that the Second Amendment is about an archaic issue relevant to 1790, not to 2012. The Second Amendment reads as follows: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear ...

The mass murder of 27 first-graders and adults in Newtown Connecticut could be a turning point in public sentiment and presidential leadership. Or it would be a moment for kind gestures and little durable change. President Obama was eloquent last night and seemed to be setting the stage for a presidential commitment on behalf of ...

Some Republicans have long insisted that many of the jobless, relaxing in a billowy social safety net, simply aren’t trying hard enough to find a job. My fellow Economix contributor Casey Mulligan makes a similar argument when he contends that the poverty rate should have risen ­between 2007 and 2011, but didn’t ­because public assistance ...

We shouldn’t have to choose between our seniors and children — I’d rather focus on jobs and growth rather than deficit reduction, and sooner cut corporate welfare and defense spending than anything else. But the brute fact is America’s seniors have political clout that matters when spending is being cut, while children don’t. At the ...

Attempts to undo or diminish Social Security began upon the program’s enactment; they continue unabated. Early charges of unconstitutionality foundered when the Supreme Court upheld the law. The Bush push for “privatization” shocked but did not awe. Participants and the public know that work and contributions earn the program’s benefits. The recession tailspin of 401(k)s ...