Middle Class Financial Insecurity, China Trade, Businesses for Health Care Reform, Paid Sick Days, Revitalized Cities

Highlighting the struggling situation of working families, the Center for American Progress has a new report on middle-class financial security indicators that show that after a rise in security for middle-class families in the 1990s, a steep decline set in after 2000 as families increasingly became vulnerable to unexpected medical emergencies and rising debt. A recent report by the Center also highlights stark racial disparities in economic wealth.

 

Unbalanced trade with China since 2001 has displaced 2.3 million jobs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as outlined in this economic snapshot by the Economic Policy Institute.

Defying the rhetoric of big business lobbies, a new survey of small businesses conducted by BALCONY and Small Business Majority in New York State finds that 55% of those businesses agree that small businesses have a responsibility to offer health insurance to their employees and a majority support requiring employers not providing insurance to pay to help employees afford insurance.

To highlight the need for family-friendly workplace policies such as paid sick days and paid leave, the 1000 Voices Archive provides video testimonials of the day-to-day struggles of families that can support passage of such policies. 

In To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities, PolicyLink highlights community-focused policies that are helping smaller industrial cities revive themselves and restore opportunity to their residents.

According to a new report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 27 states could save hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue if they eliminated from their own tax code a federal corporate tax break known as the "domestic production deduction," which mainly benefits large, profitable, corporations.

The Brennan Center for Justice has released three excellent reports on election reform issues.  Writing Reform is an invaluble guide for drafters of campaign finance reform legislation; Better Ballots covers how poor ballot design continues to disenfranchise voters almost a decade after the "butterfly ballot" fiasco in Florida and how to solve this under-appreciated problem; and A Citizen's Guide to Redistricting is "an owners' manual, for those who should own the process: we, the people."

The Democratic Leadership Council released an analysis of how gerrymandering reduces voter turnout in a dozen states by up to 9 million votes because of a lack of competitive elections.

A new report by the National Institute on Money in State Politics finds that since the 2000 election cycle, companies and associations representing the predatory financial services industry have contributed more than $10.2 million to state-level candidates and party committees in 41 states.

The Progressive Policy Institute has a new report, Stop Revolving-Door Justice, outlining how states can change corrections practices to reduce the country's sky high recidivism rates to save money by reducing the prison population.

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