What’s it called when only rich(er) people run for office?

America. From Juhem Navarro-Rivera at Demos: …analyses looking at the type of people who are elected to office at the federal and state levels often find that most elected officials come from the upper economic stratum of American society. The reason for the socioeconomic biases among those elected to office is related to the barriers that people …

Voter registration and freedom from college debt

Read this, from Sean McElwee at Demos. McElwee writes: Our democracy has far too many missing voices, particularly among those who are already less advantaged due to racial and class barriers in our society. Such voting inequalities depress overall participation in our elections, but if we look at public opinion data that can be broken …

Wait. Free college??!?!

Last week, Pres. Obama proposed making two years of community college free and universal. It faces, of course, an uphill battle. This is  wonderful, but it’s not new. A commission in the 1940s suggested something like this, free education all the way up to the “14th grade.” The potential for this could be huge, according …