Follow us:       |
Thursday, May 23, 2013
|
|
Sections
Our Writers
- Important: All passwords were reset on 06/15/11. Old passwords will no longer work. Click here to retrieve your password.
- Login
- Logout
- Subscribe to Our Free Dewsletter
We are non-commercial, all volunteer and supported by our readers. Please help sustain the Dew by making a donation.
Sue Sturgis
Number of posts: 18
Email address: email
Facebook: Facebook
Twitter: Twitter
Blogger: Blogger
Posts by Sue Sturgis:
Institute Index:
Follow the drone money
Date on which U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) launched a talking filibuster protesting John Brennan’s appointment as CIA director, and raising concerns about the Obama administration’s policy on the domestic use of unmanned aircraft known as drones against U.S. civilians: 3/6/2013
Hours Paul spoke before he was forced to stop for a bathroom break: almost 13
Facing South
In North Carolina, school resegregation by charter?
North Carolina could soon see a dramatic increase in the number of charter schools, with as many as 150 of the public-private hybrids opening across the state next year.
But new research from Duke University suggests the charter school boom will result in greater racial imbalance in the state’s public education system — and that can have negative educational consequences for students.
North Carolina limited the number of charter schools that could operate in the state to 100 until 2011. That’s when the General Assembly…
Facing South
Will the Supreme Court gut the Voting Rights Act?
Number of days after the 2012 election that the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear Shelby County, Ala.’s challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that aims to protect racial minorities from discrimination at the polls: 3
Number of states covered in whole by the VRA’s Section 5, the target of the challenge, which requires the Justice Department to approve any changes to election rules before implementation: 9
Facing South
Impact of voter suppression efforts less than feared
Voting rights advocates have successfully pushed back against a national effort to restrict Americans’ ability to cast a ballot, with far fewer people disenfranchised than feared.
“Strikingly, nearly all the worst new laws to cut back on voting have been blocked, blunted, repealed, or postponed,” according to a new report from NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Laws in 14 states were reversed or weakened. As a result, new restrictions will affect far fewer than the 5 million citizens we predicted last year.”
Facing South
Southern lawmakers earn low grades for efforts to address income inequality
Though the South is the region of the United States with the greatest concentration of income inequality, its representatives in Congress are doing a poor job of addressing the problem.
The Institute for Policy Studies released a report this week that grades federal lawmakers on 40 legislative actions over the past two years that either helped the most affluent or the poorest of their constituents. They ranged from a bill to establish a “Buffett Rule” minimum tax rate for wealthy Americans to legislation raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation.
Of the states with the most uneven income distribution, only one — Massachusetts — has senators and representatives who earned an overall average “A” score. The 13 Southern states* earned an average score of C-. Of those 13 states, 10 have among the highest income inequality index scores nationwide, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report.
Facing South
The South faces growing school segregation
Despite declining residential segregation for black families in the United States, school segregation for black students remains very high — and it is increasing most dramatically in the South, which has led the nation in desegregation thanks to the victories of the civil rights movement.
Those are among the findings of research released last week by the Los Angeles-based Civil Rights Project, which found persistent and serious increases in segregation of public-school students by race and poverty. The changes are most dramatic in the South and the West, where youth of color now constitute a majority of public school students.
Facing South
On Appalachia Solidarity Day, remembering a mountain hero
Larry Gibson, a renowned leader in the campaign to end mountaintop removal coal mining, passed away Sunday while working at his home on West Virginia’s Kayford Mountain, the ancestral Raleigh County home he fought so hard to protect. He was 66.
Gibson died of a heart attack — not an altogether surprising fate for someone who lived with the constant stress he suffered.
