DM Articles

For one group of students, what sets their springtime concert on the HUB lawn apart from the rest is simple: Theirs has a message.

Last year, the insurance companies gutted health care, the banks walked off with a trillion dollars in bailouts, and the oil, coal, and nuclear lobbyists hijacked the clean energy jobs bill. And that was before the Supreme Court last month repealed all limits on corporate political spending.

Last year the insurance companies gutted health care, the banks walked off with a trillion dollars in bailouts, and the oil, coal, and nuclear lobbyists hijacked the Clean Energy Jobs Bill. And that was before the Supreme Court repealed all limits on corporate political spending last month.

Last year, the insurance companies gutted health care, the banks walked off with a trillion dollars in bailouts and oil coal, and nuclear lobbyists hijacked the clean energy jobs bill. That was before the Supreme Court recognized corporations as equal to individual citizens and effectively repealed all limits on corporate political spending.

Members of Bryn Mawr’s Democracy Matters chapter delivered a petition expressing support for the Fair Elections Act to Congressman Jim Gerlach on Friday, contributing to the national organization’s "Fair Elections Action Week". The bill, which is currently under consideration in the House of Representatives, limits large campaign donations.

When businesses buy government, the people must take action.

Six people walked through city hall to congressman Baron Hill’s office wielding a petition with 510 signatures – part of the 180,000 signatures nationwide.

This weekend, the Colgate chapter of Democracy Matters traveled to Albany to participate in the group’s National Summit. Seniors Mollie Reilly and Sarah Finn, the group’s campus coordinators, attended this year’s summit, accompanied by W. Bradford Wiley Professor of Economics Jay Mandle, who led one of the workshops.

INDIANAPOLIS — Twenty-year-old Indiana University junior Brianna Dines made the case Wednesday for chilling the cozy relationship between legislators and lobbyists.

Ethics reforms in the Statehouse took a step forward Wednesday as one bill unanimously cleared a House committee and a second was introduced in the Senate.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Indiana House Speaker Pat Bauer, blamed for killing a lobbying reform bill earlier this year, made a rare personal appearance before the House Rules Committee to champion a new one. 

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indiana House committee endorsed a bill Wednesday to tighten lobbying and ethics rules and sent the legislation to the full, Democrat-controlled House.

My name is Rachel Williams, and I am the campus coordinator for Democracy Matters on the SUNY New Paltz campus, among other titles in this community. Recently I traveled to Washington, DC with the Hudson Valley Progressive Coalitions’ Caravan to DC to meet with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. I had the opportunity to thank her for co-sponsoring legislation that Democracy Matters has been working hard to get passed. Although she had supportive words for the grassroots activism we represent, she expressed the uphill climb we still have for change.

The exciting “change” that so many of us hoped for after the Nov. 2008 election has ground to a screeching halt. And it is largely the fault of Congress. Members of the House and Senate have blocked forward movement on such critical issues as addressing climate change, reforming the college student loan process, really fixing the health care system, regulating the big banks and examining the ethical lapses of their own members.

It would be easy for Adonal Foyle to gripe. Instead he grows.

Students need to push campaign finance reform into the public agenda

On Sunday, November 15, Colgate students launched a letter writing campaign in an effort to encourage the passage of the Fair Elections Now Act and promote campus political participation.

Joan Mandle Challenges Students to Take Back Our Democracy.

An intimate group of seven students went to the Varsity in Hughes-Trigg to listen to Andy Wilson, a registered lobbyist who focuses on campaign finance and environmental issues, discuss health care and finance.

When Vassar students went to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 3 at Arthur S. May Elementary School, many had their eligibility challenged because of discrepancies between the addresses under which students registered and the addresses where they currently live.