The Colorado Independent

Posts Tagged Work and Poverty

DREAM Act backers go door to door to blast Buck, boost Bennet

By | 10.25.10 | 8:14 am

Student DREAM Act backers and immigration reform activists took to the streets over the weekend, knocking on doors to talk Boulder residents into voting for candidates who favor comprehensive immigration reform.

“We as folks who are interested in the DREAM…

Jacob Hacker on the expanding income gap

By | 09.29.10 | 7:24 am

Income inequality — the difference between what the rich earn and what everyone else earns — is higher in the United States than in developed countries the world over. Moving against the trend established in the rest of developed societies, the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans has widened over the past 30 years. It has also grown wider during the recession, contrary to most predictions. Since the 1990s, the richest of the rich have pulled away from the merely wealthy, while the recession has made more and more Americans poor.

Mixed-bag Anthem settlement and Obamacare funds put insurers on notice

By | 09.28.10 | 7:03 am

Although a large portion of the $20 million that health insurance giant Anthem Wellpoint agreed to pay Colorado policyholders will simply funnel back to Anthem, the settlement and the new $1 million that Colorado insurance industry regulators will receive this year through the new health reform legislation sends a strong message to insurers to deal fairly in the state, according to consumer advocates and commissioners at the state’s regulatory Division of Insurance.

State, federal health reform expands Medicaid eligibility by 200K in Colorado

By | 09.09.10 | 10:48 am

The Colorado Health Institute, the state’s non-partisan non-ideological non-profit source for health care information, is reporting that state and federal laws passed in the last two years have expanded Medicaid eligibility by nearly 200,000 uninsured adults in the…

San Francisco study, Michigan news: Immigrants don’t steal jobs; they get exploited

By | 08.31.10 | 10:29 am

A lot of the heat surrounding immigration policy debate comes from the fear that immigrants take jobs from American citizens, a fear easily exacerbated during a job-starved recession. But do new immigrants, legal and illegal, really take jobs…

Suthers campaign cash hangs over payday loan hearing

By | 08.31.10 | 9:13 am

Attorney General John Suthers is not writing the new rules that will govern the payday loan industry in Colorado. That’s why he is playing down the $10,000 in campaign donations he has received from the industry, saying the cash won’t influence the final contours of the new state regulations. The person writing the rules, Laura Udis, has worked in the attorney general’s department of consumer protection for more than two decades. She told the Colorado Independent that Suthers has so far not been involved in her work on the path-breaking payday legislation that was passed in the spring and that she expects Suthers to remain uninvolved.

Colorado lawmakers, left and right, look to lead on immigration reform

By | 08.19.10 | 10:22 am

Liberal Boulder Democratic Congressman Jared Polis and a small group of Colorado’s most conservative state lawmakers share a focus: They’re all pushing immigration policy reform and they all believe that now is the time to act.

Organized online, jobless Americans eye midterm elections

By | 07.28.10 | 9:47 am

Sometime this spring, Republicans turned against unemployment. In Nevada, Sharron Angle (R), the candidate facing incumbent Sen. Harry Reid (D), told local reporters, “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job.” (Untrue.) Angle also called the unemployed “spoiled.”

Obama lauds Senate action on unemployment benefits, bashes GOP political gamesmanship

By | 07.21.10 | 11:24 pm

Following the Senate’s reauthorization of an extension to unemployment benefits tonight, President Obama released a statement urging the U.S. House of Representatives to quickly pass its version so he can sign it into law. He blasted Republicans who’d stonewalled…

Senate passes unemployment benefits extension

By | 07.21.10 | 11:17 pm

Tonight, after waiting 30 hours for a cloture vote, the Senate reauthorized the federal extension of unemployment benefits — moving one step closer to restoring unemployment insurance to 2.6 million American workers. Tomorrow, the bill needs four or five…