By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal
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How Big Money Keeps Populism at Bay (AlterNet)
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Thomas Ferguson writes with Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen about how both parties' reliance on large donations from the wealthy to keep campaigns afloat limits the influence of populist movements on elections.
- Roosevelt Take: Ferguson pulls from his working paper with Jorgensen and Chen to discuss political spending in the 2012 campaign.
'Mom did it, we can do it': Two-Generation Programs Help Lift Families Out of Poverty (NBC News)
Former Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline Fellow Nona Willis Aronowitz writes about a highly successful anti-poverty program in Amarillo, TX. The program works with single mothers and their children simultaneously to promote academic achievement.
How the Rise of Women in Labor Could Save the Movement (The Nation)
Bryce Covert draws on research from Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren as she argues that encouraging the rise of female leadership in both traditional and alt-labor groups will help to reinvigorate the labor movement and lead it to success.
Two Roads Forward for Labor: The AFL-CIO’s New Agenda (Dissent)
Nelson Lichtenstein considers two paths for a revival of the labor movement, one based in singular events of mass upheaval, and the other in a slow drift to the left in American politics. These options aren't mutually exclusive, so he says labor should prepare for both.
Blaming Poverty on Single Parents Is Win-Win for Republicans, Evidence Be Damned (The Wire)
Philip Bump says that when Senator Marco Rubio tries to link marriage rates and poverty, progressives should remember that correlation is not causation. Sadly, the GOP would rather talk about marriage as a solution than fund real anti-poverty programs.
It Is Expensive to Be Poor (The Atlantic)
Barbara Ehrenreich discusses poverty as a shortage of money, as opposed to the moral failure that many politicians spin it to be. She argues that Americans need to stop blaming poverty on the poor and start fixing the economic and social institutions that perpetuate it.
Banks Seek to Limit Volcker With Challenge to Meaning of ‘Own’ (Bloomberg)
Yalman Onaran reports that bankers have filed a lawsuit arguing that the Volcker Rule's definition of ownership with regard to hedge funds and private-equity funds is too broad. The rule was written that way to keep banks from skirting the ban on proprietary trading.