News Clips

Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said even if marginalized groups of people don’t exactly know what the Public Service Commission is or does, they do see the impact on their bills and on their health. “They may not directly know the jargon, but they do know what’s impacting them,” she said.

“A lot of these people tell their constituents what they think they want to hear even if they don’t necessarily believe in it or they’re not doing necessarily what’s in the best interest of the public, but themselves,” said Sean McMorris, who focuses on transparency, ethics and accountability at California Common Cause, a government watchdog group.

Common Cause named Virginia Kase Solomón as its next president and CEO. She’s currently CEO of the League of Women Voters and will start her new role in February.

The nonprofit Common Cause helped to create the National Voting in Prison Coalition. Keshia Morris Desir, justice and mass incarceration project manager for the group, explained the bill, known as the Inclusive Democracy Act, would restore the right to vote in federal elections for individuals who are incarcerated or on probation and parole. "What that does is help to disenfranchise the 4.6 million individuals that currently do not have access to the ballot box in federal elections," Morris Desir explained. "More than 50% of people across the United States support voting for currently incarcerated folks," Morris Desir pointed out. "People across the country know that, you know, just because you made a mistake in your past and you have a criminal conviction does not exclude you from citizenship and your right to vote."

Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy have been at the forefront of sounding the alarm and I’ve hot-linked their names to their most recent articles about the work they’re doing to try to stop the billionaire machine devoted to rewriting our Constitution. Please check them out, get on their mailing lists, and spread the word. This is one of those things that Republicans on the Court could use to seemingly spring out of nowhere and bring down our democracy once and for all.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group, revealed that Thomas didn’t report that source of income on his financial disclosures, despite a legal requirement to do so. The New York Times also raised the possibility that Thomas may have flown on Crow’s jet at least three times. If Thomas had, in fact, taken those flights and Crow footed the bill, the justice failed to disclose that, too. The conference told the lawmakers and Common Cause that the Financial Disclosure Committee would look into both issues. Early in 2012, the committee held a meeting. Some of the judges in attendance expected a serious conversation about how to handle the matter. If there is “reasonable cause” to believe a judge might have intentionally falsified a disclosure or omitted information, the conference, through the Financial Disclosure Committee, is supposed to refer the case to the attorney general. Instead, the committee’s chair, a Kentucky district judge and President Bill Clinton appointee named Joseph H. McKinley Jr., said immediately that he had decided to end the inquiry, explaining that Thomas already amended his filings to include Ginni’s source of income, according to one of the judges in the room.