Yesterday, I told my students in Election Law that longstanding assumptions about campaign finance regulation might be turned upside down today. That appears to have happened. In a special session, the United States Supreme Court just issued its decision in Citizens United v. FEC, and it has apparently overruled prior cases upholding the use of corporate treasury funds for express advocacy of the election and defeat of candidates. More later.
Yesterday’s New York Times reports that there has been something of a reversal of marriage fortunes between men and women. According to a recent analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center, “Men are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women.” Although other studies have shown that there continues to be a gender gap favoring men in wages (meaning that women earn, on average, somewhat less than similarly situated men engaged in the same work), it appears that the average wage imbalance in a given marriage is likely to be in the opposite direction. Trends in the last year have exacerbated this imbalance, since men were far more likely than women to lose their jobs in the recession. The report also notes that in married couples “wives contribute a growing share of the household income, and a rising share of those couples includes a wife who earns more than her husband.”
It is interesting to speculate on the impact these trends will have on marriage and divorce.
Here are a few moments of upbeat hopefulness for those (count me in) who find keeping an eye on Milwaukee’s education scene to be pretty somber going much of the time.
There are three Hope Lutheran schools in Milwaukee, each serving low-income north side students, each part of the private-school voucher program, and each with high aims when it comes to academics and character traits. The schools have a variety of contests across the year. In the fall, they had a “Hope Idol” contest.
The winning entry was a video made by sixth-grade students from the Hope Fortis school, 3601 N. Port Washington Rd. It’s a take-off on Beyonce’s hot song and video, “Single Ladies.” This is one is called “Scholar Ladies.” The students’ effort is picking up steam as a YouTube video — there have been more than 100,000 hits on it, it’s been featured on CNN, and the student are determined to find ways to promote it until they get at least 1,000,000 hits.
In the students’ version, the goal is not to “put a ring on it” but to get high grades by working hard, and to keep your eye on 2016 — the year their class will graduate high school.