Media

As a politician who cut his teeth on the South Side of Chicago, Barack Obama was positioned to become the first urban president in decades, even since Teddy Roosevelt.

His stimulus plan promised billions of dollars for infrastructure projects, including public transportation and multi-family housing, which are particularly beneficial to cities. Obama even went as far as establishing an Office of Urban Affairs, and tapping former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion to lead it. 

So how have things turned out for cities over the past few years?

The 4th OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Power begins tomorrow in New Delhi, India and will bring together roughly 1,000 participants to talk about alternative metrics beyond GDP. The theme of this year’s conference is, “Measuring Well-Being for Development and Policy Making.” The conference will build on the Better Life Initiative, which looks at 11 metrics beyond GDP to measure well-being across countries.

A robust vice-presidential debate continued a noticeable trend in this election season: climate silence. As tracked by Climate Silence, a joint project of Forecast the Facts and Friends of the Earth Action, climate change has not been mentioned even once in either the Presidential or Vice-Presidential debates. By comparison, in 2008, both presidential candidates not only discussed climate change, but both promised mandatory caps on carbon pollution.

As expected, Paul Ryan repeated one of the top mistruths of this election season last night -- namely that President Obama robbed Medicare of $716 billion to fund the Affordable Care Act.

For months, various experts and news sources have pointed out what a distortion this is. As Politifact noted in August:

Martha Raddatz was deservedly praised as a moderator at the vice-presidential debate in Kentucky last night. But, reading the transcript again, maybe that praise was a bit overdone. Raddatz may not have been another empty seat, but her question on Social Security perpetuated a frequent myth.

The latest attempt to throw a collar on for-profit colleges is the The College Student Rebate Act of 2012. House Representatives John Tierney (D-Mass.) and George Miller (D-Calif.) put it in front of a congressional committee in mid-September.

Should the Act pass, it would require for-profit schools to devote 80% of their revenue to "educational and related expenses." If they fail to do so, the schools would be required to refund an amount equal to the margin by which they exceeded the cap.

Senator Schumer offered a much needed intervention in the tax debate in a speech on Tuesday. What Schumer said is that revenue-neutral tax reform was a fantasy and that any big Congressional deal on tax reform had to include higher rates on the wealthy, as well as more revenue overall.

Yes and yes to both points.

Kimberly Kelley of Tampa has provided Florida elections officials with thousands of names of people she thinks may be ineligible to vote and should be removed from the rolls. On Election Day, she’ll join thousands more — people of all political stripes — to monitor balloting.

“I believe there is fraud both ways. I don’t think it’s a specific group,” said Kelley, a registered Republican whose group is called Tampa Vote Fair. “We’re just there to observe. We’re not going to intimidate anyone.”