Media

Despite some rain showers, over 60 percent of the country is still suffering from drought conditions and nearly a quarter is suffering from extreme or exceptional drought. We’ve detailed how this has impacted agriculture and ranching and over 60 percent of Iowa’s land is still classified as being in either extreme or exceptional drought.

News has been trickling out today that the process of hydraulic fracturing of natural gas will be allowed in parts of upstate New York.

Right off the bat, this is clearly bad news for New York's environment. Upstate communities are directly exposed to toxins by the controversial practice and millions of downstate New Yorkers rely on the same at-risk aquifers.

One clear path to retirement security is to buy a home early in life and pay off it before you retire -- at which point you can either live there at a pretty low cost or cash out and use the wealth to help cover living expenses in a cheaper place.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued a recall for over 2.3 million toilets after hundreds of people were injured. The recall applies to units manufactured between October 1997 and February 2008. Aside from being my own personal nightmare, that is an astonishing amount of manufacturer neglect in terms of number of units affected and duration of time covered. In essence, Flushmate manufactured potentially shoddy units for nearly a decade.

New York continues to suffer from high unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has new data that indicates that, of all the states, only New York had a “statistically significant over-the-year increase in its unemployment rate (+0.9%).”

New York isn’t alone in struggling. 

Voter ID isn’t the only law unjustly limiting citizen's voting rights. In an excellent piece for Salon, Erik Nielson illuminates the widespread disenfranchisement of convicted felons. Although state laws vary in severity, all but two have some sort of restrictions preventing convicted felons from voting.

It is time to answer two questions:

Washington is finally moving to better regulate the real estate appraisal industry, with regulators yesterday proposing new rules to strengthen appraiser independence.

It's about time.

An interesting proposal will be on the ballot this fall in Michigan. The measure, put forth by Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs, would increase the state’s renewable energy requirement to 25 percent by 2025, more than double what it is today. The ballot measure would place this requirement in the state’s constitution, which would make it less susceptible to being overturned and also allow citizen’s to dictate the state’s energy future.