A new study finds that climate change is already contributing to 400,000 deaths per year and costing the world more than $1.2 trillion, or 1.6 percent of global GDP. The report was commissioned by 20 governments and written by more than 50 scientists, economists and policy experts. In the report, the authors detail how the vast majority of deaths occur in developing countries and that the world’s poorest communities within lower and middle-income communities are most exposed to climate change risks.
Thomas Edsell has a column in Sunday's New York Times -- "What's Wrong With Pennsylvania?" -- that explores how various factors have conspired to make the state uncompetitive for Mitt Romney.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service looks how a carbon tax could be used for deficit reduction or other fiscal measures. The CRS projects that a tax rate of $20 per metric ton of carbon dioxide would generate approximately $88 billion in 2012 and up to $144 billion by 2020. This would be enough to cut the 10-year budget deficit in half under the 2012 baseline CBO projection.
NEW YORK – Governor Jerry Brown signed California Assembly Bill 1436 providing for future implementation of Election Day Voter Registration, also known as “Same Day Registration,” a reform that Demos and over two dozen voting rights organizations supported.
Here is an industry that has been repeatedly chastised and penalized for all sorts of bad behavior -- an industry that abused its customers so badly for so long, with hidden fees and usurious interest rates, that one of the first things Democrats did when they took control of the White House in 2009 was to enact legislation to rein in credit card issuers.
Each major election, thousands of volunteers fan out in communities all across the nation to register their neighbors to vote. You may see some of them in your travels today, National Voter Registration Day. Community voter registration drives like these provide an essential service, adding many thousands of unregistered citizens to the voter rolls.
An income gap exists between Congress and the general population, and the gap is getting bigger. The Center For Responsive Politics documents the increase of congressional wealth over the past few years. In effect, Americans are now being represented not by their peers; but by the 1 percent.
Mitt Romney's release of his 2011 tax rates -- which showed that he paid a 14 percent tax rate -- has again spotlighted the preferential ways that the tax code treats invested wealth. While a multimillion dollar income earned by an employee -- say, a baseball player or a news anchor -- would be taxed at 35 percent (not including payroll taxes), the rate for capital gains income is 15 percent.
When the Supreme Court in Citizens United allowed corporations to spend money in elections they thought that shareholders would be able to monitor the use of corporate funds “through procedures of corporate democracy.”
On the eve of National Voter Registration Day, California has taken a huge leap forward in reducing the barriers to voting. Governor Brown signed into law a Same Day Registration program, making California the 11th (and largest) state – plus Washington, D.C.
As a practical matter, government largely functions through bureaucratic regulations. But controversy is growing around the seemingly benign requirement that regulators consider costs and benefits when adopting new rules. Despite the rationality implied by the words “costs and benefits,” those who champion greater attention to these factors are, in fact, mounting an insidiously dangerous attack on government.
NEW YORK – National public policy organization Demos is joining hundreds of non-partisan groups for National Voter Registration Week, beginning September 24, to help counter attacks on the freedom to vote and ensure that the nation’s elections are free, fair, and accessible. Next week, for the first time ever, concerned citizens across the nation are coming together, pulling out all the stops, to make sure that every eligible voter is registered and able to vote in this critical election year.
Election integrity is impaired when eligible Americans are prevented from exercising their fundamental right to vote and having their voices heard on the issues that affect their lives. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania just said the same thing when considering a new voter ID requirement, writing “if the Law is enforced in a manner that prevents qualified and eligible electors from voting, the integrity of the upcoming General Election will be impaired.”
As we’ve written, New York is considering allowing fracking in limited areas of the state, despite the environmental and economic damage that comes with the practice.
Since 2005, the gambling industry has spent at least $9.5 million on lobbying and $1.5 million in campaign contributions per election cycle in New York. Compare this to the banking and financial service sector, which spent $16 million on lobbying each election cycle, and the energy sector, which spent $1.4 million in campaign contributions in 2010 alone.
The afternoon before early voting began in the 2010 midterm elections, a crowd of people gathered in the offices of a Houston Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots. They soon formed a line that snaked out the door of the Patriots’ crumbling storefront and down the block, past the neighboring tattoo parlor. The volunteers, all of whom had been trained by the Patriots to work as poll watchers, had come to collect their polling-place assignments.
Is there a “state of emergency” over voting rights in America? That was the declaration of a coalition of civil rights, faith-based and social justice organizations and groups representing communities of color in a conference call on Wednesday, just in time for National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25.
You’re going to hear “both sides do it” on this issue and that’s not true, so I thought I’d compare what voter protection lawyers and others actually do on the ground in Ohio with what True the Vote has done in past elections in Texas and Massachusetts:
