There’s been a lot of fighting the last several months about new restrictions on the right to vote. We learn that these laws, including voter ID, rules around registration, and limits on early voting disproportionately impact African Americans, Latinos, youth and other groups, many of which already have lower participation rates than the white population.
We’ve talked often about how true sustainable development cannot be achieved without adopting new metrics for progress beyond GDP. Without valuing things like natural capital and work done within the home, GDP is unable to accurately reflect the true growth of our economy and, more importantly, our progress. Yesterday, at the Rio+20 conference, a new metric was launched that offers a much more nuanced picture of growth and progress.
Philly has more than 40,000 vacant properties, 10,000 of which are under the city's control, and 30,000 of which are owned by private landowners. Some 20,000 of these properties are long-term tax delinquent.
Yesterday, I wrote about some of the new indicators coming out of the Rio +20 conference, including a corporate initiative to value natural capital. On first glance, I have to admit that I couldn’t get past the idea that it was an exercise in advanced greenwashing.
Here's a day that many of us thought we'd never see: Hot button topics like immigration and contraception operating as wedge issues -- but in ways that benefit Democrats.
Start with the awkward spot that the White House has placed Mitt Romney in with its policy shift on the deportation of young immigrants.
The political heat had been building for months on the Obama administration to provide a solution, even if only partial, to the plight of young people who came to the U.S as children, and were raised as Americans but had little chance to make it in this country.
Defenders of unregulated capitalism argue that markets tend to police themselves, as bottom feeders and cheaters get punished by consumers who take their business elsewhere. But this assumes that consumers know they are being victimized in the first place, which often they don't.
Despite continual claims that renewable energy will never be able to replace fossil fuels, its development and expansion continues at an impressive pace. A new report shows that not only is global renewable energy production increasing, investment in renewables is also increasing. In 2010, renewable energy sources supplied nearly 17 percent of all global final energy consumption. Investment in renewables rose 17 percent to $257 billion, despite the debt crisis in Europe.
Forget those jumbo checks Sheldon Adelson wrote for Newt Gingrich in the GOP primary, or even the big money that Romney is pulling in now from wealthy bundlers. The most dramatic illustration of how private wealth is perverting elections can be found in Ohio, where Senator Sherrod Brown is being pummeled by inaccurate negative ads funded by conservative outside groups and super PACs.
Aaron Skirboll has a great article on Alternet that details the history of renewable energy policy and why we are unable to move away from fossil fuel. Skirboll’s article details how President Carter encouraged conservation and a move towards energy independence by, among other things, increasing solar funding from $75,000 in 1970 to $261 million in 1977.
