Open, Accountable Government

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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FEMA Ignores Toxic Trailers of Hurricane Victims

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) turned a blind eye to Katrina victims who became ill while living in FEMA-provided trailers, according to testimony given at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 19. Trailer tenants and experts described how FEMA, with evidence of toxic levels of formaldehyde in the trailers from construction materials, refused to substantively evaluate the extent of the problem, respond to known instances of formaldehyde poisoning or take adequate precautionary action.

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Surgeon General Warning: Manipulated Science

At a July 10 hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former Bush administration Surgeon General Richard Carmona joined a growing list of officials to disclose the executive branch's political manipulation of science. Carmona's claims that agency science is being distorted for political purposes echoes charges leveled by recent whistleblowers from the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Energy Task Force Advisors Revealed, Six Years after Meetings

In the long-standing struggle to gain access to details regarding Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings in 2000 and 2001, the Washington Post reported last week some of the many players who influenced the vice president's policy recommendations. An undisclosed former White House official gave the Post a list of approximately 300 names, companies and organizations who met with White House staff.

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An Examination of Government Openness

OpenTheGovernment.org and People For the American Way recently released Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy, which gives a comprehensive examination of the importance of government transparency and the various legislative and policy means for promoting and curtailing open government.

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Baltimore Calls on Congress for More Chemical Security

On July 16, the Baltimore City Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting federal chemical security legislation that would require, when feasible, the use of safer chemicals and technologies.

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Minimum Wage Raised Today

Jul 24, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The minimum wage will go up to $5.85 today- the first of three raises scheduled under the law enacted by this Congress. In a earlier blog post, I wrote that the increase happened on July 1st, which was wrong. It was also wrong to blast the media for not covering that, well, the minimum wage wasn't increased. In my defense, I had gotten that information from this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. I should have known better.

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NYT's Brooks: If Inequality is So Real, Why Are Liberals Talking About It?

Jul 24, 2007 by Matt Lewis

People who downplay inequality are like the cranks who don't believe in global warming. They find evidence on the margin that is supposed to cast doubt on the macrophenomenon. They bob and weave, admit this exists, but say we can't do anything about it, etc. etc. David Brooks is inequality's equivalent of the American Petroleum Institute. His column ($) today provides a fine example of the type of sophistry he peddles. Let's examine: First, pile on the studies that downplay inequality, so you seem like you know what you're talking about and overwhelm your audience. The first complicating fact is that after a lag, average wages are rising sharply. Real average wages rose by 2 percent in 2006, the second fastest rise in 30 years.

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Is SCHIP the Opening Salvo in the Great Health Care Debate?

Jul 23, 2007 by Matt Lewis

President Bush, as you probably know, says he's gonna veto any SCHIP expansion, the principle rationale being that government doesn't belong in health care. My hunch is that this won't carry the day. SCHIP's focus on kids is its trump card. But Bush is right that SCHIP is only the beginning of the policy fight over health care, and when the focus isn't on kids or some other sympathetic demographic group, the arguments being made today could win out by tapping into public distrust of government, which the Bush administration has deepened.

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The New Politics of Poverty

Jul 20, 2007 by Matt Lewis

E.J. Dionne on the new consensus on poverty: Quietly, a new anti-poverty consensus -- reflected in the dueling speeches Edwards and Obama gave this week -- is being born.

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Mid-Session's Muted Myopia

Jul 19, 2007 by Dana Chasin

In its Mid-Session budget review last week, the White House ballyhooed the good "news" that the FY 2007 federal budget deficit projection was down from OMB's original February forecast of $244 billion to a revised $205 billion. But looking out the next five years, the muted Mid-Session story is of unmitigated worsening news on the deficit front. The deficit projected for FY08-FY12 was actually higher than what was originally forecast -- by $137 billion.

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