New Posts

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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Cheaper at Half the Price

According to the results of a joint NPR-Kaiser Family Foundation-Kennedy School of Government poll released last month -- and confirmed by almost every other poll on Americans' attitudes toward tax cuts - we are all in favor of tax breaks, until we understand what we have to give up in return.

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Justice Order Gags Whistleblowers

The Justice Department issued a directive on March 27th tightening their oversight of employee contact with Congress. Employees are directed to inform the Office of Legislative Affairs "ahead of time and as soon as possible - of all potential briefings on Capitol Hill and significant, substantive conversations with staff and members on Capitol Hill." This requirement would include phone calls. The office would clear Congressional contacts and liaison officials would accompany employees to briefings.

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Supreme Court Vacates and Remands FOIA Case

The Supreme Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments early last month in the first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case (United States Department of Justice v. City of Chicago) to reach the Supreme Court in years. However, just days before the March 4 oral argument the Supreme Court cancelled the hearing, removed the case from its docket, and ordered the lower court's judgment vacated. This is the second time in recent years that a last minute development has removed a FOIA case from the Supreme Court's docket.

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Administration Attempts to Re-classify 9-11 Information

The current Administration's propensity for secrecy is evidenced once again by the recent move against disclosure of the joint congressional report on September 11th. The over 800 page long investigative document was completed last December, with only a limited list of findings made public. Intelligence officials have taken a strong stance against any additional disclosure.

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Deficits and Debt and Tax Cuts

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan doesn't think that tax cuts are needed now and warns about the danger of growing budget deficits. (See this New York Times article). Recently, the International Monetary Fund issued its economic report that advised the US against passing more tax cuts. Hundreds of economists, including a number of Nobel Laureates, oppose tax cuts. According to a number of polls, most Americans don't want more tax cuts, either.

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Efforts Made to Expand Critical Infrastructure Information

The Department of Defense (DoD) has wasted no time in attempting to get a Critical Infrastructure Information (CII) exemption to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) similar to the CII provisions for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) within the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The dust hasn’t yet settled on the massive DHS reorganization, nor have its CII rules been formalized, much less evaluated, but already DoD has decided that this program merits replication.

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ALEC-backed Attacks on E-Gov't Move in States

Legislation backed by the American Legislative Exchange Council that would stifle public access to taxpayer-funded information and services in the name of protecting commercial profits is rapidly moving through the state legislature in Ohio and is under consideration in other states.

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Fool Me Once, Shame on You, Fool Me Twice?

For the second time, in as many years, the President and his tax-slashing allies in Congress have passed a budget that calls for massive tax cuts. Though the recent precedent-setting effort of congressional Republicans last week to pass a budget resolution by agreeing to different tax cut packages leaves much uncertainty about just how large a tax cut the country will be saddled with, a large tax giveaway seems assured. Within the next several weeks, we will learn whether this round of tax cuts will be limited to the Senate's $350 billion or be as high as the House's $550 billion, but this is just the beginning: the budget resolution actually provides for a total of $1.3 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years. Whatever is decided, the tax cuts will be far more than the country can afford. As a result, most of us, and future generations, will be stuck footing the bill for a huge expenditure that will do little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, lower the unemployment rate, close the ever-widening gaps in state budgets, meet the educational needs of our children, or address the shortfall in Social Security or pay for a prescription drug plan for our seniors.

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Permanent Patriot Act?

Recently the Bush administration and several lead Republicans in Congress have begun pushing to make permanent the governmental powers temporarily expanded by the USA Patriot Act. The USA Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the government’s ability to spy on citizens, only gained wide support when many of the critical provisions were designed to expire or sunset at the end of 2005, unless Congress re-authorizes them.

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DHS Broadens CII in Proposed Rule

Last week the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed its rule for handling Critical Infrastructure Information (CII). While it was encouraging that DHS is engaging in an open rulemaking process, complete with a public comment period, the content of the proposed rule was troubling. The CII provisions of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 were already widely criticized, resulting in proposed legislation to fix the provisions.

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Resources & Research

Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race, and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards

People of color and people living in poverty, especially poor children of color, are significantly more likely...

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A Tale of Two Retirements: One for CEOs and One for the Rest of Us

The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion, equal to the entire retirement account savings of 41 percent of American fam...

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