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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Federal Appeals Court Dismisses NSA Spying Case

On July 6, a divided Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2006 federal district court finding that the National Security Agency's (NSA) Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the First Amendment's protection of free speech. Without ruling on the constitutionality of the TSP, the judges dismissed the case based on the plaintiffs' lack of standing.

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Lawsuit Frees OSHA Toxic Exposure Data

A June 29 U.S. District Court decision ordered the Department of Labor (DOL) to disclose its Worker Exposure to Toxic Substances Database, the largest known compilation of workplace toxic chemical sampling data.

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GAO Issues Report on EPA Mishandling of Katrina

On the heels of a congressional hearing blasting the handling of public information about air quality after 9/11, a June 25 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report indicates the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) similarly failed the public post-Katrina.

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EPA Holds off Industry Attack on Health, Safety and Environmental Data

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has rejected the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Data Quality Act (DQA) challenge and appeal of supposed inconsistencies across several EPA databases. While agreeing to make a few changes, the agency refused the Chamber's demands that all variations between the EPA databases on chemicals be eliminated, stating that they were not errors but acceptable differences based on different scientific models.

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Approps Update

Congress is back from its week-long July 4th vacation and will, among other things, try to get pass some more spending bills. This week in the House: Wednesday
  • Transportation-HUD is in full Appropriations Committee
  • Labor-HHS is in full Appropriations Committee
Thursday
  • Commerce-Justice-Science is in full Appropriations Committee
  • Energy-Water pork is divvied up by Appropriations Committee
Possible action sometime during the week
  • Defense is in subcommittee
  • Agriculture is in subcommittee

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CBO's Monthly Budget Update - July 2007

The federal government incurred a deficit of $123 billion for the first nine months of fiscal year 2007, CBO estimates, $83 billion less than the shortfall recorded during the same period in 2006. Revenues have risen by more than 7 percent, whereas outlays have grown by less than 3 percent. Both rates of growth are noticeably smaller than the rates of increase in fiscal years 2005 and 2006, which averaged about 13 percent for revenues and close to 8 percent for outlays. (click on CBO logo for report)

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Critiquing the Critic

There was a time when I thought Louis Menand, an academic who writes for the New Yorker, was the smartest guy around. But I've changed my mind, because his review of Bryan Caplan's really ridiculous book is abysmal and totally misses the point. To recap Caplan's argument: Irrational voters support economic policy that makes people worse off. And government mostly messes everything up (See here for more). Menand's conclusion:

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A Beachhead in the Campaign Against Free-Market Primacy

Business Week has an interesting article on how some in the corporate community are embracing government-run health insurance. It's not particularly new news, but the article shows that some true-believers in the primacy of the free market are becoming more practical. They're moderating their views on government's capacity and role in society (though their faith in the market probably hasn't been shaken, paradoxically).

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EPI Papers Challenge The Macroeconomic Mainstream

EPI just put out two very interesting papers (on full employment and demand-led growth) that challenge the wisdom of low-impact macroeconomic policy. Two general points:
  • There doesn't have to be a trade-off between efficiency and fairness. Indeed, policies could generate demand-led growth partly by ensuring that work was fairly rewarded.
  • Government can play a constructive role in the economy- guaranteeing fair wages, promoting growth, ensuring full employment. The best it can do isn't just to "get out of the way."

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I'm Thinking of an Issue...Starts With "E"

Inclusion has put a challenge to the progressive policy community. What is an all-encompassing issue that nobody really knows exists? According to this logic, alternative and less familiar ways of framing rising economic inequality and insecurity aren't viable because they don't show up on the pollster's static list of "issues." But this ignores Perlstein's most important insight, that "the greatest politicians create their own issues, ones that no one knew existed." (An insight I couldn't help but notice that is very similar to my favorite one of the late philospher Richard Rorty: "the talent for speaking differently, rather for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.") Here's a shot: exploitation and economic fairness.

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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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more resources