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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One Year After Obstructionists Shut Down the Government: Where Are We Now?

Tomorrow, Oct. 1, marks one year since obstructionists in the House shut down the federal government. Approximately 800,000 federal workers stretching across the country were told not to report to work, and many public services ground to a halt.

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Planning Ahead to Keep Government Information Online

During the October 2013 federal government shutdown, several important public information sources were shuttered, which weakened government transparency during that time. But – short of averting the shutdown itself – could anything have been done differently?

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Protesters Order GOP Obstructionists to “Cease and Desist”

Last week, the government reopened and a default on the national debt was averted at the last minute, but not before Americans frustrated by extremist politics and budget brinksmanship turned out to hundreds of protests across the country.

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Even More Health and Safety Impacts of the Government Shutdown: Why You Should Care

Because the scope of health and safety protections provided by the federal government is vast, it’s easy to not fully appreciate the impacts of a government shutdown on our daily lives. Early into the current shutdown, I blogged about some of the less obvious potential health and safety impacts that could be affected by lack of government oversight. An Oct.

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Proposals to Cut Social Security Resurface

Proposals to cut earned Social Security benefits have resurfaced as politicians scramble to build a budget deal that could reopen the government and potentially avoid an economic disaster caused by a federal default.

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House: Let’s Talk About Everything but Revenue

The House is expected to vote – perhaps as early as this afternoon – on the Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth Working Group Act of 2013 (H.R.3273), a bill that would establish a committee of ten House members and ten Senate members charged with making recommendations to resolve the current stalemate over the government shutdown and looming debt ceiling crisis.

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More Health and Safety Impacts of the Government Shutdown

I blogged last week before the federal government shutdown started about potential health and safety ramifications that could result should the shutdown occur. Now that the shutdown is a reality, it’s important to consider some of the health and safety concerns that may be less than obvious.

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Shutdown Impacts Beyond the Beltway

While it’s common to equate the federal government with the Washington, D.C. metro area, the federal government provides services all over the country. Because of this, the shutdown’s impact will ripple throughout the country – even before considering the broader economic impacts that would come if it is prolonged.

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The Government is Now Closed…in More Ways Than One

The ludicrous and wasteful government shutdown can now claim another victim: government transparency. Several functions dedicated to providing information to the American public have been declared “non-essential” and are suspended during the lapse in appropriations. You might say that open government is now closed for business.

Here are some of the ways in which the shutdown is making it harder to know what government is doing (or at least, was doing before the shutdown):

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What the Government Shutdown Could Mean for You: Best Resources

Americans awoke this morning to discover the federal government had shut down.

To explain the impacts of the nation’s first shutdown in more than 17 years, numerous groups have organized fact sheets, reports, and blogs on the shutdown. We’ve compiled the best of these resources below to distill confusion about what the shutdown could mean for you.

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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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