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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What Portion of Our Collective Wealth Are We Willing to Invest So People Can Succeed?

That is the question President Obama posed at the Georgetown University Catholic-Evangelical Summit on Overcoming Poverty on May 12. It was a fascinating discussion -- not least because it was a discussion, with the president exchanging views with two scholars and replying to questions by moderator E.J. Dionne of theWashington Post. The president acknowledged the growing awareness of inequality and poverty. He challenged us to see that over decades, we have been disinvesting in shared institutions (like education) that lift people out of poverty. He agreed with the premise of one of the panelists, Robert Putnam, whose new book Our Kids describes the "withdrawing from the commons" occurring across the nation. Where in decades past affluent, working class and poor children might all have attended the same public school, all able to participate in school sports and music programs, today's communities are far more segregated by class as well as race. The well-off are less likely to send their children to a public school, and fewer have the equalizing experience of sports teams and band because strapped school districts now charge hefty fees to participating students, shutting out some struggling families.

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Not a Game: Women and Families Hit Hard by Long-Term Unemployment

Word association game. I’ll go. I say, “9 months.” You say…?

Pregnancy.

School year.

Average period of unemployment.

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International Monetary Fund Supports Minimum Wage Increase

This week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) joined the chorus of voices supporting a U.S. minimum wage increase. The IMF noted that raising the wage should be a part of a policy agenda to “fortify the country’s economic future.”

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Report Shows Government Programs Reducing Poverty

On Sept. 6, the Census Bureau released its updated measure of the national supplementary poverty rate, revealing the poverty rate remains at 16 percent.

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House Slashes Food Assistance

On Thursday, the House Republicans passed the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act (H.R. 3102) to cut approximately $39 billion from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next decade.  If enacted, these cuts would eliminate food assistance to 3.8 million low-income Americans.

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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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