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The Pew Research Center issued a deeply troubling study last year which found that black and hispanic households had suffered a much bigger decline in their net worth as a result of the Great Recession than white households. The net worth of hispanics went down by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009, blacks by 53 percent, and whites by just 16 percent.
This week marks the fortieth anniversary of the Clean Water Act (CWA). In 1972, Congress overhauled the Federal Water Pollution Act and provided the basic structure for regulating the discharge of pollutants from point sources. The CWA gave the EPA the authority to set effluent limits on an industry-wide basis and on a water-quality basis. It also required anyone who wanted to discharge pollutants to first obtain a permit, or else the discharge would be considered illegal.
As a politician who cut his teeth on the South Side of Chicago, Barack Obama was positioned to become the first urban president in decades, even since Teddy Roosevelt.
His stimulus plan promised billions of dollars for infrastructure projects, including public transportation and multi-family housing, which are particularly beneficial to cities. Obama even went as far as establishing an Office of Urban Affairs, and tapping former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion to lead it.
So how have things turned out for cities over the past few years?
The 4th OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Power begins tomorrow in New Delhi, India and will bring together roughly 1,000 participants to talk about alternative metrics beyond GDP. The theme of this year’s conference is, “Measuring Well-Being for Development and Policy Making.” The conference will build on the Better Life Initiative, which looks at 11 metrics beyond GDP to measure well-being across countries.
A robust vice-presidential debate continued a noticeable trend in this election season: climate silence. As tracked by Climate Silence, a joint project of Forecast the Facts and Friends of the Earth Action, climate change has not been mentioned even once in either the Presidential or Vice-Presidential debates. By comparison, in 2008, both presidential candidates not only discussed climate change, but both promised mandatory caps on carbon pollution.
As expected, Paul Ryan repeated one of the top mistruths of this election season last night -- namely that President Obama robbed Medicare of $716 billion to fund the Affordable Care Act.
For months, various experts and news sources have pointed out what a distortion this is. As Politifact noted in August:
Martha Raddatz was deservedly praised as a moderator at the vice-presidential debate in Kentucky last night. But, reading the transcript again, maybe that praise was a bit overdone. Raddatz may not have been another empty seat, but her question on Social Security perpetuated a frequent myth.
Senator Schumer offered a much needed intervention in the tax debate in a speech on Tuesday. What Schumer said is that revenue-neutral tax reform was a fantasy and that any big Congressional deal on tax reform had to include higher rates on the wealthy, as well as more revenue overall.