As we pointed out a few weeks ago, man-made climate change will make extreme weather events much more likely going forward and we are facing a pretty serious one now. More than half of the continental U.S.
For all the talk about the need for voter-identification laws, you’d think millions of Americans were impersonating dead people to get their candidates elected, or casting multiple ballots after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
One of the big questions environmentalists struggle with is whether there should be a price on nature. For some things, like the cost savings that are realized through cleaner air or water, there is a rote calculation that can be done to price out environmental and health benefits. But, if you think of nature as an independent entity having a worth beyond what it can provide to humans, how do you put a price on it? How much is the Amazon River or the Himalayan mountain range worth?
WASHINGTON, DC – Last night, the DISCLOSE Act which would shine a light on the dark money dominating our democracy was defeated on the Senate floor. Although it received a majority of votes it failed to overcome a filibuster from Senator McConnell.
How to value the economic role that natural resources play and incorporate some of these external costs so that not only are we aware of the impacts, we can begin to start incorporate them into pricing.
The Supreme Court issued a little-noticed decision in a Maryland case that gave the green light to states to eliminate the repugnant practice of “prison-based gerrymandering.”
Following up on our last post on the link between climate change and extreme weather, a new scientific study was released that found that manmade climate change increases the probability of extreme weather patterns. The study was a joint effort between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. and the Met Office in the U.K.
Even though it’s only the 9th of July, nearly 3,400 maximum and minimum temperature records have been tied or broken so far this month. Dozens of people have died and the lack of rainfall combined with the extreme heat is threatening the Midwest’s corn crop.
Are big corporations taking over American elections? It depends whether you ask liberals or conservatives, who can’t even agree on the basic facts.
In the liberal universe, big corporations have swallowed politics. Common Cause President Bob Edgar summed up this version of reality at a press conference in March, declaring: “We, the people, will not stand idly by while the country’s major corporations use their massive wealth to buy our democracy.”
Philadelphia, PA – Today, the Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP) and ACTION United filed suit against Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele, Secretary of Public Welfare, Gary D. Alexander and Secretary of Health, Dr. Eli N. Avila in the U.S.
Though it fell in a rather busy week and didn't grab much attention, another Supreme Court decision last week should have ramifications for Connecticut. The ruling affirmed the constitutionality of a Maryland law that counts incarcerated persons as residents of their last legal home addresses, not the prisons, for redistricting purposes.
On Monday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling which upholds a lower court ruling, and area returning citizens are pleased by the court's ruling.
Supreme Court Justices agreed with Maryland's “No Representation Without Population Act” in a summary disposition which means meaning the Justices based their ruling on existing briefs and did not engage in oral arguments. A lower court ruled that in the case of Fletcher v. Lamone, Maryland officials cannot count a prisoner's incarceration address, and must count their last known home of residence.
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Monday a lower court's ruling upholding Maryland's new congressional redistricting plan, which counts inmates as living at their last-known addresses instead of in their prison cells. But it may not be the last word on the matter.
Some Republican lawmakers opposed to the map, drawn once each decade based on U.S.
Washington, D.C. – Today, the United States Supreme Court summarily reversed the Montana Supreme Court decision to uphold a state law restricting corporate spending in elections, squandering a chance to review the disastrous consequences of Citizens United.
Washington, DC – The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of Maryland’s groundbreaking “No Representation Without Population Act,” which counts incarcerated people as residents of their legal home addresses for redistricting purposes. The 2010 law was a major civil rights victory that ended the distortions in fair representation caused by using incarcerated persons to pad the population counts of districts containing prisons.
One of the main reason alternative indicators are important is that they take things that we value on a visceral level, like the environment, and put them into the universal language of capital.
NEW YORK – Almost two out of five American Indians and Alaska Natives eligible to vote are not registered, but according to a new report by national policy center Demos, designating Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities as official voter registration agencies under the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) would go a long way toward addressing this civic crisis.
“Our democracy is stronger when all of our citizens participate, and this is all the more true in the case of American Indians and Alaska Natives.”
As we all sit around waiting for the Supreme Court to hand down decisions on a whole handful of whoppers — the Affordable Care Act, the Arizona "Papers, Please" law — it was something the Court didn't do this week that may be the most overlooked matter of all. It has before it a case from Montana whereby that state's supreme court upheld Montana's 100-year-old ban on corporate campaign contributions in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case.