Each year, the US sets off the equivalent of 20-30 atomic bombs worth of explosives, effectively obliterating entire features of its own landscape. Why? To get at the coal that’s inconveniently located beneath the mountains of Appalachia. That jaw-dropping figure came towards the end of a session at last month’s meeting of the American Association…
Category: Economy
Coal Is Expensive And Not Getting Any Cheaper
The study found that coal is the most expensive energy when “externalized costs” are factored in. These are the costs of coal use paid for by society, rather than by ratepayers. This includes the impact on public health and property from increased air pollution. Our reliance on coal has cost the economy between $345 and…
Clean energy economy is alive and well on the West Coast
With a regional GDP contribution of $47 billion and over half a million jobs created in 2010, the clean energy economy is alive and well on the West Coast. And the potential for continued growth in jobs and investment is enormous with more regional collaboration, according to a report released last week by members of…
U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement Takes Effect Today
As of March 15, 2012, the U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement – the most commercially significant U.S. trade agreement in nearly two decades — is now in effect. The opportunities this agreement offers to American manufacturers, service providers, farmers, ranchers, and workers are key components of President Obama’s National Export Initiative, which aims to double American exports by…
Details on President’s Plan to Provide Americans with Job Training and Employment Services
The President’s proposal also calls for the creation of an American Job Center network to unify all Federally-supported One-Stop Career Centers and electronic resources. Currently, names for these nearly 3,000 federally funded employment centers vary widely from state to state, or even from town to town, and electronic tools are spread across many disconnected websites. …
The Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future: One-Year Progress Report | The White House
From Heather Zichal, the Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change: One year ago, the President put forward a comprehensive plan in the Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future that outlined the Administration’s all-of-the-above approach to American energy – a strategy aimed at reducing our reliance on foreign oil, saving families and businesses…
Why The Right Is Wrong About Saving Detroit
An emerging myth being pushed by the right contends that federal spending to rescue GM and Chrysler was unnecessary, and that the companies instead should have gone through a “traditional” bankruptcy. In fact, economists at the time explained that frozen credit markets made private financing for a “traditional” bankruptcy impossible. READ MORE: via Why The…
President Obama Signs the Payroll Tax Cut
President Obama signed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 — extending the payroll tax cut and emergency jobless benefits through the end of the year. Last week, the President called on Americans from across the country to add their voices to the debate and let us know what they would…
“It’s time to put delusional beliefs about the virtues of austerity in a depressed economy behind us”
Specifically, in early 2010 austerity economics — the insistence that governments should slash spending even in the face of high unemployment — became all the rage in European capitals. The doctrine asserted that the direct negative effects of spending cuts on employment would be offset by changes in “confidence,” that savage spending cuts would lead…
Weekly Jobless Claims Fall To Four-Year Low
The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell to the lowest point in almost four years last week, the latest signal that the job market is steadily improving. Weekly applications for unemployment benefits dropped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the fourth drop in five weeks and the…
Congress reaches final payroll tax deal
Congressional negotiators resolved all differences on an agreement to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits while avoiding a fee cut for Medicare doctors for the rest of the year, leaving only technical issues to sort out. “It’s good for the country. It’s very good for the country,” Montana’s Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman…
Obama Administration’s Recovers Record $4.1 Billion From Medicare Fraud
Today, the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services (HHS) released an updated annual report showing that, for the second year in a row, anti-fraud efforts have recovered more than $4.1 billion in fraudulent Medicare payments. Compare this to just $2.14 billion recovered in FY 2008. Prosecutions are way up too: the number of individuals charged…
Mapping the Effects of the ACA’s Health Insurance Reform
The Affordable Care Act includes several provisions that allow many individuals across the U.S. to be eligible for Medicaid or for federal tax credits to subsidize the cost of insurance. The analysis below and zip code tool estimate the share of the population in geographic areas across the U.S. who had family income up to…
Factories Show Strength In Latest Sign Of Recovery
U.S. factories boosted output last month and December ended up being their best month for growth in five years. Busier factories are helping drive the economy. The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that manufacturing production increased 0.7 percent in January. And output soared 1.5 percent in December, according to an upward revision. That was the biggest…
President Obama announces $8 Billion Community College to Career Fund
Today, President Obama announced the Community College to Career Fund, an $8 billion investment in his Fiscal Year 2013 Budget that would train two million workers with skills that lead directly to good jobs in industries that need workers, including advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and information technology. This program will serve a dual purpose: making sure…
ANALYSIS: The Real World Debunks The GOP’s ‘Austerity Now’ Ideology
In Britain, a large package of budget cuts and austerity measures which rolled out in 2010 has not unleashed the proverbial job creators in the private market. Instead, the country is still shackled with an economic growth trend that’s even worse that what it suffered in the aftermath of the Great Depression. In the Eurozone…
Obama continues push for payroll tax cut extension
President Barack Obama continues his push Tuesday to get Congress to extend a payroll tax cut, a day after House Republican leaders agreed to remove an obstacle in the passage of the tax cut extension. Obama released Tuesday a video about what he called the need to extend the tax cut by the end of…
President’s Weekly Address: Extending the Payroll Tax Cut for the Middle Class
WEEKLY ADDRESS: Extending the Payroll Tax Cut for the Middle Class In this week’s address, President Obama urged Congress to quickly pass the payroll tax cut extension to prevent a tax hike on 160 million hardworking Americans who are still recovering from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. This is not the time…
Gov. Scott Walker To Use Foreclosure Settlement Money To Balance His Budget, Not Help Homeowners
Yesterday, 49 states joined the federal government in announcing a $26 billion settlement with five of the nation’s biggest banks over the banks’ foreclosure fraud abuses. The money from the settlement is meant to aid homeowners who lost their homes to foreclosure or who find themselves underwater, meaning they owe more on their mortgage than…
California’s Green Economy Doubled Performance of Total Economy
A new report from the non-partisan environmental think tank Next 10 shows that between 2009 and 2010, the “core green economy” in California — comprised of companies that provide products or services to cut natural resource use, re-purpose waste, and reduce global warming pollution — experienced half the number of job losses seen in the…