A recent poll found Americans would prefer a carbon tax to cutting spending for deficit reduction by a huge margin. Commissioned by Friends of the Earth and conducted by the Mellman Group in December, the poll is the latest evidence that actions on climate change — and efforts to tax or cap carbon emissions specifically — are…
Category: News & Opinion
Democratic Senator Floats Plan To Raise $200 Billion By Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes
A Democratic Senator wants to raise $200 billion over ten years by closing corporate tax loopholes, according to Bloomberg News. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) wants to ditch a slew of goodies for corporations, as well as a loophole that allows wealthy money managers to pay far less in taxes than middle-class families: Senator Carl Levin’s…
President’s Weekly Address: A Balanced Approach to Growing the Economy in 2013
In this week’s address, President Obama calls on Congress to work together on a balanced approach to reduce our deficit and promote economic growth and job creation.
Hispanics Approval of Obama 70%, Up 12 Pts. Since August
In January, 70% of Hispanics approved of the job President Barack Obama was doing, down slightly from 75% in December. However, the January measure still represents an increase of 12 percentage points since last August, just prior to the Democratic National Convention. The results are based on Gallup Daily tracking throughout January. During that…
Gerrymandering is not what’s wrong with American politics
In a recent interview in The New Republic, President Obama said this about the politics surrounding gun control: That does not mean that you don’t have some real big differences. The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel…
Study: The U.S. has had one mass shooting per month since 2009
Congress is in the midst of a heated debate over gun control and how best to tamp down on gun violence. And mass shootings like the one that tore through Sandy Hook Elementary School last December are a huge part of that discussion. So how much do we actually know about mass shootings and the…
Obama: more tax revenue needed to address deficit
President Barack Obama said on Sunday more tax revenue would be needed to reduce the U.S. deficit and signaled he would push hard to get rid of loopholes such as the “carried interest” tax break enjoyed by private equity and hedge fund managers. Obama, who won re-election in November largely on his promise to raise…
Florida Rep. Wants To Limit Death Penalty Appeals In State With Most Exonerated Death Row Inmates
Like most death penalty states, Florida has a web of state-level appeals processes and additional checks to ensure that every aspect of a case is thoroughly examined before an accused criminal is executed. This system is expensive and often cruel, which is why many death penalty advocates cite extended death row wait times during the…
Grand Theft Election
President Barack Obama won a commanding victory in this November’s elections, defeating Republican candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by nearly 4 percentage points in the popular vote. In doing so, President Obama became the first president to twice win more than 51 percent of the popular vote since President Dwight D. Eisenhower did so…
How Republicans Plan To Rig The Next Presidential Election, In Six Pictures
Yesterday, Virginia Republicans took the first step to move a GOP plan to rig the Electoral College forward in that state. Similar plans are under consideration in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The Republican election rigging plan targets blue states that President Obama won in 2008 and 2012, and changes the way they allocate electoral votes…
Think Obama’s a huge spender? Then you need to see these two charts.
The takeaway, Drum says, is that “total government spending didn’t go up much during the Clinton era, and it’s actually declined during under President Obama. In the last two decades, it’s only gone up significantly during the Bush era, the same era in which taxes were cut dramatically.” But some said Drum’s chart was a…
California School District Spent $14,000 on New Semi-Automatic Colt Rifles
When the public school students of Fontana, Calif., returned to classes in January, something had changed about their schools. Specifically, the Fontana Unified School District had filled on-campus safes with $14,000 in new Colt 6940 semi-automatic rifles for its 14 police officers. The high-powered, long-distance rifles will only be used in “extreme emergency cases.” As…
Report: Ohio Secretary Of State’s Restrictive Voting Hours Hurt Urban Voters
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) became one of the most notorious election officials in the country after his many attempts to restrict voting and discard ballots. Husted banned evening and weekend voting hours in all 88 boards of election, in spite of multiple counties‘ requests to stay open to accommodate people who could…
Boy Scouts Losing Big Funders Over Anti-Gay Policy
The Boy Scouts of America teach young men how to build fires, pitch tents, weave camping chairs, and “be prepared”—unless your son happens to be gay. But the Boy Scouts long-standing policy of banning “open or avowed homosexuals” is starting to cost it some major financial backers: In the last six months, companies including UPS, United…
Clinton angrily defends handling of Benghazi attack
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday angrily defended her handling of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi and denied any effort to mislead people. The attack by armed militants that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans threatens to stain Clintons legacy as secretary…
Legalization’s Biggest Enemies
The marijuana legalization initiatives that triumphed in Washington and Colorado this past fall faced surprisingly little organized opposition. Money tells the story: Washington’s pro-legalization initiative I-502 raised more than $6 million from supporters, while the campaign against it pulled less than $16,000. In Colorado, meanwhile, proponents of Amendment 64 raised more than $2 million, outdoing…
The Second Inauguration of Barack Obama
This morning, at 11:55 AM Eastern Time, President Obama delivered his Second Inaugural Address. The speech was 2,137 words long and took 15 minutes to deliver. “America’s possibilities are limitless,” he said, “for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk…
Americans’ Reaction to Obama Gun Proposals Is Positive
Americans’ immediate reaction to President Barack Obama’s proposals for new laws designed to reduce gun violence is more positive than negative, with 53% saying they would want their representative in Congress to vote for the set of proposed new laws, while 41% say their representative should vote against them. These results are from…
McDonnell Doesn’t Rule Out Signing GOP’s Secret Redistricting Plan
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) expressed displeasure Monday with the Republican Senate’s sneaky maneuver to subvert majority rule and gerrymander the Senate in such a way that could give themselves a super-majority — but has not yet said whether he would veto the bill. But to live up to his previous promises, he will have to…
SHOCKING MAP: In These 22 States, Every House Republican Voted Against Sandy Aid
Almost three months after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast, the GOP-controlled House approved a bill that provides $50.7 billion in disaster relief for the storm’s victims. While passage of the bill is being hailed as a bipartisan success by some (the vote was 241-180), a closer look at how the parties voted by state lines…