That Buzz in Your Ear May Be Green Noise
Two years after “An Inconvenient Truth” helped unleash a new tide of environmental activism, green noise pulses through the collective consciousness from all directions. The news media issues dire reports about disappearing polar bears; Web sites feature Brad Pitt arriving at a movie premiere in his hydrogen-powered BMW; bookstore shelves are piled high with titles like “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth”; shops carry hemp-enriched shampoo and 100-percent organic cotton tampons. An environmentally conscientious consumer is left to wonder: are low-energy compact fluorescent bulbs better than standard incandescents, even if they contain traces of mercury? Which salad is more earth-friendly, the one made with organic mixed greens trucked from thousands of miles away, or the one with lettuce raised on nearby industrial farms? Should they support nuclear power as a clean alternative to coal? If even well-intentioned activists are feeling overwhelmed, the average S.U.V. driver must be tuning out. And some environmentalists fear that the public might begin to ignore their message before any meaningful change can be accomplished. For them, it’s a time to reassess strategies and streamline their campaigns before it’s too late.
Read the story from NY Times | No Comments | Posted June 16, 2008 at 9:51 AM by Sam Bear
In just twelve days, United Ways all across the country will host a “Day of Action.” It’s a simple idea but a powerful one, and they explain it best themselves,
June 21 is the longest day of the year. More daylight hours than any other. More time for volunteers to bring sun into someone’s life. More time to help elected officials see the light. More light to shine on United Way’s solutions to community issues. June 21 is a perfect day for United Ways across the country to let their actions speak louder than words. To show, by example, what it means to LIVE UNITED.
Each local United Way is hosting its own day of volunteering, each with a unique agenda. The Aloha United Way is refurbishing affordable homes, the United Way Capital Area in Austin, TX is hosting block parties and a LIVE UNITED film festival, the United Way of Nashville is having a book drive, and the United Way of the Midlands is providing free blood pressure screenings.
As the political season grows more and more partisan, it’s refreshing to see such a visible organization as the United Way attempt to put the emphasis back on volunteering and engagement. It’s a goal and an event that I, personally, will be proud to support.
And, as a postscript, if you haven’t gotten a chance to see United Way of America’s new ad campaign, take a look:
Underneath everything we are, underneath everything we do, we are all people: connected, interdependent, united. And when we reach out a hand to one, we can influence the condition of all. That’s what it means to Live United. [Music: We Belong]
After Immigrant Raid, Iowans Ask Why
In this small northeastern Iowan town surrounded by newly planted cornfields, a middle-aged white woman walks into the local Guatemalan restaurant with her arm around a Hispanic child who is sobbing because she can’t find her mother. After conferring with a restaurant worker, the woman takes the child nearby to St. Bridget’s, a small 1970s-era brick Catholic church on a quiet tree-lined street that has become command central for what people in this community of 2,273 describe as a “disaster relief response.” In the aftermath of the nation’s largest single-site immigration raid — a May 12 raid of a Postville-based meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors Inc. that took 389 workers into custody — Hispanic children and adults here remain fearful. And many white residents remain hard at work helping the people left behind — mostly women from Guatemala and Mexico and their children.
Read the story from TIME | No Comments | Posted June 8, 2008 at 12:38 AM by Sam Bear
Using community to fight drugs
The background to the story is a classic inner city crime-ridden neighborhood where police can’t effectively prosecute drug markets since it looks like community norms sanction them and the community thinks that police are in cahoots with drug dealers because calls to police are relatively ineffectual. Police Chief Fealy called open meetings with the community in 2003 to admit bravely that the police had been ineffective and often caused more harm than good. That led to lots of useful dialogue. The Police Department got community residents to understand both that their walking away from drug dealers let the drug trade continue and that they had a lot of moral outrage about what was happening. The Chief emphasized that by partnering with police they could both dry up the drug markets and all the associated crime.
Read the story from Social Capital Blog | No Comments | Posted April 9, 2008 at 12:17 AM by Sam Bear
Administration Unveils Sweeping Plan to Overhaul Financial Regulation
he Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury’s ornate Cash Room. He declared that a strong financial system was important not just for Wall Street but also for working Americans. The administration’s plan was already drawing criticism from Democrats that it does not go far enough to deal with abuses in mortgage lending and securities trading that were exposed by the current credit crisis. The plan, which would require congressional approval for its biggest changes, seeks to trim a hodge-podge collection of overlapping jurisdictions that date back to the Civil War.
Read the story from AP | No Comments | Posted March 31, 2008 at 10:08 AM by Sam Bear
This story in the Washington Post a few days ago caught my eye. Basically the gist is that one in four U.S. teenaged girls have some form of STD, mostly human papillomavirus. The slant of the article, however, is frustrating to me. The central question in the article seemed to be “Why do teenagers have sex?” Not, “Why don’t teenagers use protection?” or “Why are teenagers having sex with five different partners?” but “Why are teenagers having sex at all?”
One-year earmark moratorium fails in Senate
A closely watched proposal for a congressional “time out” on earmark spending failed by a wide margin late Thursday night, creating some unusual Senate alliances along the way. Senators voted 71-29 against a measure by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) that would have imposed a one-year moratorium on earmarks. The measure needed 60 votes to pass because it was ruled non-germane to the budget, prompting DeMint to ask that the Budget Act be waived. Presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) all voted for the amendment, as expected. In a surprise, so did Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a longtime top appropriator for Kentucky who has traditionally taken a skeptical approach to the idea of limiting earmark spending. “The DeMint-McCain amendment would have provided an important pause to allow us all—those who oppose earmarks and those who favor them—to take a step back, build a better oversight system, and allow these reforms to be implemented,” McConnell said in a subsequent statement.
Read the story from The Hill | No Comments | Posted March 14, 2008 at 10:19 AM by Sam Bear
Nothing better exemplifies the fact that a lot of people have a lot of different ideas to make the country better than this video from the New York City improv troup Improv Everywhere:
According to their website, Improv Everywhere “causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” Thanks to You Ain’t No Picasso for the heads up.
Weather Channel Founder Wants to Sue Al Gore
John Coleman wants to sue Al Gore for fraud. Coleman, who founded the Weather Channel in 1982, thinks taking legal action against Al Gore would be a great “vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.” Coleman rejects the notion that people must take drastic actions to reduce their energy use. Speaking at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on Monday, Coleman sharply chastised those who further global warming alarmism. Coleman believes that the station he founded has been captured by alarmists, such as the Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen, who has advocated revoking the license of meteorologists that believe global warming can be explained by cyclical weather patterns and not human activity.
Read the story from Citizen Sugar | 2 comments | Posted March 5, 2008 at 7:42 PM by Sam Bear
An Upside for the Middle Class
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton declares, “The economy is not working for middle-class and working families,” noting the typical American family earns less now than it did seven years ago. Citing the same trend, her Democratic presidential rival, Sen. Barack Obama, promises “to put America back on the path to prosperity.” Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, says, “It is harder for families to weather hard economic times.” The candidates’ pitches are aimed at wooing the vast majority of Americans who consider themselves middle class. Those people tell pollsters that they are increasingly anxious about their financial security, a feeling that has intensified in recent years because of flattening wages, rising income inequality, increasing consumer debt, soaring health-care costs, spiraling energy prices and, now, declining home values. But as Americans’ wage growth has slowed, their rate of consumption has accelerated, leaving some economists dubious about claims that the middle class is worse off than before.
Read the story from Washington Post | No Comments | Posted February 28, 2008 at 9:06 PM by Alex Tievsky
