If you find it hard to wrap your head around the idea that a shrub bearing pea-sized flowers could have anything to do with energy independence, consider guayule. This weedy little plant thrives in the arid climate of the Southwest, and it could provide the US with yet another sustainable source of domestic biofuel while also replacing petroleum as a feedstock for synthetic rubber in tire manufacturing.

We last checked in on guayule over the summer, when ARPA-E provided a grant of $5.7 million to a new partnership for developing guayule biofuel (ARPA-E is the Department of Energy’s transformative technology funding agency).

Given all the activity surrounding weedy-feedstock biofuels (camelina, much?), the biofuel angle isn’t too surprising. What’s new and different is the idea that one plant could double as a biofuel feedstock and substitute for synthetic rubber, too.

guayule for energy independence

The ARPA-E grant involves a company called Yulex, which is aside from its work in biofuels is already showing off the high performance qualities of guayule-based material with the launch of a new guayule wetsuit produced by Patagonia. The guayule wetsuit, which replaces neoprene, made its debut in Japan last December and is now available in the US.

The latest development involves […]

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Good news for struggling writers: the key to sustaining your lifestyle is to go to a city that’s struggling more.

A new nonprofit organization called Write-A-House, located in Detroit, Michigan (which, earlier this year, became the largest city in the United States to file for and enter bankruptcy) has found something creative to do with the city’s seemingly endless blocks of vacant homes-gut them from the inside-out, fix them up, and give them to writers.

Sarah Cox, one of the founders of Write-A-House, and an editorial director for the real estate site Curbed, moved to Detroit from New York in 2010 in order to start the site’s Detroit blog. There, she witnessed the city’s desire to rebuild and rebrand, and found what was missing in order to make the dream into a reality.

‘In the past three years, I’ve seen incredible progress, but there is still so much room for more in the literary arts,

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Some of the cities hardest hit by the sub-prime mortgage crisis are fighting back with lawsuits against the banks whose lending fueled the collapse of the housing market. Most recently, the city of Miami filed three separate suits against Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup, claiming their lending practices violated the federal Fair Housing Act and cost the city millions in tax revenue.

The cases, all of which were filed in the Southern District of Florida, focus on the banks’ treatment of minority borrowers. According to the city, minority residents were routinely charged higher interest rates and fees than white loan applicants, regardless of their credit history. They were also stuck with other onerous terms-such as prepayment penalties, adjustable interest rates, and balloon payments-that increased their odds of falling into foreclosure.

It’s no secret that some big banks discriminated against minority borrowers during the housing bubble. Racial bias ran so deep inside Wells Fargo’s mortgage division that employees regularly referred to subprime mortgages as ‘ghetto loans’ and African American borrowers as ‘mud people,’ according to testimony from former bank officials. In 2011, Bank of America paid $355 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit, charging that its Countrywide Financial unit steered […]

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SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS — For Denise Acosta, it was being laid off for the first time. For Diana Martinez, it was the death of her mother, leaving her as the sole carer for her severely disabled younger brother. For Johnny Hill, it was having to take responsibility, a year away from retirement, for her two young granddaughters.

Each of these hard-working women from San Antonio, Texas, have fallen victim to circumstances that turned their lives upside down, robbing them of their full-time jobs, the paychecks they once enjoyed and, in Acosta’s case, her home. Their stories vary, but they all belong to a growing group, America’s working poor, for whom the journey from getting by to hunger can be brutally short.
US emergency food providers brace as $5bn food stamp cuts set in
1 Nov 2013

Deep cuts to the US food stamps programme, designed to keep low-income Americans out of hunger in the aftermath of the economic recession, have forced increasing numbers of families such as theirs to rely on food banks and community organisations to stave off hunger.

An expansion of the programme, put in place when the recession was biting deepest, was allowed to expire in November, cutting benefits for […]

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Here’s another marijuana-in-politics first: A marijuana activist is now mayor of a city.

This week, the Sebastopol City Council selected Robert Jacob – the founder and executive director of Peace in Medicine, two licensed medical marijuana dispensaries – as its mayor. He is believed to be the first dispensary operator to serve in an elected official capacity in local, state or federal government.

It’s hardly a surprise in town, where Jacob began serving on the city’s Planning Commission in 2011, then was elected to City Council in 2012. He was its vice mayor before getting the top job this week.

Jacob has worked to create statewide dispensary regulations as well as help craft local rules in Napa, Sacramento, San Jose, and Stockton. The North Bay Business Journal included Jacob in its annual listing of ‘Forty Under 40

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