Is America really the most free country on the plant? Despite what patriots may tell themselves, several new studies say ‘no.’ A shocking new report from Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page found that the average American has a ‘near-zero” impact on U.S. policy, both domestic and foreign.

‘Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impact on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little to no independent influence,” reads the study which is slated to appear in the fall edition of Perspectives on Politics.

For the paper, researchers examined over 1,800 separate policy issues and the public attitude towards them. Of these 1,800 issues, the study determined that public opinion was almost categorically ignored by legislators.

This study comes only months after a similarly harrowing study by the same researchers that determined the U.S. government in not a democracy or a republic, but is in fact an oligarchy.

‘I’d say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States… Government policy-making over the last few decades […]

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In the aftermath of clashes between heavily armed police forces and protesters in Ferguson, MO, the Senate will review the nearly twenty-five year old law that promotes the transfer of surplus military goods to police forces, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee said on Friday.

The tensions in Ferguson after the death of teenager Michael Brown at the hands of the police in a shooting that still has many questions left unresolved have been punctuated by the collision of protesters and the Ferguson police force. On Wednesday evening, the local police displayed a wide-ranging array of gear that would normally be considered outside the scope of traditional policing, including armored personnel carriers, high-powered sniper rifles, and sirens capable of emitting deafening noises. Though the Missouri Highway Patrol was brought in to takeover from the local law enforcement, APCs and tear gas were still deployed against demonstrators and looters violating the state-imposed curfew alike, and the images of full body-armor clad police facing unarmed protestors have become iconic.

The level of armament on display was enough to concern Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman […]

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Police advance after tear gas was used to disperse a crowd of protesters in Ferguson, MO on Sunday CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CHARLIE RIEDEL

After years of being critiqued for its own crackdowns against dissidents, China has begun to use the ongoing clashes between police and protesters and police in Ferguson, MO as a way to lambaste the United States for hypocrisy, joining other repressive regimes in expressing no small amount of schadenfreude at the current situation.

The Chinese government either directly owns or oversees all media within the country, including the Xinhua news service. As such, the op-ed published on Monday from commentator Li Li can be read as being an unofficial statement from Beijing. In the article, Li takes the United States to task for not yet realizing Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream, noting that ‘despite the progress, racial divide still remains a deeply-rooted chronic disease that keeps tearing U.S. society apart, just as manifested by the latest racial riot in Missouri.”

Li’s article goes on to argue that though ‘racial differences and conflicts are unavoidable” in multicultural […]

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Arctic sea ice, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

The amount of Arctic ice left has been steadily shrinking. But it’s now dwindled by so much that National Geographic has said their updated maps will feature a much smaller ice sheet, in what they’re calling the most visible change to the atlas since the break up of the U.S.S.R.

National Geographic drew its current map of the Arctic in its 1989 edition of the Atlas. Since then, though, the decrease of not just the area, but the volume of Arctic sea ice (as seen in the graphic below, charting sea ice volume from 1979 to the present) has been sharp. The newest edition, which comes out in September, will redraw the lines into a significantly smaller area, based on NASA and the NSIDC data on the amount of remaining multiyear ice.

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Photo Credit: toffehoff

‘We can’t do it as an individual, But four hundred communities aggregating and asking for local wind power and solar power – that’s really powerful.”

Oak Park, IL, is one of hundreds of Illinois towns using their authority to buy electricity in bulk on behalf of its residential and small business customers. So far, most communities have used the policy – known as community choice aggregation – to negotiate for less expensive electricity compared to the default electric utility, Commonwealth Edison. Many have also purchased renewable energy credits with their power, but it’s not clear if the practice is greening or green-washing the power supply.

Learn more about the incremental steps forward with community choice aggregation in Illinois and the potential for much greater collaboration between cities in this interview with outgoing Sustainability Manager K.C. Doyle of Oak Park, recorded via Skype on Mar. 28, 2014.

K.C. is also the founder of the Prairie State Local Government Sustainability Network, providing peer-to-peer networking of municipal officials around sustainability and climate planning.

Apologies for the egregious keyboard […]

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