Lots of electric vehicles were rolling towards Geiranger for an EV festival this weekend. Norway now boasts one of the largest markets in the world for the quiet cars.
Credit: El-bil Forening

This year the average concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has hit its highest level in 800,000 years. Yet without urgent efforts to reduce emissions, concentrations, and the damage caused by climate change, this concentration will continue to grow.

One of the sectors where CO2 emissions continue to rise is transport. Recent analysis of the carbon budget suggests that petrol and diesel car sales will have to end by 2030 in order to counter this trend.

We all understand the implications of driving, in terms of CO2 and other emissions, and many of us are acting to do something to reduce the extent of our impacts. So why is this not translating into a reduction in emissions?

The reasons are many, varied, and complex:

• The move to heavier, and therefore less fuel efficient cars, as the ‘high-end’ car market becomes increasingly dominant;
• There may be […]
  
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Credit: Gustavo Garello / AP

Hard to believe, but the Trump administration is proposing yet another massive tax windfall for the rich.

It would be to reduce their capital gains taxes. Those are taxes on the increased value of their stocks and bonds, businesses, and other valuables, when they sell them. Trump would do this by eliminating whatever portion of that increased value was due to inflation.

Here are three reasons why reducing capital gains taxes would be another tax scam for the rich.

1. The people who’d get most of the benefits are already richer than ever and pay a lower effective tax rate than they have in decades. An estimated 63 percent of the benefits of this proposal would go to the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans, while the bottom 80 percent of us would get only 1 percent of its benefits, according to a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School analysis.

If anything, Congress should raise capital gains taxes, not lower them. The capital gains tax rate is already lower than the […]

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It only took 15 years, but senators must now electronically file their campaign finance reports directly to the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) as part of a provision tacked onto a larger appropriations bill that Trump signed on September 21.

The provision is only one sentence long in the Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, but it has accomplished what several previous attempts to transition from paper to electronic filings since the early 2000s could not.

For one, this new system means that information could become immediately available to the public once filed, as is the case with House of Representative and presidential candidates, which have electronically filed their disclosures directly to the FEC since 2001. The previous process took weeks and sometimes months to complete.

It also is estimated to save nearly a million dollars annually in taxpayer money by eliminating the old system, which relied on Senators submitting paper reports to the Secretary of the Senate, who would then process those thousands of paper reports before submitting them to the FEC, which would have to turn […]

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Republican favorability at 45%, Democrats at 44%
• Democrats generally have had the upper hand in favorability ratings
• Major gains for Republican Party within the party, including leaners

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Forty-five percent of Americans now have a favorable view of the Republican Party, a nine-point gain from last September’s 36%. It is the party’s most positive image since it registered 47% in January 2011, shortly after taking control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. Forty-four percent give the Democratic Party a favorable rating.

The parity in Republicans’ and Democrats’ favorable ratings marks a change from what has generally been the case since Barack Obama’s election as president in November 2008. Republicans have usually been rated less positively than Democrats over this time, with the Republican Party’s favorability rating for the last decade averaging 39%, compared with the Democratic Party’s 44%.

Only one other time in the last decade has the Republican Party had a significantly higher […]

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Credit: Tyler Comrie

Donald Trump has adopted many contradictory positions since taking office, but he has been unwavering on one point: that Russia played no role in putting him in the Oval Office. Trump dismisses the idea that Russian interference affected the outcome of the 2016 election, calling it a “made-up story,” “ridiculous,” and “a hoax.” He finds the subject so threatening to his legitimacy that—according to “The Perfect Weapon,” a recent book on cyber sabotage by David Sanger, of the Times—aides say he refuses even to discuss it. In public, Trump has characterized all efforts to investigate the foreign attacks on American democracy during the campaign as a “witch hunt”; in March, he insisted that “the Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever.”

Few people, including Trump’s opponents, have publicly challenged the widespread belief that no obtainable evidence can prove that Russian interference changed any votes. Democrats, for the most part, have avoided attributing Hillary Clinton’s defeat directly to Russian machinations. They have more readily blamed James Comey, the […]

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