New York, California and Washington, representing over one-fifth of U.S. Gross Domestic Product, are committed to achieving the U.S. goal of reducing emissions 26-28 percent from 2005 levels and meeting or exceeding the targets of the federal Clean Power Plan.
4Us – Track Congress, Hold Your Representative Accountable
4US tracks your Representatives in Congress, and gives you real-time updates on House and Senate votes, while monitoring the issues that are important to you.
4US – https://4us.com/
Another site for tracking Congressional activity. Welcome to the party.
The HuffingtonPost Provides Open Source API For Public Polls | opensource.com
The initial release is big. It includes more than 215,000 responses to questions from more than 13,000 polls, which the HuffPost Pollster team has organized by subject and geography into more than 200 charts. Per their announcement, “the data feeds operate in real time, so shortly after we add a new poll to our database, itll appear in the HuffPost Pollster APIs responses and calculations.”Adding to the coolness is that the effort relies heavily on open source tools. The HuffPost Pollster team is publishing the data as an HTTP-based application programming interface, or API, with JSON and XML responses. They are releasing the data under a creative commons license.
via The HuffingtonPost releases Pollster, open source API for public polls | opensource.com.
This lets developers get access to a large body of polling data from over 13,000 polls. The API provides JSON and XML responses to queries sent over HTTP allowing developers to parse and display the information in their applications. This represents a major open source resource in the political field.
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Is U.S. Headed That Way?
http://rt.com/politics/panarin-usa-collapse-economy-905/
This is an interesting thought experiment on what could happen if things go WAY downhill.
The US might collapse into six pieces, according to a theory proposed by Russian political scientist Igor Panarin. And the current economic crisis in the country, amplified by mass protests, might be the beginning.
Udall: Amend the Constitution, Wipe Out Citizens United
Sen. Tom Udall (D., N.M.) has proposed a constitutional amendment that would wipe out the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling in Citizens United.
The ruling last year unleashed a flood of campaign contributions from corporations and super PACs, which can spend as much money as they want and do so nearly anonymously.
The proposal put forth by Udall would add language to the Constitution that says Congress and the states can regulate campaign contributions and expenditures. Click here for more on the proposal in The New Mexican.
This proposal is seen as part of broader movement to rethink and reform the notion of corporate personhood in the US.
Sen. Ted Kennedy’s FBI Files Released Just in Time for Beach Reading Season
Edward “Ted” Moore Kennedy served as U.S. senator for the state of Massachusetts from November 7, 1962 until his death. He was a long-time leader in the Democratic Party and candidate for that party’s presidential nomination. During his senate tenure, Kennedy served in several senior leadership positions, including stints as the chair of the Judiciary Committee, the Labor and Human Resource Committee, and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
Edward “Ted” M Kennedy – Federal Bureau of Investigation – Freedom of Information Privacy Act.
Most of the files cover “FBI investigation of threats of violence and other extortion claims against Senator Kennedy and other public officials”. The files are in PDF format, scans of type written pages mostly. Hopefully someone will take it and do something useful like make it searchable.