Suchergebnisse

This report mainly discusses about the preparation on House Committee Hearings where committee hearings provide representatives an opportunity to gather information and draw attention to legislation and issues within a committees purview.

Two-thirds of UK councils have declared a Climate Emergency, setting ambitious Net Zero targets for their regions that will require billions of low carbon investment over the coming decade. Yet councils are at the mercy of political changes that have seen PWLB rates fluctuate, grant income fall, and SALIX scrap its 0% loan offer. Councils will struggle to meet Net Zero targets whilst maintaining front line services without new sources of borrowing, non-repayable capital, and the active participation of residents. Enter Community Municipal Investments (CMIs). CMIs are green bonds issued by a council corporate body and administered by a regulated crowdfunding platform, Abundance Investment. Local residents and general public investors purchase the bonds, directing investor capital immediately and with high visibility towards the delivery of local Net Zero infrastructure projects. Working with the platform, CMIs also open a new communication channel between the council and residents about the urgency of the Climate Emergency and council's role in delivering Net Zero projects. The UK's first two CMIs were launched as local 'Climate Bonds' by West Berkshire Council and Warrington Borough Council in the Summer of 2020. Each met their £1M target ahead of the close date. This report presents key findings from these two case studies and evaluates the potential scalability of CMIs as a simple, low-risk mechanism for diversifying borrowing sources and – due to an innovative donation feature – a new way of boosting non-repayable capital for councils.

ALTHOUGH THE 1996 FEDERAL WELFARE-REFORM LAW SHIFTED MORE AUTHORITY FOR WELFARE POLICY TO THE STATES - INCLUDING AUTHORITY TO PROVIDE LOWER BENEFITS TO NEW STATE-RESIDENTS THAN TO LONGER TERM RESIDENTS - THE US SUPREME COURT'S DECISION IN SAENZ V. ROE DELINEATES A LIMIT ON THAT AUTHORITY, NAMELY, THAT STATES CANNOT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST CITIZENS BASED ON THEIR LENGTH OF IN-STATE RESIDENCY. THE COURT'S RELIANCE ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT'S PRIVILEGES OR IMMUNITIES CLAUSE IN SAENZ, WHILE SURPRISING AFTER ITS LONG DORMANCY, IS NOT A DEPARTURE FROM PRIOR PRECEDENT. WHAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN IS WHETHER STATES WILL ATTEMPT TO AVOID THE DECISION'S IMPLICATIONS BY ADOPTING NEW VARIATIONS ON RESIDENCY LAWS, AND WHETHER THE REVIVAL OF THE PRIVILEGES OR IMMUNITIES CLAUSE WILL LEAD TO A REARTICULATION OF INDIVIDUAL CIVIL RIGHTS, BASED ON A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP.

Shows how scientific hypotheses about the Earth's ecology and its ability to sustain life may be linked to its relationship with a multitude of near earth objects which every so often slam into its surface, transferring vast quantities of energy and life-building materials.

Discusses how feminists and individuals concerned with women's issues can attain the power needed to influence the Clinton administration's plans regarding welfare reform and to promote alternate goals. One necessary element is the authority to tell the administration, for example, that their position on the non-negotiability of the 2-year limit is not acceptable.

After the Rodney King case and the riots that followed, the callous murder by a policeman of a black truck driver shows that little has changed. The cynicism of both federal and state authorities who claim the task of regeneration can be left to private corporations, as local government decays, is clear. Even under a new black police chief the LAPD is disrupting attempts to negotiate a peace between neighbourhood gangs.

NEW CIRCUITS OF ACCUMULATION AND SPECULATION COMBINED WITH THE SOCIAL REVANCHISM OF THE REAGAN-BUSH ADMINISTRATIONS TO DENY RESOURCES TO U.S. CITIES ATTEMPTING TO CONTEND WITH HOMELESSNESS, AIDS, DRUGS, AND THE DECAY OF SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE. DISINVESTMENT AND DEINDUSTRIALIZATION HAVE BLIGHTED THE URBAN HEARTLAND WHILE PERMITTING THE GROWTH OF SERVICE-RELATED "EDGE CITIES" WITH SHOPPING MALLS AND NEW OFFICE BUILDINGS. THOSE AUTHORITIES AT THE CITY AND STATE LEVEL WHO FACE THE WORST PROBLEMS, INCLUDING A SHRINKING TAX BASE, HAVE BEEN INFORMED BY PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON THAT PRIORITY MUST BE GIVEN TO TACKLING THE FEDERAL DEFICIT. THE BORDERS THAT ONCE SEPARATED THE THIRD WORLD FROM THE AFFLUENT AMERICAN METROPOLIS ARE NOW BEING BREACHED, BRINGING ATTACKS ON CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS AND WELFARE ENTITLEMENTS. THE SITUATION HAS ALL THE INGREDIENTS NECESSARY TO GUARANTEE NEW EXPLOSIONS OF ANGER AND DESPAIR.

Explores the devastating impact of militarism on much of the American West. This can be compared to the ecological disasters afflicting large parts of the former Soviet Union, and Green movements in the two areas have learnt from one another. The photographs of Richard Misrach, Carole Gallagher and others provide clues for the reconstruction of a major disaster zone and echoes of the utopian hopes which inspired the pioneer surveyors of the West. (Original abstract-amended)

Delineates the social panic which has sought to impose a state of siege on Black and Hispanic youth in the name of a war on gang violence. As Davis shows in NLR 164, the Black and Hispanic communities are victims of colonial-type policing, as well as of the drug cartels and their local henchmen. Such measures as gun control and the medical regulation of hard drugs are by themselves inadequate to the scale of the problem, which could only be tackled through the removal of youth unemployment, racial disadvantage and widespread poverty. (Abstract amended)

Decades of systematic underinvestment in housing and urban infrastructure, combined with grotesque subsidies for speculators, permissive zoning for commerical development, the absence of effective regional planning, and ludicrously low property taxes for the wealthy have ensured an erosion of the quality of life for the suburban middle classes as well as for the innercity poor. Traces the outworking of this in all the city's systems. (PAS)