Rent Prices Shut Out Minimum-Wage Workers In Every State: Report

Think the rent is too damn high? Well, it actually is. No matter where you live in the country, a new report says that no full-time worker making minimum wage can adequately afford a one-bedroom or two-bedroom rental at fair market rent.

Faced with that bleak fact, it makes perfect sense why President Obama and Congress have been making such a big push to raise the federal minimum wage.

13 examples of the Harper government's anti-democratic abuses

Recently, it has not been a good time for the Harper government and they have also shown a disturbing pattern of illegal and anti-democratic abuses.

Here is a baker's dozen of examples with two highly unsettling themes: (1) ignoring the rule of law and (2) flouting the traditional processes of parliamentary democracy.

1. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Harper government's legislation making retroactive changes to parole eligibility breaches the Charter of Rights and is thus unconstitutional.

Canada's Telecoms Have Built Databases For Police Spying: Geist

Canada’s telecoms appear to be building databases of subscriber information that law enforcement agencies can access without a warrant, according to documents released under access to information laws.

The news comes as Parliament once again gears up to debate the merits of giving police greater access to telecom subscriber data.

Ring Of Fire Agreement Places Northern Ontario Project Step Closer To Reality

Ontario and Matawa First Nations have reached a momentous agreement that paves the way for progress in developing the lucrative but lumbering Ring of Fire mining project.

The province’s Ministry of Northern Development and Mines said Wednesday that the agreement had been signed by the province and the chiefs of all nine member First Nations of the Matawa Tribal Council.

Egypt Announces New Mass Trials As Prosecutor Charges 919 Islamists

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's chief prosecutor on Wednesday ordered two trials for a total of 919 suspected Islamists on charges that include murder, pushing ahead with a series of mass tribunals of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi despite international criticism.

The policy of mass trials sparked an uproar among rights groups after a judge this week issued death sentences against more than 520 defendants on charges of killing a policeman during an attack on a police station last summer.

Inherited wealth is an injustice. Let's end it

Inherited wealth is the great taboo of British politics. Nobody likes to talk about it, but it determines a huge number of outcomes: from participation in public life, to access to education, to the ability to save or purchase property. When David Cameron recently promised to raise the threshold for inheritance tax to £1m and praised "people who have worked hard and saved", he is singing from the hymn sheet of inherited inequality: it is, after all, easier to save if you inherit substantial sums to squirrel away, or if you can lock money in property that is virtually guaranteed to offer huge returns. Hard work has very little to do with it.

British Columbia Enacted the Most Significant Carbon Tax in the Western Hemisphere. What Happened Next Is It Worked.

SUPPOSE THAT YOU LIVE IN VANCOUVER and you drive a car to work. Naturally, you have to get gas regularly. When you stop at the pump, you may see a notice like the one above, explaining that part of the price you're paying is, in effect, due to the cost of carbon. That's because in 2008, the government of British Columbia decided to impose a tax on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, enacting what has been called "the most significant carbon tax in the Western Hemisphere by far."

Corporate Religious Freedom Means Freedom to Discriminate

Reports from the Supreme Court, where the Hobby Lobby case was argued today, suggest that a majority of the judges appear sympathetic to the idea that corporations are not just people, but people with religious liberty. “The court seemed ready to accept that at least some for-profit corporations may advance claims based on religious freedom,” Adam Liptak wrote in The New York Times. Granted, it’s easy to read too much into the judges’ questions, and no one knows how the case will ultimately be decided. Still, it seems possible that logic of the Citizens United case – that corporate “persons” have the same first amendment rights to political speech as individuals – is about to be expanded, with frightening implications that go far beyond birth control.

Solar Power Is Now Just As Cheap As Conventional Electricity In Italy And Germany

Once all its costs are accounted for, the price of commercial solar power has pulled even with retail electricity rates in Italy and Germany, according to a new report.

The analysis is the third installment in a regular report by the consulting firm Eclareon, done on behalf of an international group of sustainable energy interests. This installment was also the first to look at solar power in the commercial sector rather than the residential sector. It looked at a standard 30 kilowatt solar photovoltaic system for your average commercial building, and the built a methodology to assess its “leveled cost of energy” (LCOE) in seven different countries: Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Spain.

BP Refinery Leaks Oil Into Lake Michigan

A BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana leaked an unknown amount of oil into Lake Michigan Monday afternoon, an incident that occurred less than two weeks after the U.S. lifted BP’s ban on seeking new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP says the spill, which has since been stopped and contained, was caused by a “disruption in the refining process” at its Whiting refinery in northwest Indiana. Dan Goldblatt, spokesman at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, told ThinkProgress that his office was notified at about 4:30 CDT Monday of an oil sheen, which EPA officials said on a press call Thursday totaled about 5,000 square yards, on Lake Michigan. Mike Beslow, On-Scene Coordinator for the EPA, said that when he visited the site around 9 p.m. Monday, the sheen was no longer visible. Neither Goldblatt nor EPA officials had information on how much oil had spilled, but CBS, citing unnamed sources, reports that between 10 and 12 barrels — around 500 gallons — spilled into the lake.