For the eighth time the U.S. Republican Party -- the party of big oil and climate change -- has held future green energy hostage [ark] in the Senate to an insistence upon drilling every last bit of oil in every last wildernesses' intact ecosystems first. Given an American addiction to cheap fossil fuels necessary to power climate changing conspicuous consumption [ark] as the meaning of life, the public appears willing to fall lemming like into line with the myth that the "energy crisis" can be solved by drilling. Paying the full cost of energy including upon the environment is no crisis.
This comes as MIT researchers appear to have overcome a major technological limitation to economical solar energy storage [ark], perhaps removing the last major barrier to solar energy charged fuel cells...
from The Asheville Citizen Timesby Kerra L. Bolton,Millions of dollars in federal tax credits for the working poor are going unclaimed each year, according to research from two state anti-poverty organizations.Only 16 percent of Buncombe County taxpayers claimed the federal earned income tax credit in 2001, the latest year for which statistics were available. On average, they received $1,559 per family.But 2,624 to 4,956 eligible families didn’t access the credit. Had they gotten the money, it would have brought in an extra $2 million to $3 million. That could change next year, as state leaders such as Treasurer Richard Moore and Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue are renewing calls for a state earned income tax credit.Moore held a press conference last week urging state lawmakers to pass...
from The Guardian Citizens Advice calls for a 'radical rethink' of system· Almost half of tax credit payments were incorrectPhillip InmanGordon Brown will miss crucial child poverty targets unless he signals, in his pre-budget report tomorrow, a complete overhaul of the troubled £14bn tax credits system, leading anti-poverty campaigners have warned the chancellor.In 2004-05, almost half of all payments were incorrect. Of the nearly 6.5 million families receiving them, almost 2 million were overpaid and then forced to pay the money back, while more than 900,000 were underpaid.David Harker, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said progress in reducing poverty had hit the buffers and the Treasury needed a radical rethink to continue the progress of the last few years. He called for a...