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Alan: Michael Thomas had this righteous rant in Newsweek over the holidays. The argument is not original: Wall Street and big money generally have corrupted US democracy. But the writing is arresting: “I have lived what now, at 75, is starting to feel like a long life. If anyone asks me what has been the great American story of my lifetime, I have a ready answer. It is the corruption,...

Six months ago, we launched the Making Sustainability Legal project arguing that, although the Northwest could benefit from a top-to-bottom remodel of its public-policy house, deep political divides and starvation budgets make big reforms unlikely soon. In the meantime, maybe we can clean out the fridge? Making Sustainability Legal is about pulling moldy regulations out of the back of our law books and composting them. Dozens of regulations, whatever virtue...

Permeable pavement can make old-school road engineers and pavement builders anxious. To them, the idea of water seeping through roads like they’re made of Swiss cheese just doesn’t seem right. Water runs off roads, not through them. Or at least it used to. In the Northwest, there’s a growing acceptance of the use of pervious concrete and porous asphalt for roads, sidewalks, parking lots, and driveways. The unconventional pavement does...

Sightline had another big year in 2011. Here are a few of the things we did that made us proud: Coal Exports: Just as Washington State makes the healthy move to phase out its only coal-fired power plant, there are efforts afoot to connect Montana coal with Asian markets—via Northwest ports. From train traffic snarls to harmful coal dust to climate pollution—the negative impacts to our communities would be immense....

If you have commuting costs for parking, transit, or biking, you could be eligible for a federal tax subsidy. The IRS allows companies or employees to contribute up to $230 per commuter for monthly parking or transit commuting costs, a benefit that some 3 million people nationwide take advantage of. For the last two years, the pre-tax limits have been the same for parking and transit. But it wasn’t always...

Clark: Now this is a true catastrophe: a craft brewer is worried that climate change is making beer more expensive! Gahh! Valuable tips for the holidays:  4 ways to hack your brain to avoid impulse purchases! Physicists with lasers and very big brains are trying to figure out if reality is actually just a hologram.  “More specifically, they are trying to either prove or disprove the somewhat mind-bending notion that the third dimension doesn’t...

Stormwater has been kicking the Northwest’s butt. Armed with back-to-back deluges, the region’s polluted runoff has shown no mercy. For weeks it has soaked us to our socks with deceptively deep and oily puddles. It’s sent icy trickles of rain snaking off awnings and splatting our cheeks and foreheads. It has forced us to leap, not always so nimbly, its muddy mini rapids just to reach the safety of the...

Eric dP: It was with a sort of grim satisfaction that I read the Washington Post’s excellent feature, “Wall Street’s resurgence frustrates its claims, and Obama’s.” It’s a close look at recent bank profits, bonuses, and growth and it gives lie to the complaints from the finance sector that the Obama administration is treating it punitively. It also, of course, gives lie to the idea that the Obama administration is...

Editor’s note: This post was written by John Abbotts, a former Sightline research consultant and a long-time friend of Sightline. It’s been almost 50 years since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, sparking public concern about the dangerous side-effects of chemical pesticides. In the book, she flagged organophosphate pesticides, which are neurotoxins derived from nerve agents developed during WWII. Yet despite their well-known dangers, organophosphate insecticides are still used in the...

Eric dP: Probably the best thing I read this week was Elisabeth Rosenthal’s Sunday NYT piece about what ever happened to global warming as a live political issue. I like these images of turning dollar bills into infographics as a way to illustrate economic inequality. Writing for the Atlantic, I thought Matthew Yglesias did a good job of capturing what’s wrong with municipally-owned parking garages: But municipal provision of subsidized...