NEW! On goMYD.com: Events Gallery

Photos from past events! The ones from our Hands On NY Day are particularly great, with wonderful captions by Al.

Here’s Sarah Gudernatch, our Community Service Director and intrepid leader on Saturday, doing some plantin’.

Vote For A Better, Greener World With Marriage Equality

Not that we need more floating around, but here are two good reasons why marriage equality is good policy. (I sure hope some New York State Senators are reading this blog, like they did back in March.)

1) Marriage changes us for the better, and everybody should be able to partake of that gift:

A new research paper studies how relationships change after marriage:

The belief that your partner helps you to better live up to your commitments and responsibilities was only found in more satisfied marriages … This belief wasn’t found as important in non-marital relationships (which is not surprising, since marriage is the epitome of a commitment one can make to another person).

2) It’s green to get hitched, yo:

I would like to offer my congratulations to the environmental movement: We have literally reached a place where even articles on the optimal age for matrimony include an analysis of carbon emissions:

Marriage may be bourgeois, but it’s also the greenest of all social structures. Michigan State ecologists estimate that the extra households created by divorce cost the nation 73 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and more than 600 billion gallons of water in a year. That’s a mighty big carbon footprint created in the name of solitude.

Hat tip: The amazing Chas Danner.

I Need YOU (Says Recovery.gov)

As the head of the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board (or RAT Board for short) Earl Devaney has an enormous — and, frankly, quite possibly close to impossible — task of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse of those federal dollars as they’re spent from coast to coast, from Alaska to Hawaii. Tough job.

And so he’s turned to the Interwebs. All this week, NationalDialogue.org is hosting an online forum for the submission and evaluation of ideas for quickly building a Recovery.gov that both keeps tabs on the spending of recovery funds and creates a forum in which the public can help to spot bad behavior. In the community forum, anyone can submit an oversight idea and rate others’ ideas on a scale of one to five stars. Comments are also welcomed.

Citizen watchdogs, unite! at Recovery.gov throughout this week. Watch the vid for the full spiel (from two guys I’d never want to meet in a dark alley!):

Consider This, NY: Universal Voter Registration

This seems so amazingly reasonable, I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t do it:

Universal registration is one idea being batted around in a larger program of election reform bills at the NYS Senate. Let’s hope it goes somewhere!

Btw, my two cents: let me vote (securely) online with a click of a button. The whole notion of having to be somewhere in person to do something is SO 20th century.

Obama Throws Another Ball In The Air

During his first 100 days in office, few would accuse President Obama of indolence. Which is why it is all the more impressive that at the Fifth Summit of the Americas, he reasserted his intention to reform the US immigration system by the end of the year.

His announcement could not have been more timely. Our current immigration system is broken. We have roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the US. Illegal labor has become an unrecognized but integral part of our nation’s agricultural, commercial and services industries. In other words: we need these people but don’t acknowledge it.

Few states have a larger stake in immigration reform than New York. Our city is the living, breathing incarnation of Immigration. Its cultural richness is founded in national diversity. Imported labor has provided our businesses with the necessary intellectual and technical resources to lead in a global marked. As for illegal labor–the city would shut down without it.

Reforming the system will be enormously difficult, even for our politically astute and ambidextrous President. He will face a minefield of protectionism, demagoguery, and fear mongering. 9/11 created an anti-immigration sentiment, and the recent recession has only strengthened this. The misconception has developed that we no longer need foreign labor, when quite the opposite is true: immigrants will continue to be a fundamental building block of American greatness.

By electing Obama, the American people have recently demonstrated increased resilience to deception and empty rhetoric. Time will tell whether this will suffice to bring about a much-needed overhaul on immigration.

Interest in Foreign Affairs? Join the Issue Committee!

Sixty is the Unloneliest Number that you ever see

Arlen Specter (D-PA)

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

Granted this is more because the PA State GOP was going to oust him (for supporting the Stimulus Package) rather than him really feeling like a Democrat, and he still won’t be jumping in line on some issues (he couldn’t be worse than Lieberman, or Ben Nelson) – but either way, it’s good for the Dems, it’s bad for the GOP, and it’s further proof that the moderates of the Republican party are not coming back into power anytime soon, if ever again. Perhaps that’s sad, but real none-the-less. Enjoy your 20% of the population guys!

Taking Back NY, One Billboard At A Time

While MYDers were busy planting trees on Saturday, artists fanned out across the city to take on their own urban beautification project and simultaneously protest the thousands of (illegal!) billboards that invade our vision and mindspace every day. Click photo, read story:

Republican Ideologues > Swine Flu

As swine flu infiltrates out borders, it would seem pretty darn important that we have strong and solid leadership in place to lead the country through this growing epidemic and the myriad of other public health issues we face. But Senate Republicans are keeping President Obama’s appointment to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (the department containing the CDC) from being confirmed because of ideology:

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security had to announce the “public health emergency” at the White House press briefing today. Why? Because the GOP is filibustering the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius… And because Sebelius has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, the CDC does not yet have a director. In fact, the Acting Secretary of HHS is a Bush appointment, Charles Johnson, who has significant experience in… accounting.

The kicker here is that the filibuster is based strictly on ideology. Because Sebelius is pro-woman, Senate Republicans, held hostage by right-wing anti-choice advocacy groups, don’t have the fortitude to allow an up or down vote. Even in the middle of a public health emergency threatening the nation.

Swine flu is scary. But Republican ideologues are scarier still.

A Dollar A Day To Make Norm Go Away

MYD got an email last week from Senate Guru about the Senate race in Minnesota. A bit of background:

You’ve no doubt heard the news stories surrounding the U.S. Senate seat from Minnesota.  Republican Norm Coleman is playing the role of the sore loser, continuing his endless appeals in order to prevent Democratic Senator-elect Al Franken from being seated… Several Minnesota newspapers that endorsed Coleman have even urged him to abandon his fruitless appeals… Meanwhile, Washington D.C. Republicans continue to fund Coleman’s lawyers as they believe it is in their interest to keep Al Franken out of the Senate.

Now, the progressive netroots have come up with a creative incentive that kills two birds with one stone. NormDollar (which has already raised $35K) asks for daily dollar donations for every day that Norm Coleman does not concede, and will channel the funds to proressive candidates in 2010:

Pawns In A Game: Bloomberg Toys With The MTA And Riders

Displaying the fascination that the press holds for our city’s larger than life mayor, the NY Times published a story specifically about what Bloomberg is NOT doing about the transit current crisis:

Mr. Bloomberg has played a low-key role in trying to marshal Republican support for the plan. “Very minimal,” John McArdle, a top aide to Senator Dean G. Skelos, the minority leader and a Long Island Republican, said of the mayor’s efforts in reaching out to Republicans on the issue.

The article makes clear that Bloomberg’s lack of initiative is NOT because he doesn’t have the clout:

Mr. Bloomberg is in a unique position to exert influence among Republicans, considering that he has given more than $1 million to Republican state campaign funds in recent years, much of it for Senate races.

At a moment when subway and bus riders are furious about the impending fare rises and service cuts, Bloomberg should take some leadership–instead of taking a backseat in light of his upcoming election. Bloomie’s lack of leadership on a key issue facing New York disturbingly suggests that he is more interested in making backroom deals with convenient political allies than actually helping citizens. While he has garnered a great deal of accomplishments during his administration, Bloomberg better not think that he can just run the city on autopilot for a third term while he shmoozes with Republican bigwigs.

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