The Family Behind Hip Clothier The Gap Logs the Redwoods Founded in ultra-hip 1969 San Francisco and named for the generational split that was then ravaging America, The Gap Inc. clothing empire has made billions selling once-egalitarian blue jeans as fashion items. Now some charge that The Gap’s founder/owners, the Fisher family, are selling out […]
Tobacco Growers Look Elsewhere to Save the Family Farm Dorothy Robertson has a friend who says “the best fertilizer in the world is the shadow of the farmer.” But the shadow falling over Robertson's farm, and those of 124,000 other tobacco farmers in the U.S., is that of Big Tobacco, and it's certainly not helping […]
Toxic Trains May Be Rumbling Through Your Town * ITEM: In the pre-dawn hours of April 11, 1996, along railroad tracks one mile west of the rural Montana community of Alberton, four Montana Rail Link tank cars suddenly derail. The largest mixed chemical release in railroad history—and the second biggest chlorine spill—sends a plume of […]
Americans love to gripe about paying their taxes, and April 15 is both a day of national dread and the butt of a thousand bad jokes. But the same people who crowd local town halls to complain about a minuscule jump in their mill rates are quick to change the channel when they happen across […]
If We Shift the Tax Burden From Work to Waste, Everyone Benefits
State by State Though green tax reform isn’t exactly becoming the law of the land, it is beginning to make inroads on the state level, where a blizzard of bills have been introduced and a healthy dialogue is building. Here’s a state-by-state look at some exciting developments: Maine. Progressive financial ideas are alive and well […]
The Income Tax’s Progressive Roots One argument against a tax shift is that the change would violate the spirit of the progressive income tax. It sounds plausible, but in reality the opposite is true. If Congress kept the income tax for higher incomes and shifted part of the rest to polluting natural resources, the result […]
A Murky Tale of the Florida Reefs. Is Salvation Possible? It was 20 years ago that I first dove the clear and fertile waters of the Florida Keys. Just five protected miles off Key West, the reef was close enough to get to in a small boat, shallow enough for any snorkeler to enjoy, and […]
Earth-Friendly Gardening is Gaining Ground
Infectious Diseases, Once Thought Near Eradication, Show a Remarkable Persistence Almost 20 years ago, smallpox was eradicated from the face of the Earth, and medical science was feeling bullish. With good reason: as James W. Brown and Elin A. Gursky wrote recently in the Medical Laboratory Reporter, at that time “it appeared civilization’s oldest enemy—infectious […]
