Corporate Free Speech Reigns Supreme
As part of HeadCount’s “What’s Your Issue?” campaign, we publish regular updates on each of six issues. The following is our latest Personal Liberty update. What does the New Year have in store for personal liberty issues? So far, we’ve seen the approval of an airport security measure that not only wants to see you…
LMFAO Vs. Mitt Romney
We’re all about music interacting with politics but this is ridiculous. Rapper Sky Blu of rap group LMFAO takes to YouTube to explain his side the Air Canada altercation with Mitt Romney that galvanized America. It’s cool that Skyler Gordy – grandson of Motown founder Barry Gordy! – took six minutes out of his day…
Interview: ALO Man Of The World Dave Brogan
According to drummer Dave Brogan, ALO‘s music is their politics. And that personal-is-political sensibility comes through loud and clear on the group’s fourth album, Man of the World. Produced by ALO friend Jack Johnson, Man of the World is an tuneful reckoning with changing lives in a changing world. An uncertain nostalgia wends through “The…
Coal, Climate Change, Copenhagen, Canada
Even as the snow-topped peaks of beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia melt before our eyes during the Winter Olympics, the coal industry wants to remind us how important “clean coal” is for creating affordable energy and future jobs. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is running TV ads during the games to champion coal…
Interview: Mushroom Master Paul Stamets Launches Life Box
The mushroom world couldn’t have a better friend than Paul Stamets – and I assure you the feeling is mutual. Stamets has been growing and studying fungi for about three decades. His family-run company, Fungi Perfecti, is the country’s leading Certified Organic source for gourmet and medicinal mushrooms. But Stamets believes that fungi is more…
US Health Costs Rise As Life Expectancy Drops
“Hey,” you may be asking yourself. “Where’s the United States on this National Geographic graph comparing health care spending per person and average life expectancy at birth?” See way up there in the upper left corner? That’s the US, spending $7,290 per person, each of whom lives about 78 years – less than just about…
Augmented Reality In Hell’s Kitchen
Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo. Although it would drive us insane to be completely conscious of it, our daily lives are saturated with countless advertisements and brand interactions. It’s a corporate world, as a majority of the Supreme Court reminded us recently when it decided that corporations have the same rights…
Interview: Oxfam’s Liz Lucas In Haiti
Providing water and preventing diarrhea is Oxfam’s main mission in Haiti right now, says Liz Lucas, the relief organization’s American press officer. And HeadCount is donating all money collected at shows through March 1 to Oxfam America’s relief effort in Haiti. (Learn more about how you can donate here.) Emergency-response organizations from around the world…
Poor You: Economist Samuel Bowles Has Some Bad News
A Santa Fe economist has some sobering facts and figures for you. It turns out that New Mexico is losing jobs more than a hundred times faster than the state’s Economic Development Department is creating them – and you could probably extrapolate those grim numbers to many other states. According to this must-read story in…
Obama Budget Escalates War On (Some) Drugs, Slightly
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), President Obama’s 2011 National Drug Control Budget is requesting $15.5 billion “to reduce drug use and its consequences.” This represents an increase of $521.1 million, or 3.5%, over 2010. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition notes that the upcoming budget allocates in money in almost exactly the…