The Most Generous Countries on Earth: The Gallup World Giving Index recently released data about the most giving countries. The USA comes in at number 5. The criteria used by Gallup includes charitable giving, time spent volunteering, and willingness to help strangers. It’s hard to draw too much from the limited amount of info here, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Making the Grade: This Matthew Bishop piece in The Economist discusses how loans for education may be the next version of microfinance to make it big. He discusses up-and-coming organizations like Enzi — who are experimenting with loans correlated to a percentage of future income — and Vitanna, as well as pondering the potential of Kiva’s entry into the student loan market. Watch this space in the coming months.

Startup Visa Interviews at O’Reilly Gov 2.0: This speech and interview combo posted by Brad Feld, a venture capitalist based in Boulder, CO and one of the leaders of the Startup Visa movement, provides great background on the push. In short, the goal is to create a class of visa specifically designed for immigrant entrepreneurs who wish to build their companies and create jobs in the USA.

Schools: The Disaster Movie: I expect that education reform will be one of the most talked about issues in our field over the next year. This is in part due to the fact that the field is so ripe for disruption, and that more and more startups are being created to tackle it. But it is also in part because the filmmaker behind “An Inconvenient Truth” is back with a much-anticipated film about the deplorable state of American schools. Early reports have suggested that Teacher’s Unions come out looking pretty bad, which will be sure to poor additional fuel on an already intense flame.

Instead of IPOs, Startups Look to Be Acquired: Tomorrow I will publish a piece about new evidence that suggests that startups are the most important economic engine of job creation in the United States. This piece reinforces the point I make then about how economic policy designed to promote small business and bank reform is not necessarily the same — in fact can be down right opposite — for policy needed to allow startups to flourish. This piece shows how both too much and too little regulation has ruined the market for technology IPOs, impacting job creation and the venture industry as a whole.

Photo credit: Schlüsselbein2007

Weekend Entrepreneur Links: Global Generosity, Education, IPOs

You can thank U.S. EPA. On Friday, gun-lovers won a crucial battle against conservationists and wildlife when, in a surprising move, the agency rejected a request (pdf) from environmental groups for a ban on lead in gun ammunition and tackle.

The Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy and other groups argue lead toxins are wreaking havoc on the environment and have some startling numbers to back up the claim, including:

–Up to 20 million birds and other animals are killed each year as a result of lead poisoning.

–At least 75 wild bird species, including bald eagles and endangered California condors, are poisoned by spent lead ammo.

–About 87,000 tons of lead are released into the environment each year as a result of hunting, fishing and shooting ranges. As Change.org Animals blogger Martin Matheny recently pointed out, that’s as many tons as there are in the U.S. Navy’s largest vessel.

–Humans who eat game shot down with lead ammo face serious health risks. A recent study found that up to 87 percent of cooked fowl killed by lead ammo can contain unsafe lead levels.

In the face of such staggering figures, why the rejection? EPA argued it doesn’t have the right to regulate ammo under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which forbids regulation of products subject to an excise tax—including guns. EPA assistant administrator Steve Owens said in a statement, “EPA reached this decision because the agency does not have the legal authority to regulate this type of product under the Toxic Substances Control Act—nor is the agency seeking such authority.”

Eco-groups are countering that this argument is hooey. They just want the dangerous lead component of gun ammo banned, not the guns themselves. Not to mention the fact that EPA has a long history of lead regulation in the marketplace, including products such as paint and pipes.

One wonders if fierce outside pressure had anything to do with the EPA’s confounding dismissal. Could it possibly be?

Look, of course, no further than the NRA. The powerful lobby group waged a fiery battle against a ban, claiming it posed a threat to their most sacred Second Amendment. On Aug. 20, the association sent a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson asking outright for the request to be shot down. None other than notorious environment-hater Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), who is the Senate’s top Republican on the environment committee, also added his voice to the chorus of dissent. “They are just talking about taking away Americans’ freedom,” he said of the environmental groups.  (Hyperbole much, Senator?)

The big problem with this rejection is that EPA is the only real recourse available to prevent the destruction taking place thanks to poisoned ammo. Nobody’s asking gun-lovers to pack up their pistols; they’re just asking that the shooting be done in a way that doesn’t degrade the ecosystem and threaten human health. If our government’s premiere environmental agency can’t take a stand against the devastation, who can?

This petition was started before EPA made its decision on Friday. But please continue to edit and sign the letter, and tell EPA how important you think it is they reconsider their decision.

Photo credit: Renee V/Wikimedia Commons

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

EPA to NRA: Sure, Go Ahead and Poison Birds With Lead Ammo

As a legislator, McDonnell was chief sponsor and author of a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex couples from marriage. McDonnell’s Web site proudly boasts that he was twice named “Legislator of the Year” by the Virginia Family Foundation, an ultra-conservative group. As governor, in February 2010, he signed an executive order banning discrimination against state workers on the basis of race, sex, religion and age — but not sexual orientation, as his predecessors had done. A month later, after much criticism, he issued an executive directive (not as strong as an executive order), saying that he would not tolerate discrimination of any kind, including that based on sexual orientation. And his Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli forced the halt of a proposed state regulatory change that would have allowed government employees to add same-sex partners to their state health benefits.

McDonnell’s former in-law, however — the divorced spouse of his wife’s sister — is transgender. In April, at an LGBT-rights rally held by Equality Virginia, she announced to the crowd, “I am father to three of the present governor’s nephews and nieces.” She said she wants to use her association with the governor to advance LGBT rights, especially because she fears her personal situation may have “hardened” some of his views.

The Washington Post has a long piece today on Deane, and reports that several LGBT activists are skeptical of Deane’s motives. Sen. A. Donald McEachin (D-Richmond), an advocate of LGBT rights, told WaPo that “several activists have told him they are worried that Deane will shift attention from the cause to her,” and that “It’s incumbent to all of us to keep the issue front and center. The more all of us do to speak out about the issue, the more it becomes about the issue.”

Wait just a minute. The “issue” here is civil rights — and civil rights are about people. One cannot separate them from the people whom they affect.

Yes, there are those whose activism seems motivated by the desire for personal fame rather than truly benefiting the cause. I have no idea if Deane is that kind of a person. I also hope that the comments about her are not motivated by transphobia. On the other hand, she is related to the governor through a marriage that has ended, which seems a tenuous connection — but tenuous or not, the situation also reflects that more and more non-LGBT people will at some point in their lives know someone who is LGBT.

These connections are critical for equality. Research from the Pew Center has found that “People who have a close gay friend or family member are more likely to support gay marriage and they are also significantly less likely to favor allowing schools to fire gay teachers than are those with little or no personal contact with gays.” It does not seem like a stretch to think this would apply to those who know transgender people as well.

Imagine what would happen if every LGBT friend, relative, and ex-relative connected to anti-LGBT politicians made themselves publicly known, in addition to having private conversations with the official. It would be no guarantee that the politicians would change their minds, but it would make it much more awkward for them to justify their positions.

Come out. Be visible. That is perhaps the oldest and simplest tactic in the LGBT-rights handbook. Could it also be the most effective?

Photo credit: Conk 9

Six Degrees of Bob McDonnell

This is happening in the UK and USA. This is going on and it is wrong.

Please help prevent this in the future.
Christians should be allowed to say gay is a sin

The time has come, my fellow Americans, for another Declaration of Independence. But this time it’s not some distant king jeopardizing our future, it’s the dirty energy sources of the past. Fossil fuel companies have a tyrannical stranglehold on our national energy policy. So this Independence Day, let’s declare our independence from fossil fuels.

It just so happens Green For All has a handy petition online so you can do just that. Their website has tools for you to call on your Senators to do their patriotic duty and take action to get us off the dirty stuff. You can also sign a pledge to go dirty energy-free yourself and spread the word about the Dirty Energy Independence pledge.

Of course, it’s not enough for us all to just declare our independence. We need a revolution to assert that independence once and for all — an energy revolution.

For years, however, fossil fuel companies have been telling us it can’t be done: Getting off of coal and oil, they say, would cost us too many jobs and wreak havoc on the economy. They’ve been feeding us the lie that we can’t live without them, and we’ve been swallowing it like sugar.

But it is possible to generate 96 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2050 and create over a million jobs in an American renewable energy sector in the next 20 years, all while phasing out the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Greenpeace put out a report a few weeks ago — Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable USA Energy Outlook — that shows how it can be done.

Why a [r]evolution? Because moving from the dirty fossil fuels of the past and onto the clean, green renewable energy sources of the future requires an evolution and a revolution.

We need a [r]evolution because business-as-usual is not going to stop the tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil spilling into our waters, scores of workers around the world losing their lives in coal mines, or the countless other disasters we are all facing due to our dirty energy reliance.

Declare your energy independence and help launch the energy revolution. It’s what real American patriots will be doing today (plus grilling and shooting off fireworks, of course).

Photo Credit: Beverly & Pack

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Declare Your Energy Independence And Start A Revolution

Under pressure from the gun-rights lobby, House Democrats might exempt the National Rifle Association from pending campaign finance legislation. As you might recall, earlier this year, the Supreme Court upended 100 years of campaign finance restrictions, determining for the first time in the 223-year history of our Constitution that corporations are equivalent to human beings under the First Amendment. It was a startling chapter in the Roberts Court’s embrace of conservative judicial activism — one that disgusted the American public and earned a central role in coverage of President Obama’s second State of the Union address.

Since that remarkable demonstration of judicial prerogative, Democrats have included campaign finance reform among the planks in a populist platform that they hope will mitigate losses in the mid-term elections. That political calculus, however, is giving way to pressures from the NRA.

While conservative politics undergoes an identity crisis, with moderates losing out to the looniest elements of the hardcore right, Democrats on Capitol Hill seem bent on sacrificing their principles to maintain the broad tent that brought them electoral landslides in 2006 and 2008. The latest lamb sent to the slaughter? Common-sense gun regulation.

Despite myths about gun regulation propagated by the NRA, America’s history of protecting citizens by limiting access to firearms is long and proud. Democrats on Capitol Hill, however, seem on the precipice of forgetting such history amid pressure from short-term political demands.

Right now, in exchange for a promise that the NRA will not actively oppose current campaign finance regulations under consideration, House Dems have formulated a compromise that would exempt the NRA from the proposed law. You read that correctly: Dems on the Hill are sacrificing American lives, all to avoid an active challenge from a powerful interest group. It’s a move that speaks not only to the NRA’s extraordinary reach — but to the desperation of the Democrats, in what’s shaping up to be a disastrous year for them at the polls.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Under NRA Pressure, Dems Propose Unraveling Gun Regulation