Joel Makower has a post on a bill introduced into the the California state Senate.

California’s Bold Move to Legitimize Sustainable Business

A bill introduced in California’s state Senate last week holds enormous potential to give sustainable business a push by making it — well, legal.

Under current law in California and most other states, companies can be sued by their shareholders or investors for taking environmental or social measures that negatively affect shareholders’ financial returns. The proposed bill would enable a new form of for-profit corporation, encouraging and expressly permitting companies to pursue other things besides simply making money.

If you wonder why money

InformationWeek Government has an article about the current state of the Social Security Administration (SSA) Data Center.

Social Security Data Center Approaching Collapse

An inspector general finds agency operations at high risk due to delays in upgrading its critical infrastructure and software.

By Elizabeth Montalbano ,  InformationWeek
January 3, 2011 02:08 PM

Compromised timing for a new data center transition and a slowdown in application modernization are among the top IT management challenges facing the Social Security Administration (SSA), according to a recent report by the agency's inspector general (IG).

It is projected 2012 the outdated data center may not function, and a replacement cannot be built until 2015

The agency has received more than $500 million so far to replace the outdated center, which is now so severely strained by an expanded workload over its time of operation that it may not be able to function by 2012, according to the report.

However, the SSA does not foresee completing the new center until 2015, a project the IG deems as "imperative" considering the precarious position of the existing NCC.

The SSA’s failure may be the biggest opportunity to reinvent IT in government as a catastrophic event may question their methods.

How many start-ups reached a point where their data center infrastructure (HW & SW architecture) would not scale, and part of the strategy is to be acquired by a big pocket company like Google to port their code on to a better platform.

Part of companies locating their data centers in Ireland besides the potential to run a Greener Data Center is the tax situation.

The Telegraph reports on potential changes.

US firms warn Irish over tax move

The Irish government has been given a stark warning from some of the biggest American companies in Ireland on the risk of a mass exodus if the country's low corporation tax rate is raised.

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Executives at Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Intel ? spoke of the "damaging impact" on Ireland's "ability to win and retain investment" should the country's corporation tax rate be increased from 12.5pc. Photo: EPA

By James Quinn 9:30PM GMT 20 Nov 2010

The warning – from executives at Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Intel – spoke of the "damaging impact" on Ireland's "ability to win and retain investment" should the country's corporation tax rate be increased from 12.5pc.

It came as talks between members of the Irish government and the European Union and the International Monetary Fund continued around the clock on a financial aid package of as much as €100bn to shore up the country's beleaguered banking system.

Although Brian Lenihan, the Irish finance minister, has indicated Ireland's 12.5pc corporation tax rate – the lowest in the eurozone – will not be raised, a number of factions within the European Union are known to have pushed for it to be increased in return for the bail-out.