The US’s booming energy resources are changing the landscape, and not just from the Midwest to the Intermountain West. A recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that North American oil production may affect the global market as dramatically as the recent increase in Chinese demand. IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven …
During the 2008 campaign, then-candidate Obama promised that his administration would be the most open and transparent in American history – in history! Jefferson be damned. He’s repeated that sound bite multiple times, stating that they have instituted rules that, for example, disallow registered lobbyists from working at the White House and make White House …
This has been an eventful week in Washington…or should I say, for President Obama and his administration? On top of the recent scandals, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is being accused of soliciting private and non-private companies for donations. Her effort to raise money for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) …
Perhaps only the Marines are able to make holding an umbrella over another person look powerful and executed with precision. As these marines stood stoic, Mother Nature reminded her critics on Thursday that she too has a flair for the poetic when rain began to fall on President Obama’s joint press conference with the Turkish …
The Bureau of Land Management has released a new proposal for rules governing the use of hydraulic fracturing on federal land. This proposal contains revisions from last year’s proposal that better balance environmental and business interests over the controversial drilling technique. Hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking,’ has been used in conventional, vertical wells since at least …
As if US-Russian relations weren’t already complicated enough, a breaking spy scandal has resulted in the expulsion of Ryan Christopher Fogle, a junior diplomat at the US Embassy in Moscow, who allegedly attempted to recruit a Russian intelligence officer to spy for the CIA. Reading the American and Russian press in the wake of the …
Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) unveiled her first piece of legislation on the Senate floor — a proposal to allow students to borrow at the same rates as banks. While this move galvanizes the populist movement, the economics behind it does not quite add up. The interest rate on direct subsidized loans for undergrads …
It’s been a tough May for Federal Agencies. Amid a backdrop of scrutiny over potential regulatory missteps in the Texas fertilizer plant explosion, accusations of document concealment at the Environmental Protection Agency, and lengthy congressional hearings into State Department action in the aftermath of the Benghazi terror attacks, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) finished this …
With gun control stalled and budget negotiations on the back burner, all eyes have now turned to immigration reform. President Obama is seeking (and really needs) a large second term accomplishment to solidify and bolster his legacy. Republicans, meanwhile, are trapped at the bottom of an electoral well staring up at 70% of Latinos and …
The Kaiser Family Foundation maintains an on-going tracking poll that surveys the opinions of approximately 1,203 adults on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The polls started in May of 2010 with only 41% of the surveyed population in favor of the ACA. 14% were unsure of the law or simply refused to answer. The latest poll … Continue reading »
New revelations came to light in the investigation over the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi yesterday during a tense House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Hearing. Here’s a list of some new developments from the hearing: 1. The YouTube video had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack. Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief … Continue reading »
The field is set in the Massachusetts Special Election to fill the vacant Senate seat that was long held by John Kerry before his appointment as Secretary of State by President Obama. On the Democrat’s side we have long-time Congressman Ed Markey. On the Republican side we have former NAVY Seal and political-newcomer Gabriel Gomez. … Continue reading »
Flexible and nimble, these are the words chosen by one Obama Administration official as part of the announcement earlier this week that the application to apply for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) shiny new state exchanges would be trimmed to three pages. The presentation of the new form, meant to remind the … Continue reading »
Two weeks ago, a grad student at UMass Amherst discovered a spreadsheet error in the Reinhart-Rogoff (R-R) paper, a paper that many austerity advocates cited as proof that too much debt cripples economic growth. In the days and weeks after the spreadsheet error fiasco, many were quick to draw significant implications from this event, calling … Continue reading »
As the economy slowly grows, the job market has been improving as well. Contributing to this is improvement in the manufacturing sector. Contrary to trends in the past decade, manufacturing is returning to the U.S. and new jobs are being created in the process. However, they are not the type of manufacturing jobs you are … Continue reading »
I recently heard a quote that went a something like this: You can’t come up with the solution, unless you understand the true nature of the problem. This quote practically sums up the current state of the American education system. There are competing views on how our educational system should be run and what is … Continue reading »
