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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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
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
It has been a week of whirlwind, frustrations, and disappointments for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). To better describe it in the words of Senator Max Baucus (D-MO.), “I just see a huge train wreck coming down.” First of all, there has been speculation that lawmakers and Capitol Hill aids could be exempt from entering … Continue reading
This week, Rep. Louie Gohmert’s stated, in the vulnerable context of the Boston bombings, that there are links between Al Qaeda and Hispanics. Gohmert said: “We know Al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border. We know that people that are now being trained to come … Continue reading
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