President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

Jittery investors gobbled up Treasury notes last week, sending their value down to historic lows.   Unlike stocks and commodities, Treasury bonds’ value goes down when demand is high. The rush last week sent Treasuries with 10- and 30-year yie...   read more

Women earn less money than men in the workforce as a general rule. They also peak at a younger age, it turns out, in terms of salary growth.   According to the company PayScale, college-educated women on average reach their pay ceiling by age ...   read more

State officials have been lining up like kids outside a theater box office, spending more than $1 billion to coax Hollywood to film movies and television shows in various states.   Forty-three states currently offer subsidies to production com...   read more

With the coming withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the rule of President Hamid Karzai also will be coming to an end by 2014. But this doesn’t mean Karzai or his family members will be lacking for opportunities in their home country.   ...   read more

As Congress and the Executive branch investigate the recent trading disaster at the nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase (JPM), many are asking what role bank regulators played in the debacle, expected to cost JPM between $2 billion and $7 bill...   read more

The Department of Energy (DOE) wastes too much energy, and could see great improvements at very little cost, according to an Inspector General report released May 25. DOE IG Gregory Friedman audited energy usage at the agency’s approximately 530...   read more

Elections have consequences, a truism demonstrated last week in Grants Pass, Oregon (pop.: 34,533), where dozens of inmates poured out of the Josephine County jail Wednesday, some running, yet none pursued by law enforcement because voters two w...   read more

Growth in the number of Latinos was single biggest reason why Texas was awarded four more congressional districts after the 2010 census. And yet when the next Congress convenes, Latinos are not expected to make gains in Texas’ delegation to the ...   read more

The new ambassador to the United States from the Persian Gulf oil emirate of Qatar is a former career military officer turned diplomat since 2001. Born in 1956, Mohammed Bin Abdullah Bin Mutib Al Rumaihi graduated from the St. Cyr Military Acade...   read more

Why aim high when it’s so much easier to bust the little guy? That’s the approach being employed these days by those running the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone.   Taibbi has drawn attention ...   read more

The Public Buildings Service (PBS) of the General Services Administration (GSA) has yet another scandal on its hands. PBS has been plagued by a series of scandals since April 2008, when GSA Administrator Lurita Doan was asked by the Bush White H...   read more

Like the ancient Persian King Xerxes, who ordered the sea whipped and chained for destroying a bridge his army needed to cross, real estate developers in North Carolina are pushing a law to prohibit rising sea levels owing to global warming–or a...   read more

A senior Foreign Service officer with 31 years of experience in Europe, the Caribbean and the Middle East, Marcie Berman Ries was nominated by President Barack Obama in May 2012 to serve as ambassador to Bulgaria. Over the course of her diplomat...   read more

The West African nation of Liberia, which has had close relations with the U.S. since its founding by American former slaves in 1847, has sent a new ambassador to Washington who has played a key role in the nation’s reconstruction after back-to-...   read more

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of playing favorites when it comes to clearing material in books authored by former government officials.   At the center of the controversy is the CIA’s Publications Review Board, which i...   read more

The Obama administration has proposed making it easier to provide federal agricultural loans to young farmers in need of financing.   New rules proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), aimed at the 70% of American farms that gross ...   read more