Top Stories
TSA Finally Starts Checking All Air Passengers against Terror Watch List
More than nine years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and more than six years after the 9/11 Commission made its recommendations for improving security in the United States, the federal government has finally figured out a way to ... read more
Gay Partners Gain Medicare Hospital Visitation Rights
The Obama administration is in the final stages of approving new rules requiring hospitals that accept Medicare and Medicaid to grant visitation rights to same-sex partners. The regulations, developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Servi... read more
Is it Time to Bring Back the Reagan Leveling of Wage and Investment Tax?
Adopted with the blessing of conservatives like President Ronald Reagan and Democrats in Congress, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 equalized taxes on income from investments and income from wages. It ended the practice of lower taxes on income from w... read more
Are Permanent Wage Cuts Just around the Corner?
Large manufacturing companies are using the weak economy as leverage to force organized labor into accepting different levels of wages for workers that would last long into the future, even after a recovery kicks in.
Use of two-tier labor sy... read more
St. Louis Worst City for Crime; Colonie, NY the Safest
CQ Press’s annual City Crime Rankings has declared St. Louis, Missouri, the worst urban center for crime, displacing Camden, New Jersey, which finished with the second highest crime rate after occupying the top spot last year. Other top crime-ri... read more
Obama Halts Sermons during Soup Kitchen Meals
Faith-based organizations that accept federal funding cannot proselytize while providing social programs to the needy, under a new executive order signed by President Barack Obama. The order changes the original initiative, adopted by President Ge... read more
Sen. Kyl Denounces Earmarks…Except His Own for $200 Million
Much maligned by Republicans since the election, earmarks are defined under U.S. Senate rules as a spending item inserted “primarily at the request of a senator” that goes “to an entity, or (is) targeted to a specific state.” This definition fits ... read more
Corporate Profits Hit Record High
Unemployment may be high, but business is booming…or at least corporate profits are. New data from the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis shows businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter ... read more
Who’s Hiring? Big Companies and U.S. Government
The best bets to find employment in the public and private sectors are with large corporations and the federal government, according to a new Gallup poll.
Forty-two percent of companies surveyed with at least 1,000 employees said they were h... read more
Supreme Court to Decide if AT&T Has Personal Privacy Rights
Corporations could win privacy rights reserved until now for individuals if the U.S. Supreme Court finds in favor of AT&T in a case that will be heard early next year.
At issue is whether AT&T can block the release of company documents, prev... read more
Insurance Industry Gave $86 Million to Chamber of Commerce to Oppose Health Care Bill
While the health insurance industry publically negotiated with Congress last year over the shape of the healthcare reform law, it secretly funneled more than $86 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce so it could criticize ideas, such as creati... read more
Federal Judge Orders CIA to Release Records on Secret Experiments on Soldiers
The CIA is being forced to produce specific information regarding secret tests conducted on thousands of soldiers over a 25-year period.
In response to a lawsuit filed by three veterans groups and six individual veterans, a federal judge, Ja... read more
New Members of Congress Include 33 Republican Small-Business Owners
Thanks to this year’s Republican wave, the number of small-business owners in Congress will triple in size in January. Thirty-three new lawmakers, all Republican and including two women, make their living running small enterprises. The last Cong... read more
More Americans Quitting Jobs than Being Laid Off
Huh? That about sums up the reaction to the latest labor news out of Washington, where the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has reported that more people are quitting their jobs than are being laid off.
In September, there were two million q... read more
6.8 Million U.S. Households Did Not Have Enough Food Last Year
With the economy improving little from 2008 to 2009, it’s not surprising that the problem with hunger in America saw little progress as well. A new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service found that nearly 15% ... read more
New Income Opportunity for Banks and Hedge Funds…Investing in Lawsuits
Wanting to get in on the billion-dollar action, banks and hedge funds are backing lawsuits against corporations, hospitals, doctors and other deep-pocketed interests in order to create new streams of income. Investments in civil cases now total ... read more