Washington isn’t known for getting things done quickly, but the wrangling over the Keystone XL pipeline is taking this reputation to an extreme. Now in its fifth year, the approval process is ensnared in bureaucracy that is excessive even by the federal government’s standards. Every time it appears as if...
The number of Americans enrolled in four-year colleges has increased fairly steadily since 1970 but it took a dive between 2011 and 2012. Nationally, according to the September 2013 edition of American Consumers Newsletter, enrollment at four-year colleges plunged by 580,000, or about 5.3%. Is that drop indicative of a...
According to the Capital Research Center, an education and research organization in Washington, D.C., activists are now using a process known as “sue-and-settle” to obtain policies favorable to their missions. First, activists sue government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and negotiate settlements with friendly bureaucrats. They then obtain...
The popularity of long-term highway projects procured as availability-payment concessions, rather than traditional toll concessions, has been increasing over the last year. At the ninth annual InfraAmericas US P3 Infrastructure Forum in New York in June, several speakers noted the trend. Peter Allison of InfraAmericas was quoted in a long...
Even casual purveyors of the news readily concede there is liberal media bias. But the spin in this past year’s media coverage of the Virginia Governor’s race has been over the top. From local Virginia papers to the Washington Post; from PBS to Time to MSNBC, the verdict is in:...
Our economy is in desperate need for more middle-class job creation. Recent statistics continue to show a very weak economy — one of the worst recoveries since World War II. Once Congress gets back to it, the immigration debate needs to focus on reality and not “news bites” and unrealistic...
Our economy is in desperate need for more middle-class job creation. Recent statistics continue to show a very weak recovery – one of worst recoveries since World War II. Once Congress gets back to it, the immigration debate needs to focus on reality and not “news bites” and unrealistic concepts.A...
Ken Cuccinelli can’t catch a break. From the left, opponent Terry McAuliffe charges that his tax plan will cut funding to education – a false claim ignoring the truth noted by Democratic blogger Ben “Not Larry Sabato” Tribbet: that Cuccinelli would fund any tax cuts by cutting tax loopholes, not...
The recent controversy concerning alleged “unconstitutional” National Security Agency (NSA) collection of vast telephone “metadata”—records already collected by private sector telecommunications companies that identify what phone numbers were connected with what other phone numbers along with when the calls occurred and how long they lasted—has sadly been driven by misinformation,...
Here’s a pop quiz: since their inception in the 1990s, the Standards of Learning tests have (a) relied exclusively on multiple-choice questions, (b) rewarded rote memorization, (c) resulted in ever-higher passing rates, or (d) none of the above. Go to the head of the class if you correctly answered “none...
