CARPE DIEM:
Committee to Protect Journalists -- Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez was astounded this week by President Barack Obama’s decision to respond a written questionnaire Sánchez submitted to the White House. Still recovering from bruises left by a recent vicious attack by state security agents, she told CPJ from her home in Havana: (Read More)
CARPE DIEM:
The Leading Economic Index (LEI) increased for the 7th straight month to 103.8, the highest level since the fall of 2007, and the first time in more than five years of 7-consecutive monthly increases (since early 2004). Details: Six of the ten indicators that make up The Conference Board LEI for the U.S. increased in Octob (Read More)
CARPE DIEM:
Southern California home sales rose in October as prices showed more signs of firming. The median sale price fell by the smallest amount in two years, the result of a shrinking inventory of homes for sale and government and industry efforts to stoke demand and curtail foreclosures. Last month 22,132 new and resale houses a (Read More)
CARPE DIEM:
Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. Deep flaws in Medicare and M (Read More)
CARPE DIEM:
From a new report "Staying Competitive: Patching America’s Leaky Pipeline in the Sciences" from the Center for American Progress:The “leaky pipeline” for women in the sciences, sometimes referred to as the “pool problem” because of the low number of women in job applicant pools relative to their rates of doctoral degrees gr (Read More)
CARPE DIEM:
From the article "Who Needs Mathematicians for Math, Anyway?" by Professor Sandra Stotsky in the City Journal:As part of his education-reform plan, President Obama wants to “make math and science education a top priority” and ensure that children have access to strong math and science curricula “at all grade levels.” But th (Read More)
CARPE DIEM:
From a new study released today by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions "Retail Medical Clinics: Update and Implications - 2009 Report" (press release here and full study here):1. Retail clinic market growth has slowed from an astronomical 350 percent in 2007 to 30 percent in 2008, and it trended negative (-5 percent) i (Read More)
CARPE DIEM:
Click to enlarge.From the BLS report "100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending":1. The material well-being of families in the United States improved dramatically, as demonstrated by the change over time in the percentage of expenditures allocated for food, clothing, and housing. In 1901, the average U.S. family devoted 79.8 perc (Read More)
History News Network:
In light of the recently released Shriver Report (“A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything”) which examines the status of American women today, we should not ignore the enormous debt owed to nineteenth-century women who initiated the fight for women’s rights. They held their first public convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in (Read More)
History News Network:
The discourse in the public sphere debating the motivation of mass murderer Major Nidal Malik Hasan—the psychiatrist who recently shot forty-three people in Fort Hood, Texas—has taken two primary forms. The first agues he is a lone, depressed, and deranged gunman motivated by the stress of impending deployment to Iraq or Af (Read More)
History News Network:
Several bomb blasts accompanied Hillary Clinton's recent trip toPakistan. This was a wake-up call in more ways than one. The momenthad come for Clinton to act more boldly as the nation's top diplomat.Historically our best secretaries of state have been those who thinkcreatively and move assertively. Likewise our most effect (Read More)
History News Network:
In Fiscal Year (FY) 2009, the United States government incurred its largest ever peacetime budget deficit of $1.4 trillion, equal to 10 percent GDP. The way out of this fiscal hole must surely involve the slaughter of some of the sacred cows of both the right and left. A review of earlier cycles of deficit growth and cont (Read More)
History News Network:
We are ten months into the Obama administration, but one loose end left by the President’s predecessor is still dangling. Two days before Christmas, President Bush pardoned Isaac Robert Toussie, who had been convicted of fraud following an enormous real estate scam. Toussie’s clemency application had hit a dead end with the (Read More)
History News Network:
A few weeks ago, Glenn Beck of the Fox News Channel, with that hysterical flourish that has made him the darling of rightwing extremists, proclaimed: "America, if . . . you're not really into that whole One World Government thing, watch out." This kind of warning, regularly issued on Fox News, seems rather absurd today, g (Read More)
CARPE DIEM:
From the article "White Collar Reset: Kidney for sale?" by Mark Cohen:In my last installment, I entertained the notion of opening a medical marijuana store in the New York City suburb my wife and I call home. This week, while we wait for the New Jersey legislature to finalize the legality of that option and as I begin year (Read More)