Toyota has seen better months than February when the automaker recalled millions of vehicles amidst a sticky pedal and unintended acceleration problem that led to sales decline of 8.7 percent. To win back the consumer, Toyota offered incentives including extended warrantees, auto maintenance plans and zero percent financing, and it …
After enacting 93,000 earmarks at a cost of $200 billion over the past decade, lawmakers are finally taking the first steps to rein them in. First, House Democrats hinted they may announce a moratorium on earmarks to for-profit companies (while retaining them for non-profit organizations and state and local governments). …
President Barack Obama announced Monday that $900 million in federal grants in the proposed FY 2011 budget would be available to school districts and administrators who work to transform roughly 5,000 failing school across the nation. While the proposal encourages transformation of the few thousand schools that produce half of …
No greater dilemma faced the Colombian political system in recent months than the issue of presidential re-election. Should a constitutional referendum be held to allow a popular, extremely effective leader to run, and likely win, a third term as president? For many Colombians, President Alvaro Uribe had become the indispensable …
Discussion of Chinese investment in the United States usually focuses on U.S. government bonds held by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE). While SAFE directs the majority of Chinese investment in the United States, including all China’s bond purchases, it plays very little role in non-bond investment. The China …
President Obama has received criticism from yet another Supreme Court justice concerning his inappropriate and unprecedented chastisement of the Court during the State of the Union address. Obama criticized the Court’s recent campaign finance opinion while six of the justices sat before him, obviously unable to respond to the criticism …
After President Barack Obama nominated Eric Holder to be Attorney General, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Holder a questionnaire that required him to provide copies of any briefs he had filed with the Supreme Court. Holder told the Senate he had participated in a total of five such briefs and …
The alphabet is expensive. The Obama administration’s FY 2011 budget includes $9.3 billion in new spending on an Early Learning Challenge Fund, a new federal preschool program contained within the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA). The SAFRA, a higher education bill, has passed the House and is awaiting …
The EU’s beleaguered Foreign Minister, Baroness Ashton, stated yesterday that she is no longer opposed to the creation of a permanent EU military headquarters to support a European army that will stand separate from NATO. In a flip-flop that would make John Kerry blush, first she was against the idea …
