Shortly after the Occupy Wall Street protests gained national attention, donations from supporters began pouring in. Lacking the infrastructure to manage the hundreds of thousands of dollars reportedly donated, the protest group enlisted the services of a non-profit organization called the Alliance for Global Justice. The group takes a 7 percent commission of all donations it manages. According to its secretary, the Alliance for Global Justice is processing hundreds of times as many donations as it did prior to partnering with the Occupy protestors. The AFGJ provides “grassroots” support for …
Congress could move a step closer to rejecting the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to regulate the Internet this week when the Senate considers a resolution targeting the agency’s net neutrality rule. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) introduced the measure, S.J. Res. 6, to halt the FCC from implementing the regulation. The Congressional Review Act gives lawmakers the authority to overrule regulations from government agencies. Hutchison’s resolution simply states: “That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to the matter of preserving the open Internet and broadband …
There’s a new kid on the block. Muppet Lily joined Elmo and Big Bird on the cast of Sesame Street last month. Despite Lily’s bright pink face looking cheery and healthy in her debut episode, the audience found out that Lily deals with hunger and food insecurity. Sesame Street’s newest primetime special, “Growing Hope Against Hunger,” introduced Lily in order to raise awareness of widespread hunger throughout the United States. Viewers were informed that over 50 million Americans don’t have the food they need much of the time. Seventeen million …
Travel in time back to January 2009 when President Barack Obama’s advisers painted a portrait of the future under the President’s recovery plan. It turns out that their prediction was much rosier than reality. With the plan, they predicted in their chart, unemployment today would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6.5 percent. Today, after the President’s $787 billion stimulus, unemployment still stands at 9 percent. In a new paper, Heritage’s Rea Hederman, Jr. and James Sherk write, “The labor market is adding jobs and holding steady but not improving …
Among the more egregious failings of the Budget Control Act (BCA)—the proxy fiscal plan spawned by the summer’s debt ceiling debate—are a pair of gaping loopholes allowing Congress effectively to blow through the agreement’s advertised spending limit. The Senate has already begun to exploit one of these openings. The House should not let it happen. Loophole No. 1, little noticed when the BCA was enacted, is called “disaster relief.” It allows Congress to “adjust” the BCA’s $1.043 trillion discretionary spending cap for fiscal year (FY) 2012—that is, to simply raise …
Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest statistics on income inequality. Economists, bloggers and others have been furiously debating their implications. Over at the American Enterprise Institute, Jim Pethokoukis has been bludgeoned by various left-wing bloggers for pointing out that the story of growth of income inequality is much more complicated than the simple version spun by the CBO, and that there exists a considerable amount of evidence that income inequality hasn’t gotten worse since the ‘90s. His arguments can be read here, here and here. One point …
The armed forces of Colombia have scored a major battlefield victory. They finally hunted down, confronted, and killed the leader of the narco-terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Guillermo Leon Saenz, widely known by his alias Alfonso Cano. A guerrilla for decades, Cano assumed the top leadership of the FARC following the natural death of founder Manuel Marulanda (2008) and the elimination of senior figures Raul Reyes (2008) and Jorge Briceno (aka Mono Jojoy, 2010). Seen by some as a modern-day version of the “good revolutionary,” Cano—a life-long advocate …
Want to get the economy growing again? McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner says that Washington needs to cut taxes and get spending under control in order to make that happen. The Telegraph reports: “The question is, how can we get the ox out of the ditch?” Mr. Skinner said. “In order to create jobs in America, you’re going to have to cut taxes… particularly in the business community. “We pay some of the highest [corporate] taxes around the world. There needs to be some levelling.” Asked about federal borrowing, he said: …
It has been 12 months since the American people spoke resoundingly at the polls against overtaxing, overspending, and overborrowing, but memories can be short in Washington. All it takes is for a couple of politicos and the so-called “mainstream” media to denigrate the Tea Party and the freshman congressional class–and urge compromise–and you have the spectacle of some Members of Congress hiding under the neutral-sounding “revenue raising” banner and urging the so-called “Super Committee” to raise taxes. Throw in some character assassination of those holding the line against spending and …
Greece continues to dominate the headlines as the country faces an increasingly dire economic situation and now political uncertainty as well. Prime Minister George Papandreou plans to resign once an interim government is formed, but there’s no telling if the political leadership will be able to avoid expulsion from the euro zone. Greece’s troubles might seem a world away from what the United States is experiencing, but a new report and video from the Joint Economic Committee suggest the two countries have troubling similarities. (Click to watch.) Here’s how Sen. …
