By Jonah Bennett Social Security has long-term financial challengers but the agency that administers it faces more immediate problems, according to a bipartisan report. Sixty-four Social Security offices have closed since 2009, despite an ever-increasing backlog of applications for benefits, MarketWatch reports. The Senate Special Committee on Aging discussed these findings earlier this week. Only 1,245 offices…
Taxes, spiders, North Korea, it doesn’t matter. If you can name it, it’s probably more popular than the United States Congress. Only 7 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the U.S. Congress, according to a new poll by Gallup. Even after many years of brutally unpopular Congresses, that’s…
By Michael Bastasch For millions of soccer fans around the world, being able to watch their country play in the World Cup is a luxury: People in poor countries have to suffer through rolling blackouts and electricity rationing as massive amounts of power is diverted to meet surging electricity demands of the World Cup. Soccer…
By Jonah Bennett The International Monetary Fund (IMF) annual rule has called for the United States to raise the minimum wage, arguing that it would increase incomes for millions of poor Americans, CNBC reports. Proposed changes in the minimum wage would spur medium-term fiscal growth and “would be helpful from a macroeconomic point of view,” according to Christine…
By Jonah Bennett New York state Sen. Guestavo Rivera wants to pass legislation to give illegal immigrants the right to vote in local and state elections, Reuters reports. In terms of the broad benefits available to non-citizens, this bill is the first of its kind in America. The main objective of the New York Is Home…
By Blake Neff Often stereotyped as the destination for college graduates who can’t find more remunerative employment, Starbucks will offer thousands of its employees free tuition through a collaborative endeavor with Arizona State University, the company announced Monday. The plan is available to any employee at Starbucks who works at least 20 hours per week….
Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza has remarked that “there are probably more Marxists on the faculty of our elite colleges than there are in all of Russia and Eastern Europe.” Any right-of-center American who has received a contemporary social science education can confirm that D’Souza is right: though Marxism purports to represent the disenfranchised, it is,…
WILLISTON, NORTH DAKOTA–Mark J. Perry, an acclaimed economics professor and writer, recently took a trip to Williston, North Dakota. Despite its remote location, the city is in the midst of an economic boom after the Bakken oil fields began gushing shale oil. Bakken produces one million barrels of oil per day, making it one of…
WFLA News Channel 8 TAMPA, FL– Matthew Heller was attending a hip hop concert last February when his truck was broken into and his equipment was destroyed. The perpetrators weren’t thieves in the traditional sense. The police had ransacked Heller’s car without a search warrant, but left behind a note explaining their actions. “Sir, your…
By Jonah Bennett The El Paso City Council is slated to hold a public hearing Tuesday to decide whether to treat e-cigarettes like tobacco products under the local smoking ban. If the Smoke Free Ordinance were modified to include e-cigarettes, the Texas city would join approximately 172 state and local governments that have taken precautionary measures, citing health concerns…