For several decades, Neal Peirce has been a national journalist in Washington, but with a sharp eye focused also on the state and local scenes. He is the author of the newspaper column “Citistates Reports” (formerly called the “Peirce Reports”), which concentrates on strategic issues for many regional newspapers. The country’s first national newspaper column […]

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Corruption at Public Broadcasting—The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is the administrative funnel through which congressional appropriations are doled out to PBS, the Public Broadcasting System’s television outlet, and NPR, National Public Radio. The CPB received about $378 million from Congress for the 2004 fiscal year, representing about 15 percent of public broadcasting’s revenues. Some […]

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Whole Hog—The Washington watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste keeps a sharp eye on the under-reported phenomenon of pork barrel politics. That’s the antiquated system used by members of Congress to invisibly slip a total of billions of taxpayer dollars into legislation that steers big chunks of cash back to projects in their states and […]

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The real-estate market seems to have become so unreal that we asked a clear-sighted interpreter of the economy, Perry L. Weed, to explain what’s happening. Weed is a retired Washington economist and lawyer whose 30 years in the nation’s capital included Senate and House staff assignments and a position at the U.S. Commerce Department. His […]

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Not many, if any, news reports have focused on the unpublicized connections of this Bush administration’s family members with politically—and financially—sensitive operations. Business Week recently noted that “dads and sons and other relatives reign so widely in this administration that there have never been so many family combos in an administration at the same time.” And the […]

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