Oil and Politics—Minerals extraction is a dirty business, evident in the oil slick riding the currents of the Gulf of Mexico. Minerals-extraction political appointments are often as befouled as the process. The previous occupant of the Oval Office had left a disaster waiting to happen. Consider. Nine days before George W. Bush and Dick Cheney […]

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ON A SOMBER TUESDAY MORNING IN MID-APRIL, pews were filled in the tiny chapel of Pax Advent Christian Church. Behind the sobbing women, men wearing jeans and pressed shirts stood together, the nails of their calloused hands scrubbed clean of black dust. With red buds blooming outside, the pastor spoke of hope for a future […]

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Gaming the System—The death of 29 coal miners in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in April was not exactly predicted when the House Committee on Education and Labor met on February 23—to address a failed safety inspection process. But the industry’s response to tougher regulations that followed a spike in miners’ deaths midway through […]

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The (Supreme Court) Case for Immigration ReformSheer incapability or lax enforcement of the laws barring entry into this country, coupled with the failure to establish an effective bar to the employment of undocumented aliens, has resulted in the creation of a substantial “shadow population” of illegal migrants—numbering in the millions—within our borders. This situation raises […]

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The New Financial Economy—In 1948, 56 percent of profits in the U.S. economy derived from manufacturing, while 8.3 percent came from the financial sector. In 2007 (the year the financial collapse began) manufacturing produced 10 percent of profits, while the financial sector produced 26 percent of profits. The $62 Trillion Question—Eighteen months ago, Iowa Democratic […]

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