News Round-up
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ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT Global warming alarmists are attacking the integrity of scientists, desperately seeking to minimize the damage presented by a recent survey of geoscientists and engineers regarding global warming. Government biofuel programs are causing the destruction of America’s grasslands, scientists report in a newly published study in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Spurred on by biofuel programs, America’s grasslands are disappearing at a pace comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The Antarctic ice cap is not shrinking despite alarmist claims to the contrary, scientists report in the peer-reviewed science journal The Cryosphere. Moreover, the scientists report “a clear increase in accumulation of more than 10% has occurred in high SMB (surface mass balance) coastal regions and over the highest part of the East Antarctic ice divide since the 1960s.” As President Obama’s health care law goes into effect, restaurants across the country are preparing for the new expense of meeting informational requirements under the law which are likely to prove costly without any certainty of health benefits. College students are about to wake up to the fact that there is a huge price they will have to pay under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For them, ObamaCare will be anything but affordable. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has decided to go along with the Obama administration's expansion of Medicaid, the most significant state under Republican control to do so. EDUCATION The action now moves to the Indiana House on a measure providing for public hearings around the state to reconsider the Common Core, after the Indiana Senate on Thursday passed Senate Bill 193 Thursday 38-11. In 1998, Florida and Nevada had the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress fourth grade reading test. In 1999, however, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) instituted a series of reforms, including tax-credit scholarships, vouchers, grading schools from A-F, ending social promotion after third grade, a robust system of charter schools, and expanded online learning. Americans are having fewer babies and fewer immigrants are arriving because of the 2009 recession, which will have decades of repercussions for education and the economy. The number of high school graduates dipped in 2012 for the first time in decades, and is likely to stay down until 2019, according to a new report by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. After then, the commission projects a slow growth in graduates, due largely to immigration, and nothing like the past several decades of 8 to 10 percent increases each year. BUDGETS AND TAXES Capital gains tax rates in the U.S., raised in January, are now among the highest in the world, causing a drain on the economy and putting the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage, according to a new analysis by the Tax Foundation. Rita Crundwell of the small town of Dixon, Ill., has been sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for stealing almost $54 million from the city to finance a lavish lifestyle that included ownership of farms with hundreds of show horses. FINANCE, INSURANCE, REAL ESTATE The Board of Governors of Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has voted to transfer $30 billion of hurricane exposure from the state-run insurer to Florida-based Weston Insurance Co. Everybody knows what will happen if you set up a private mint in your basement, stamp out a few coins and call them “nickels” or “dimes.” You won’t circulate much longer than they will. TECH In the past few years, members of Congress have proposed several bills to expand states’ ability to tax purchases made online and from mail-order catalogs. Last week, U.S. Sens. Mike Enzi (R-WY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act, which expands states’ ability to charge sales taxes on out-of-state retailers regardless of whether the retailer has a physical presence in the state. Obsolete thinking and rear-view-mirror analysis comprise Professor Susan Crawford’s new book Captive Audience — the Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. Unfortunately, the only “gilded” thing in this book is the analysis with fool’s gold. |
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