A lot of official Republican discourse tries to skate past the failures of the Bush years, but this won’t do.

American colleges have a lot of practice by now at rationalizing their annual tuition increases, often by blaming the bad economy or state budget cuts. Slate’s Matt Yglesias breaks down these explanations. While it’s true that state support for public universities has fallen over the past few years, universities have increased tuition by more than is required […]

Did we just hear the death knell for corn ethanol? Congress may finally be coming to its senses about one of the biggest green policy failures in America, as two bills were introduced yesterday to fix the corn ethanol mandate. Reuters reports: The legislation would eliminate corn-based ethanol targets, which make up the vast majority of the […]

The student debt crisis isn’t just a problem for students; it could depress the whole economy. That’s the upshot of the new comments the Center for American Progress submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Student debt has risen to a frightening $1 trillion, and New York’s Federal Reserve Bank has reported that almost 30 percent of all student loans […]

The number of insolvent union pension plans is steadily increasing, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) estimates that the number of insolvent funds will double by 2017. If these estimates are accurate, the PBGC itself could run out of money within 15 years, and much sooner if two particularly large troubled funds become insolvent.Needless to say, […]

The daily commute is bad news for everyone, not just commuters. Researchers discovered a link between traffic and childhood asthma last month. Just last week we found out that everyday irritations like being stuck in traffic can take a toll on long-term mental health. Now the LA Times reports on a much more troubling correlation. Children growing […]

Japan and Taiwan have gone behind China’s back and agreed to a deal to allow Taiwanese fishing boats to work within 12 miles of the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, the Japanese-administered islands also claimed by China and Taiwan.Taiwan’s approach to the islands dispute has been much more peaceful than China’s (although Taipei did recently launch two new coast guard […]

Hold on to your wallets students, the road to paying off your loans may get rough. As Time reports, interest rates on federal student loans are set to double to 6.8 percent on the first of July: Advocacy group U.S. PIRG says it could cost students an extra $1,000 over the life of their loan if […]

Google Fiber, the cheap, super-fast fiber optic internet infrastructure capable of speeds roughly a hundred times faster than the current national broadband average, came first to Kansas City and will soon be coming to Austin, Texas. How long will California have to wait before one of its cities gets to enjoy 1 Gbps? Thanks to a high […]

Ground was recently broken on the first new oil refinery in the United States since 1976. The refinery is being built near the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota, one of the centers of the recent American shale boom. Until now, most of the oil extracted in North Dakota has wound its way to Gulf […]