Media

Being in favor of strong government means being forward-thinking. Literally. In expanding our current government, we are constantly looking ahead to the future of our country, to the repercussions of our actions, and to the best possible version of the United States that we can build. But this week, let’s set our obsession with the future aside.

Let’s not only focus on building stronger and larger government, but let’s laud the existing government employees who make do with our current system.

Mother’s Day won’t arrive until Sunday, but the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is already looking beyond it.

Every single working day of the year, American women pay a 22.6 percent gender tax on their income.  By gender tax, I mean a negative transfer imposed upon women’s wages which reduces the wealth they control and increases the amount of time they work. Feminists know the gender tax as the pay gap (in 2010, the median full-time, year-round woman earned $10,784 less than her male counterpart) as well as Equal Pay Day (to earn his income of $47,715, she had to work until April 17, 2011—an extra 15 weeks on the job).

Last week Vermont lawmakers passed groundbreaking legislation establishing a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) for the state.

New York, NY - On May 5 2012, the Connecticut Senate passed legislation introduced by Governor Dannell Malloy, and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill to enact Same Day Registration and online voter registration, effective July 2013 and January 2014, respectively. The bill, HR 5024, had been previously passed by the state House. It now heads to the governor’s desk for his signature, expected later this month. 

What do Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), Charles Manson, and a large majority of Americans have in common? People who are not insane would say nothing. The Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank, however, recently put up a billboard that equated the 62 percent of people that think the weather is changing (i.e.

Earlier this year, when President Obama's critics were in overdrive trying to blame the White House for rising gas prices, we wrote that there were three main ways to bring gas prices down: end oil speculation to prevent market distortions, reduce tensions with Iran, and meaningfully increase investment in alternative energies to diversify our fuel supply. We also noted that if Americans drove more fuel efficient vehicles, fluctuations in gas prices would be less of a big deal.

If Washington is going debate tax reform, fundamental questions should be on the table: Like, for instance, how we might tax bad things -- i.e., pollution and over-consumption -- instead of good things, like work and wealth creation.

One obstacle to such a rethinking, though, is that energy and pollution taxes scare the heck out of elected leaders. Everyone remembers Bill Clinton's disastrous BTU proposal in 1993 and -- more recently -- how easily a vote for climate change legislation in 2009 was turned into a liability for House members.

The Federal government has been regulating electrical products almost since electricity was invented. And, for decades, it has set energy efficiency standards for a variety of products -- from cars to air conditioners to refrigerators.