Commentary
Business & Economics
50 State Index Of Energy Regulation
The 50 State Index of Energy Regulation measures the regulatory climate for energy consumption, production, and distribution and which states are more economically efficient. Alabama, Alaska, South Dakota, and Texas tied for the best (#1), while California (#49) and New York (#50) are at the bottom. The Energy Index was ...
Commentary
Peoria County Schools: Not As Good As Parents Think
Are the Illinois public schools that serve many middle-class children performing well? Their parents may think so. But many of these schools are not as good as they think. Thats according to a new study from the Pacific Research Institute, which analyzed school performance in Illinois, including Peoria County, using ...
Commentary
Wait times and single-payer health care
The Veterans Affairs scandal may seem like it can’t get any worse – yet bad news continues to mount. An audit of the VA hospital system has revealed that over 57,000 patients have been forced to wait at least 90 days for an appointment. More than 63,000 patients in the ...
Commentary
The Reality of Common Core in the Classroom
If one asked most people a couple years ago about the Common Core national education standards, the response would have been a blank stare. Now, Common Core is a front-burner political issue because parents are discovering that their children are struggling under the new standards. Common Core is a set ...
Commentary
Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage
After years of slowing growth, employer health costs are forecast to climb at a faster pace next year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even with that projected growth, employers are spending much less per person than is the government about 60 percent less, concludes a new study from the American Health ...
Commentary
The Corruption of Peer Review Is Harming Scientific Credibility
Academic publishing was rocked by the news on July 8 that a company called Sage Publications is retracting 60 papers from its Journal of Vibration and Control, about the science of acoustics. The company said a researcher in Taiwan and others had exploited peer review so that certain papers were ...
Agriculture
The Honeybees Are Just Fine
Is a relatively new class of insecticides, known as neonicotinoids or “neonics,” harming bees and other wildlife? That’s what the International Union for the Conservation of Nature claimed in a recent press release announcing the results of a meta-study the organization conducted earlier this year. One might have expected the ...
Commentary
U.S. Has the Worst Health Care? Not By a Long Shot
Few complaints about the U.S. healthcare system are as common as the claim that we spend too much on health care and get too little for all that spending in return especially compared to other industrialized nations. A new Commonwealth Fund report is the latest to indict U.S. health ...
Commentary
Healthcare’s Problem Is Not High Drug Prices
Is $84,000 too much to pay to save a life? That’s a question worth asking now that the insurance industry has declared war on what it has deemed outrageous prices for new specialty drugs. In this case, the complaints focus on Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that gives three million people ...
Commentary
Union wins $15 minimum wage for L.A. schools’ service workers
A Los Angeles Unified School District move to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour has thrust the system into the forefront of a national movement and marks another political victory for a powerful labor group and it’s not the teachers union. The Service Employees International Union, Local ...
50 State Index Of Energy Regulation
The 50 State Index of Energy Regulation measures the regulatory climate for energy consumption, production, and distribution and which states are more economically efficient. Alabama, Alaska, South Dakota, and Texas tied for the best (#1), while California (#49) and New York (#50) are at the bottom. The Energy Index was ...
Peoria County Schools: Not As Good As Parents Think
Are the Illinois public schools that serve many middle-class children performing well? Their parents may think so. But many of these schools are not as good as they think. Thats according to a new study from the Pacific Research Institute, which analyzed school performance in Illinois, including Peoria County, using ...
Wait times and single-payer health care
The Veterans Affairs scandal may seem like it can’t get any worse – yet bad news continues to mount. An audit of the VA hospital system has revealed that over 57,000 patients have been forced to wait at least 90 days for an appointment. More than 63,000 patients in the ...
The Reality of Common Core in the Classroom
If one asked most people a couple years ago about the Common Core national education standards, the response would have been a blank stare. Now, Common Core is a front-burner political issue because parents are discovering that their children are struggling under the new standards. Common Core is a set ...
Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage
After years of slowing growth, employer health costs are forecast to climb at a faster pace next year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even with that projected growth, employers are spending much less per person than is the government about 60 percent less, concludes a new study from the American Health ...
The Corruption of Peer Review Is Harming Scientific Credibility
Academic publishing was rocked by the news on July 8 that a company called Sage Publications is retracting 60 papers from its Journal of Vibration and Control, about the science of acoustics. The company said a researcher in Taiwan and others had exploited peer review so that certain papers were ...
The Honeybees Are Just Fine
Is a relatively new class of insecticides, known as neonicotinoids or “neonics,” harming bees and other wildlife? That’s what the International Union for the Conservation of Nature claimed in a recent press release announcing the results of a meta-study the organization conducted earlier this year. One might have expected the ...
U.S. Has the Worst Health Care? Not By a Long Shot
Few complaints about the U.S. healthcare system are as common as the claim that we spend too much on health care and get too little for all that spending in return especially compared to other industrialized nations. A new Commonwealth Fund report is the latest to indict U.S. health ...
Healthcare’s Problem Is Not High Drug Prices
Is $84,000 too much to pay to save a life? That’s a question worth asking now that the insurance industry has declared war on what it has deemed outrageous prices for new specialty drugs. In this case, the complaints focus on Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that gives three million people ...
Union wins $15 minimum wage for L.A. schools’ service workers
A Los Angeles Unified School District move to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour has thrust the system into the forefront of a national movement and marks another political victory for a powerful labor group and it’s not the teachers union. The Service Employees International Union, Local ...
