Nation
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Washington, DC, USA. Charlie Baker is a Republican health care executive who hopes to unseat Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick this November, in part with a plan he cleverly calls “Baker’s dozen.
”It is 13 ways to save taxpayers well over $1 billion that includes various schemes for shrinking state government.
“Right now, under this administration, state government is not working,” Baker says in a recent campaign ad.
Meanwhile in New York, Andrew Cuomo’s gubernatorial campa... |
09-03-10
Word count: 1464
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New Orleans, LA, USA. It’s certainly no secret that the oil industry remains deeply embedded in Louisiana culture.
Not only does it employ tens of thousands of people, but it is the economic engine state leaders depend on as they struggle to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Even so, it was something of a surprise earlier this summer when the first round of lawsuits over the BP oil spill reached a federal court in downtown New Orleans.
One of the judges on the court — t... |
09-01-10
Word count: 1411
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Washington, DC, USA. A year after suffering record investment losses, many of the nation’s largest public pension plans report double-digit percentage budget gains for the year that ended June 30. Although the improved returns in fiscal 2010 did not wipe out the damage funds suffered in the previous two years, the figures confirm how the financial industry has stabilized and liquidity increased since the Wall Street crisis battered state pension plans.
A review by Stateline of 20 public emp... |
08-31-10
Word count: 1535
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Washington, DC, USA. For the people who hold elections in West Virginia, the passing of U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd in June was upsetting in more ways than one. West Virginia had already held its primary election in May. So the special primary to pick candidates to run for Byrd's seat, scheduled for Saturday (August 28), represents an unanticipated expense for counties during a time of historic budget pressures.
“Every budget year, you have one election,” says Jamie Six, the clerk of Wood... |
08-29-10
Word count: 1321
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Atlanta, GA, USA. In his campaign to become Georgia’s next governor, Roy Barnes is relying on an unusual combination of personal attributes: competence and contrition.
The competence comes from the fact that Barnes has held the office before, from 1999 to 2003. As governor, he passed an aggressive slate of education reforms, tackled traffic congestion in the Atlanta area and launched an economic development program for rural areas. What he’s contrite about is how he got to some of those a... |
08-27-10
Word count: 1930
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Seattle, WA, USA. Washington State is one of nine states without a state income tax. Bill Gates Sr., the father of the Microsoft founder, wants to change that. Gates is lending his high-profile name and influence to a ballot measure that would tax the income of individuals who earn more than $200,000 and couples who earn more than $400,000. His son — the world's second-richest person — definitely falls into that category.
The elder Gates, who also co-chairs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foun... |
08-24-10
Word count: 2499
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Concord, NH, USA. Following a similar move by Republicans earlier this month, national Democrats agreed over the weekend to push back their primary calendar for the 2012 presidential election cycle while still keeping Iowa and New Hampshire in their traditional roles at the front of the nominating pack, preserving their influence in national presidential elections.
In delaying their respective primary calendars, both Republicans and Democrats hope to prevent the kind of jostling among states ... |
08-24-10
Word count: 396
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Des Moines, IA, USA. From beyond Iowa’s borders, it may be hard to understand why this state’s first-term governor, Democrat Chet Culver, is fighting for his political life.
Iowa’s budget is balanced, with reserve funds to spare. With the exception of pricier cigarettes, taxes haven’t gone up on Culver’s watch. Revenues are beating expectations, and debt is a fraction of what it is in other states. The unemployment rate, at 6.8 percent, is high for Iowa, but far below the national a... |
08-21-10
Word count: 1804
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Washington, DC, USA. This week, President Barack Obama has been flying around the country, rallying Democrats to vote for their party’s nominees for governor in Wisconsin and Ohio. At both stops, top Democrats have been all too happy to appear on stage with their party’s most powerful spokesman.
But the welcome reception Obama received this last week stands in contrast to the reception from other would-be governors as the president has traveled through the country this year. Democratic no... |
08-20-10
Word count: 1020
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Sacramento, CA, USA. The Legislative Analyst’s Office in California has been described as the conscience of the Capitol.
Or, as one longtime capitol columnist so colorfully put it, “the skunk that ruins the budget garden party the governor and the Legislature would otherwise enjoy each year.”
Mac Taylor is the fifth person to head the LAO since it was founded in 1941. It is a powerful office whose independent, nonpartisan fiscal findings can deep-six a governor’s budget proposal with... |
08-20-10
Word count: 1344
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Provo, UT, USA. A down economy usually spells trouble for incumbents, but a new study shows that six Republicans up for re-election this year caught a break when John McCain lost the last presidential election.
The analysis found that some voters are less objective (and more forgiving) in evaluating their governor’s economic performance if the White House is controlled by the opposing political party. “When there is an easy chance for people to pass the blame onto a party they don’t lik... |
08-19-10
Word count: 834
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College Station, TX, USA. A longitudinal study in the Social Science Quarterly analyzes suicide rates at a state level from 1981-2005 and determines that presidential election outcomes directly influence suicide rates among voters. This article is the first in its field to focus on candidate and state-specific outcomes in relation to suicide rates.
In states where the majority of voters supported the national election winner suicide rates decreased. However, counter-intuitively, suicide rates... |
08-19-10
Word count: 748
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Cincinnati, OH, USA. New research examines how night shifts and rotating work schedules are affecting the state of the marital union.
Taking care of business is becoming an ever-growing, 24/7 challenge for the American worker. “Although much research has examined the marital effects of women’s work, relatively few studies have focused on the effects of working late shifts on marital dynamics,” writes David Maume.
“This study updates and extends the rather limited and dated research o... |
08-18-10
Word count: 670
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Atlanta, GA, USA. Volunteering in state parks has long been a staple of the Boy Scouts experience. But in Georgia this year, as the Boy Scouts celebrate their 100th anniversary by building bridges and park benches, maintaining trails and cleaning up waterways, the ongoing event is unusual in one respect.
It’s sponsored by Verizon Wireless.
Verizon provides funding for tools and supplies as the scouts perform service projects around the state. Georgia recognizes Verizon Wireless in publicit... |
08-18-10
Word count: 1078
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Des Moines, IA, USA. For a few months next year, Ed Cook, a lawyer with the Iowa General Assembly’s bill-writing agency, will turn his attention from drafting legislation to drawing maps.
Cook and a handful of his colleagues will hole themselves up in a hidden, locked room in the state’s Capitol complex.
A few weeks later, members of the bill-writing agency will emerge with a set of maps that will help determine the makeup of Congress and the state Legislature for the next decade.
Iowa ... |
08-17-10
Word count: 1705
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Washington, DC, USA. North Shore Community College, located outside Boston, joined the glitzy side of the green-building trend last November when it broke ground on the first state-owned “zero net energy” building in Massachusetts. The 58,000-square foot health and student center, with geothermal heating and cooling and solar panels on the roof, will produce more than enough power to cover its energy needs.
But a less glamorous project also is underway at North Shore, one that is arguably... |
08-15-10
Word count: 1392
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Washington, DC, USA. When Martin O’Malley became Maryland’s governor in 2007, one of his first moves was to double the number of cameras used to spy on cars. The cameras, stationed at toll booths and parking garages and mounted on police cars, scan license plate numbers and instantly match them with a database for tracking stolen cars.
The sort of “Big Brother” criticism one might expect of a program like this never materialized in a substantial way. There’s a good reason for that: ... |
08-14-10
Word count: 1213
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Denver, CO, USA. At the end of a topsy-turvy Republican primary campaign for Colorado governor, Dan Maes ended up on top by a slim margin. But now that the dust is settling from Tuesday's contest, Maes has found few new fans in the party that just elected him.
"Although GOP state chair Dick Wadhams said he supported Maes as the nominee, the silence from other top Republicans throughout the state, as well as nationally, on his surprise win Tuesday over former GOP congressman Scott McInnis... |
08-13-10
Word count: 418
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Salem, OR, USA. Long before the Tea Party became the national symbol for lower taxes, Oregon voters told their government to keep its hands off their money. The state is one of five without a sales tax because residents voted nine times over the years to keep it that way. Oregonians have enshrined a property-tax cap in their state constitution. And another voter-backed amendment — like no other in the country — forces the state to give rebates to taxpayers whenever revenues exceed expectat... |
08-12-10
Word count: 1499
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Washington, DC, USA. State legislators are beginning to challenge one of the ironclad tenets of public pension policy: that states cannot legally reduce pension benefits for current and future retirees.
Lawmakers in Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota voted earlier this year to limit the cost-of-living increases they previously had promised to thousands of current and future retirees, who courts historically have protected from benefit reductions. Not surprisingly, retirees in each of these ... |
08-11-10
Word count: 1838
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