WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House Appropriations Committee unveiled a short term Continuing Resolution (CR) to provide funds to keep the government operating over the next two weeks until a compromise can be reached on ayear-long funding bill. The CR, which includes $4 billion in spending reductions, will prevent a government-wide shut down that would occur on March 4th – if no agreement between the House, Senate and White House is...

OPEC today announced that member states will cut production by 1.5 million barrels a day starting in November in order to shore up the price per barrel which has dropped 56% from its high in July. This is obviously bad news for oil producing countries, so they are trying to manipulate the oil market to drive up the price of oil. We depend on their oil, and they depend on our dollars. Unfortunately, the massive transfer of wealth that results...

Financial And Environmental De-Regulation: Two Crashes In The Making This post points out the parallel risk of under-regulating the financial industry and undercutting established environment protections. You may not like it; but the analogy is apt. Both strategies have us headed over a cliff. Twenty-plus years of aggressively deregulating the financial industry and the culture of consumerism, together, have led the world into an economic...

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly. - President Jimmy Carter’s speech to Congress in 1977. Four years earlier, the Middle Eastern members of OPEC had imposed a strict oil embargo...