The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) isn't just about hard hats and safer machinery anymore. The federal government agency charged with regulating workplace conditions has formed an "alliance" with a "national social justice advocacy organization for transgender people"…
Since Politico, a politics-focused website and newspaper, launched its subscription-based news service Politico Pro in 2011, government agencies have increasingly turned to the service to keep abreast of the latest developments in their spheres of policy. Government records show fiscal year 2011…
We received this email from a 40-year veteran of the federal workforce, who raises serious questions about Hillary Clinton and her emails:
As Justin Sink of Government Executive reports:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is working on a solution to a problem faced by a growing number of Americans as the population ages and relies more on prescription drugs: "What is this pill?" Much in the way a Google image search looks for similar images in Google's vast caches, the…
The White House says President Obama signed a presidential memo "directing agencies to allow federal workers to take six weeks of advanced paid sick leave to care for a new child, ill family members, and for other sick leave-eligible uses."
When Congress headed home for the year last week without renewing the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) many in the real estate, tourism, and insurance business predicted disaster. The Coalition to Insure Against Terrorism—a broad grouping representing everyone from real estate investors to…
When President Obama finally offers his executive action on illegal immigration, the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is going to get a bit busier.
The federal government is taking New York City to court. "Manhattan U.S. Attorney Files Healthcare Fraud Lawsuit Against Computer Sciences Corp. And The City Of New York For Orchestrating A Multimillion-Dollar Medicaid Billing Fraud Scheme," reads a headline from the Justice Department's press…
The American public often rails about bureaucracy. It is not difficult to fathom why. Who amongst us has not fumed while standing in a long line at an understaffed post office? And how many of us have thrown up our hands in frustration at the complexity of income tax instructions and outsourced the…
Eric Katz of Government Executive writes that Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., has:
The "busiest land port of entry in the Western Hemisphere" is getting an upgrade, and according to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), about a half a million dollars worth of new artwork will be part of the package. The San Ysidro Land Port of Entry, the border crossing facility for the…
Just a day after House Republicans introduced legislation to roll back some Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations on school meal programs, the USDA announced some flexibility would be granted to some schools for the coming school year when implementing the new policies:
At first glance, a page on the Health and Human Services (HHS) website seems to be giving that agency's official advice on the "The Health Benefits of Nootropics," a classification of purportedly memory-enhancing drugs. The page is found on the website's subdomain of the Assistant Secretary for…
At least three marketers of health-related or insurance products and services have taken advantage of the "data-set" feature at Healthcare.gov to give themselves a virtual presence on the federal government's Obamacare site. The ability to use a web address containing "healthcare.gov" may lend…
The federal government is closed, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Managment:
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that Accenture Federal Services would be taking over for CGI Federal as the main contractor for Healthcare.gov. CMS documents reveal that without the new estimated $91.1 million contract, the government could end up making…
Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? …
Julian Hattem and Ben Goad of the Hill report that:
The government re-opened, and there was no default. No surprise. This was the 18th shutdown since 1976, when the current budget procedure was established. The five shutdowns under Jimmy Carter were mostly over major policy issues such as abortion (he was for it) and the construction of a…
The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with James C. Capretta on fallout from the government shutdown and the failure called Obamacare:
The company responsible for the digital disaster of Obamacare is a Canadian outfit called CGI which, as Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post explains:
Vice President Joe Biden offered returning federal workers handshakes, hugs, and kisses -- and muffins, too -- this morning at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The siege has been lifted. The 16-day ordeal is ended. Life, once again, is good. As Alexander Bolton and Pete Kasperowicz of The Hill report:
At sea aboard the ms Noordam, off the coast of Greece
A memo from the Office of Management and Budget director Sylvia M. Burwell on re-opening government:
President Obama signed the "deal" to re-open Congress and increase the debt limit, according to the White House. The press secretary sent this out late last night:
Even before the House vote on the so-called congressional deal to re-open the federal government and increase the debt limit, President Obama began to pivot to immigration:
Here's the so-called deal that Congress is expected to approve tonight:
National Park Service director Jarvis said he discussed closing the open-air monuments and memorials with the White House, as well as the secretary of the Interior Department:
President Obama understands "the frustrations of the American people" more than anybody else. At least, that's what he told WABC in an interview:
In the White House garden, tomatoes are rotting on the vine and the weed growth is unchecked. Reuters is reporting that:
The findings of the newly released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll are simply brutal for congressional Republicans. Not only are they getting the lion's share of the blame for the government shutdown, but President Obama's numbers have actually improved. Worse, Obamacare's numbers are improving,…
Headline from the Hill:
Since first writing about the conduct of the National Park Service yesterday, events have accelerated somewhat.
In a letter sent yesterday to Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, 94 members of Congress question the federal government's decision to close open-air memorials during the federal government shutdown.
Northern New England is in its glory; now and for the next week or so. The leaves are nearing peak color and until yesterday, there has been a big high pressure zone parked over the area so the weather has been what would once have been described as "heavenly." It has been raining now but in a few…
Another open-air memorial in the Washington area is closed and barricaded off: the Iwo Jima Memorial, just across the bridge from D.C. in Rosslyn, Virginia. A source sends along this picture of the barricade set-up at the memorial, which is also called the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial:
In an attempt to dramatize the effects of the federal government shutdown, Washington state Democrats may have revealed more about their state and about the state of the economy under President Obama than they intended. The Advance, official blog of the Washington state house Democrats, posted the…
Sometimes timing is everything. Yesterday was day one of the federal government shutdown, and one of the biggest stories of the day was the barricading of the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., nearly preventing a group of 92 veterans from Mississippi who had been flown in on an Honor…
The federal government is shutdown. That means only federal government employees that are deemed "essential" are going in to work.
At least four National Park Service workers are erecting a barricade around the World War II memorial, John McCormack reports:
Not all parks are closed during the present unpleasantness. Recreational Resource Management is announcing on its website that:
Harry Reid, speaking earlier today on the Senate floor about the government shutdown:
Michelle Obama will not be tweeting as frequently, due to the federal government shutdown. The announcement was made today on ... the first lady's Twitter account.
The federal government has shutdown. So what does this mean for the White House? Vice President Joe Biden keeps 12 staffers and President Barack Obama keeps 129.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports today that sales of fossil fuels produced on federal and Indian land continue to decline, dropping 4 percent in fiscal year 2012. The slide continues a decade-long trend that accelerated in 2010, as the chart accompanying the report shows:
IRS chief Daniel Werfel says he wants to keep his health care plan, not switch to Obamacare:
They do, however, receive subsidies from the Department of Agriculture according to a recent GAO investigation that discovered that, as Mark Micheli at Government Executive writes:
Detroit mayor Dave Bing tells ABC's George Stephanopoulos that there's no bailout "yet":
Furloughed federal employees who like to play golf are in luck. There's a deal waiting for them, courtesy of the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority.
First Lady Michelle Obama praised federal workers in remarks today, calling them an "invisible face." Her remarks were delivered at the Department of Interior.
In what may be just an eerie coincidence, the Defense Department posted a contract award notice today to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts for research into "Methods for Explosive Detection at Standoff." Of particular concern are Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that have become a…
The federal government will now allow companies that sell "nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products," such as Nicorette, not to put warning labels on their merchandise, the Food and Drug Administration announced. The change, the FDA now admits, is because the warnings, which were mandated for…
The federal government in the Washington, D.C. area is closed today. Here's the announcement, by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management:
Federal welfare spending will skyrocket 80 percent over the next decade, according to new analysis by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee. Here's a chart, provided by the committee, detailing the growth in spending:
President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden.
According to bestplacestowork.org, the worst large federal agency to work at is the Department of Homeland Security. The second worst large federal agency to work at is the Department of Veteran Affairs, while the Department of Labor is the third worst.
The federal government is now spending $110 billion on "all food assistance" per year, according to new analysis by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee. The federal dollars spent on these programs has risen by nearly $70 billion in just ten years.
It has been a little more than a month since Hurricane Sandy made landfall and pounded the Atlantic shores of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. Within hours, government big dogs, the president included, were on the scene promising speedy and comprehensive relief. When they left to attend to…
The NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids filed this report on the stimulus-receiving battery company, LG Chem:
A new report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service finds that the largest federal budget item is spending on welfare programs. To support the 83 programs that CRS identified as welfare programs, the federal government spends $745.84 billion.
The federal government has been making the case that, with food stamps, "everyone wins," according to literature meant to promote the federal social welfare program. The argument is that accepting food stamp benefits helps to promote economic growth for the communities hosting those recipients.
President Obama's Department of Justice recently released new regulations to prevent prison rape. "Sexual violence, against any victim, is an assault on human dignity and an affront to American values," Obama said when announcing the new initiative. "The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA)…
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent claims to debunk the conservative argument against raising taxes on wealthier Americans, by drawing attention to “how much the share of their own income they are paying in taxes” and observing how much that share “has shrunk” (italics in original). But the facts…
Princeton University professor Alan Krueger, recently named by President Obama to be the new chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, is perhaps best known for his claim that raising minimum wage will not reduce employment. But Krueger has had a long, varied career as a labor economist—and a…
President Obama’s controversial plan for a high-speed rail system took a hit Tuesday as the top California member of Congress, House majority whip Kevin McCarthy, voiced strong opposition to building a new rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The Obama administration today announced a two-year pay freeze for all federal workers (excluding military). Phil Klein puts the policy into perspective:
Amid the controversy arising from the federal district court's decision to strike down portions of Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, one must keep in mind the fact that the case is at its most preliminary stage. Judge Bolton, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, did not issue a final…