The House Rules Package, H. Res. 5, which passed in the House Jan. 3, included a provision to permit the 10:00 a.m. reading Tuesday morning at the recommendation of the new House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.
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All posts for the day January 14th, 2013
Pew: 85% of Americans, including about equal numbers of Dems/GOP, back universal background checks on gun buyers including private sales
The layoffs came swiftly at JPMorgan Chase and Co. last week following the announcement that a much-maligned program meant to identify and compensate borrowers who were hurt by fraudulent foreclosures was being shut down.
But the heads rolling were not those belonging to the bank executives, corporation counselors or operations managers who helped run the program into the ground. Instead, according to an announcement posted to the New York State Department of Labor website, the bank began firing 529 of the employees who had been poring over individual foreclosure files from within a suite in downtown Brooklyn. (Huffington Post, 1/14/13)
When 20 children and 6 adults were gunned down in Sandy Hook Elementary School exactly one month ago today, the National Rifle Association rushed to blame video games, not guns, for inspiring such mass murders. But the gun lobby seemingly lost sight of its target in the past weeks, and over the weekend released a […]/p
via One Month After Newtown Shooting, NRA Releases Shooting Game App With Coffin-Shaped Targets.
WASHINGTON–The Treasury Department said Monday that it will have trouble paying nation’s bills by mid-February to early March unless Congress approves a higher borrowing limit for the U.S. government.
The announcement, in a letter sent to Congress from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, said the Treasury will provide a more exact estimate of when the government will exhaust its ability to pay bills as that date draws closer. The government is already taking emergency measures to avoid hitting the $16.4 trillion debt limit. The agency said the date range estimate was necessary because there is a “significant amount of uncertainty” in the beginning of the tax filing season when the amounts and timing of tax payments and refunds are unpredictable. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged Congress to raise the debt limit “well before the risk of default becomes imminent.” (Washington Wire, 1/14/13)
Journalist Ed Bradley spent 26 years on TV as a member of the 60 Minutes team, winning 19 Emmy Awards along the way.
It seems as though everyone—homeowners, corporations, and even state and local governments—is taking advantage of the current historically low interest rates by refinancing their debt. Refinancing allows the borrower to replace his or her existing debt with a new loan that has better terms. It’s a win for individuals and for the nation as a whole, easing the burden of loan repayment and freeing up income for purchases that stimulate the economy. But one group is getting left behind in the refinancing trend: students who take out loans to pay for their higher education.
We need reform that will allow students to take advantage of historically low interest rates by refinancing their student loans in order to ease their debt burdens and stimulate the economy. Click here to read more.
The effort to get records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System can be strengthened in four important ways:
- Better background checks
- Taking military-grade weapons off the streets and out of criminals’ hands
- Better data, better coordination, and better enforcement
- Toughening penalties on states that do not provide records to the database
- Requiring federal agencies to affirm that they have provided required records to the database
- Clarifying the definition of “mentally ill” to ensure that individuals with a serious mental illness are prohibited from purchasing guns
- Requiring background checks for all gun sales
danetteoneal1
Danette O'Neal, PhD 