Six weeks ago, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) was stuck in a political quagmire of trying to be the champion of too many different causes -- all topics important to her, but left her with a message that lacked focus.
Last week, there was considerable partisan fighting in Congress. Driven on by partisan ideologues within its numbers, one party vowed to hold up a key bill until other legislative items were addressed. A senator, who spent months crafting the bipartisan language of this bill, denounced it to the applause of his colleagues. While the party in support of the bill called for their opponents to act in the best interest of the nation, the vote failed on the Senate floor.
Several news sources, including Russia Today and Business Insider pounced on a Danish scientist's report in the British Journal of Medicine this week lambasting the drug industry:
Jeb Bush is expected to announce he is running for president in 2016 -- at some point. Right now, he is reportedly skirting campaign finance laws in order to build a super PAC that is "unprecedented in size and scope," according to Politico.
In 2010, Art Pope, the CEO of Variety Wholesalers – a discount store chain – began pouring money into statewide races in North Carolina. One of his groups, Real Jobs NC, helped pay for attack ads targeting Democrats. According to a lengthy profile of Art Pope by The New Yorker, Pope and allied groups spent $2.2 million on the 2010 legislative election.
Rand Paul was supposed to be a different kind of Republican -- a Republican who championed individual liberty, but who also did not wade into the culture wars or any war for that matter. He was supposed to be the Republican who could pull in younger and perhaps even more liberal voters frustrated by the lack of progress on civil issues.
The term "skills gap" is a common one in discussions about America's economic forecast. The notion is that job opportunities for skilled laborers exist, but that not enough laborers have the correct skills to fill the positions.
Oftentimes, talk of a skills gap crops up in reference to vocational jobs -- those requiring "middle skills," which can range from manufacturing jobs to some health care positions.
When it comes to campaigning in the era of social media, lighting can strike the same place (or more importantly, in the same faux pas manner) an infinite number of times. It seems like a candidate's public relations staff can put out an unlimited amount of "political" sounding rhetoric that is in reality only 140 characters of utter nonsense.
What the pundits and election watchers in traditional media didn't tell you about the 2014 general election was that it was the least competitive election season in 30 years. That's according to a new analysis authored by Professor Carl Klarner and published on Ballotpedia, which examines the number of competitive state legislative elections since 1972. An election that is won by 5 percentage points or less is considered competitive by their analysis.