For-Profit colleges only spend 17% of their revenue on instruction. Source: Senate HELP Committee
Statuary Hall - Before and After the #SOTU.
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson delivered the first State of the Union speech to Congress since Thomas Jefferson.
Read full article here.
Eight openly gay members of Congress are on the cover of the National Journal. Host Michel Martin speaks with Representative Mark Takano of California and Adam Kushman, executive editor of the National Journal, about gay power brokers in D.C.
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Wall Street’s Frightening New Plan To Become America’s Landlord
Financial companies seem poised to turn the rental housing market into the same sort of high-risk cash mill that created the last financial collapse.
Important Read of the Day
Proud to be on the cover of this weeks National Journal with my colleagues. They’re right. The country is changing, and so is the capitol.
How rental securitization works. Via Bloomberg
And my letter to the House Financial Services Committee calling for an oversight hearing of this new and risky financial product.
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Members Get Personal on Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest
I’ll Tumblr for You
Freshman Rep. Mark Takano’s Tumblr account has hooked many followers with its “There Will Be Charts” theme at repmarktakano.tumblr.com. The California Democrat plays off the floor charts used by members on the House and Senate floors to express himself.
Takano also cross-cuts different social-media platforms by posting various content from members such as tweets and quotes and using it to engage in conversation. Although staffers contribute greatly to Takano’s Tumblr, the lawmaker approves everything that is posted and often pitches his own ideas.
He also solicits ideas; his Tumblr’s submissions page states, “Original, informative and funny submissions about Politics and/or the Inland Empire will be considered.”
H/T Heritage Foundation for the graphic
Republicans on Snapchat? This is why we can’t have nice things
Scientific American: About that consensus on global warming: 9136 agree, 1 disagrees.
“I just want to highlight this illuminating infographic by James Powell in which, based on more than 2000 peer-reviewed publications, he counts the number of authors from November, 2012 to December, 2013 who explicitly deny global warming (that is, who propose a fundamentally different reason for temperature rise than anthropogenic CO2). The number is exactly one.”
Source: Scientific American
The impact of not extending emergency federal jobless benefits.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary federal agency that funds important biomedical and behavioral research in this country. According to the Congressional Research Service, the NIH’s budget (through grants) supports more than 300,000 non-federal scientists and technical personnel who work at more than 2,500 universities, hospitals, medical schools, and other research institutions around the country and abroad. This includes our very own UC Riverside.
The work of these researchers is critical to our nation’s economy and public health. However, in recent years we’ve slashed the NIH’s budget, which is now 22% lower than it was in 2003 when adjusted for inflation.
H/t Jeffrey Young of the Huffington Post
Source: Congressional Research Service
A mid-term report to my constituents. It has been an honor to serve you this year.
I spoke with SCPR and Kitty Felde about my first year:
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/politics/2014/01/07/15524/freshman-democrat-congressman-mark-takano-gives-hi/
Have you been able to sign up on state or federal exchange, qualified for medicaid or stay on your parents insurance? Reblog and tell me your story. Don’t forget to include where you live.
Are you an Obamacare Success Story?