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In this presidential election year, the public seems particularly focused on the monthly unemployment statistics gathered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). By now I am sure we all know how it works:If the numbers are bad:The Republicans tout the numbers as proof that Obama is destroying the economy, and Democrats make an attempt to […]

As a data consumer and user, I am constantly amazed at the pure volume of data currently available, as well as the many analytical tools that enable us to better understand this data and the technology that makes it all readily accessible and shareable. Data can be just numbers on a page, buried in a […]

Dustin was the first to tell me the story of how online gamers, in just 3 weeks, decoded an AIDS protein that had stumped scientific researchers for 15 years.  The story is that researchers at the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington, in collaboration with the University of Washington Department of Biochemistry, created a […]

Yesterday’s post ended with an allusion to the “Hidden Welfare State” and the world of tax expenditures.  Households across all income categories are the beneficiaries of government assistance programs, and the oft-reported 49 percent who receive some type of government benefit is true only in a narrow sense.  So, in the end, how many of us actually […]

Last week’s release of the now infamous Mother Jones video of Romney’s comments  on the “47 percent” of Americans who don’t pay income taxes has everyone talking about the U.S. tax system.  Despite this election cycle’s relative dearth of substantive, detailed policy discourse, the campaigns and the media have indeed provided the public with a […]

I spend a lot of my time working on projects for the Office of Career and Technical Education at the Virginia Department of Education. CTE receives a significant portion of its funding from the federal government, and like all government funds it comes with strings attached. For the last  25 years one of the most […]

In the wake of a very bad month for religious tolerance in the US  — including the shootings at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin;  the burning of a Mosque in Joplin, Missouri; and the insinuations about Muslim infiltration of government by a handful of Members of Congress, later denounced by some of their counterparts — […]

The big story right now in the money contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is how the Republican challenger has been out-pacing the President in fundraising in recent months.  In July, Obama and the DNC raised a total of $59 million while Romney and the RNC raised $78 million.  But like all statistics (especially […]

In the U.S., the traditional narrative of how to succeed financially in has been to do the following: Go to college and earn a degree Use that degree to get a good job (with health insurance) that pays enough money to cover your basic needs and allows you to build some savings. With your savings, […]