Government in Action: Eradicating Polio

In the early part of the 20th century, polio ravaged America. Caused by a communicable virus, polio can devastate the central nervous system and lead to paralysis that makes breathing and walking difficult. Many young victims spent long periods of time encased in metal tubes, known as iron lungs, which helped them to breathe. Others were consigned to leg braces to help them walk. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was America’s most famous polio patient.

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Extending Emergency Unemployment: Senate Finally Expected to Vote to Extend Benefits -- and Rush through Corporate Tax Cuts

This is the tale of two pieces of legislation, one a bill to extend emergency long-term unemployment benefits for 2.3 million Americans, the other to renew 55 tax breaks, mostly for corporations.

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Emergency Unemployment Benefits: Time to Petition the Government

Readers of the Center for Effective Government’s blogs will know that in the past two weeks, a significant and wonderful community of people has been communicating through the comments section of our site. We hope you all saw Jessica Schieder’s recent post announcing a new Google group for those of you that want to carry on the discussion.

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Reimagining Government: Protecting Homeless Citizens from Severe Weather

During the recent bitter cold snap that gripped much of the country, civic leaders in Washington D.C.'s Department of Human Services extended the hours at existing homeless shelters, opened additional warming stations, and then got creative. The department partnered with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to borrow Metro buses to use as mobile warming shelters.

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Boeing CEO Made More than President and 132 Other Top Federal Officials COMBINED

Last week, we wrote a blog post highlighting the fact that last year, Boeing paid no federal corporate income taxes despite benefiting from more than $20 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts.  In the post, we mentioned that Boeing CEO W. James McNerney, Jr. took home $27,484,138 in pay in 2012, the most recent year for which pay data was available.

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Environmental Disasters, Tax Avoidance, and Public Safety

On Jan. 9, 300,000 residents of the Charleston, West Virginia metro area awoke to news that their drinking water had been contaminated when 10,000 gallons of toxic 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) spilled from the storage tanks of Freedom Industries into the Elk River. The toxicity of MCHM, an additive that helps remove impurities from coal, has not been well studied but is known to cause dizziness, vomiting, and rashes, among other things.

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Boeing, Second Largest Federal Contractor, Pays No Federal Income Tax in 2013

In its just-released annual report, Boeing Company reported that it claimed $82 million in federal tax refunds, despite reporting $5.9 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits last year. This represents an effective tax rate of -1.4 percent. Boeing paid just $11 million in state income taxes, an effective state tax rate of just 0.2 percent. The disclosures were made in Boeing’s Form 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last Friday.

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Anti-Government Koch Donor Landed More Than $100 Million in Federal Contracts

Richard “Dick” Haworth is a frequent guest at the semi-annual retreats hosted by Charles and David Koch honoring those who have given more than a million dollars to conservative causes. The Koch brothers’ political machine has been marshalling “dark money” used to lead the charge to shrink the size of government, to roll back taxes, to cut regulations, and to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

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No Shared Sacrifice: CEO Contractor Retirement Packages Soar While Federal Employees Asked to Pay More

The budget deal announced last evening by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) would require federal workers to pay more of their salary towards their federal pension benefits and reduce military pensions. But the deal targets the wrong crowd.

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House: Let’s Talk About Everything but Revenue

The House is expected to vote – perhaps as early as this afternoon – on the Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth Working Group Act of 2013 (H.R.3273), a bill that would establish a committee of ten House members and ten Senate members charged with making recommendations to resolve the current stalemate over the government shutdown and looming debt ceiling crisis.

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