As COVID-19 tightened its deadly grip on our country this past year, Americans also suffered an increase in violent crime. One study documented a 30% rise in homicides, an unprecedented single-year jump. Los Angeles was not spared, logging more than 300 killings for the first time since 2009.

One of the most disturbing trends in recent economic thought is the view that green energy should be viewed as a source of good jobs. Such attitudes are bad for our polity and for our economy.

President Joe Biden’s recently announced infrastructure plan calls for the federal government to invest $40 billion in repairing America’s public housing stock, a move that could open a new chapter in the nation’s fraught relationship with public housing.

It’s plain that the federal gas tax is past its sell-by date. Originally introduced as a fair way for automobile drivers to pay for the upkeep of the roads they use, it has become less fair as rich people buy hybrid and electric vehicles. Instead of bailouts, the gas tax needs replacing.

Moving away from a gas tax as we move to electric cars is a commonsense measure that can have large environmental benefits. It is just a matter of adjusting to technology. If we had relied on a tax on hay to fund road maintenance in the days of horse-drawn carriages, we obviously would need to make a change as we moved to gas-powered cars. It is the same now as we move away from gas to electric vehicles.

As President Joe Biden gears up to sell his new infrastructure plan, Democrats are finally calling out Republican hypocrisy on government spending. The GOP, they note, supported Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — which greatly expanded the national debt — but now refuse to back his stimulus bills.

Our hearts sank on word Tuesday that officials at the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, zealously guarding their reputations as the most careful and protective regulatory agencies in the world, were recommending a pause in the safe, easy-to-store, proven-to-be-effective, one-dose Johnson &Johnson vaccine, after doctors recorded six, count ‘em, instances of people developing blood clots after getting the shot.

Brace yourself — there’s another surge coming. But this one isn’t COVID-19. It’s kittens.

President Joe Biden announced a slate of actions Thursday aimed at fulfilling his campaign promise to combat the proliferation of firearms and gun violence that kill some 40,000 people a year in this country. But the moves, while necessary and welcome, also spotlight how few options a president has for addressing an issue that’s critical to public safety and public health.

President Joe Biden’s massive American Jobs Plan is likely to come in two parts: a traditional transportation package as well as a domestic package that includes, among other priorities, universal prekindergarten.

It is understandable: the desire to embrace an elderly loved one, to shed a mask and smile brightly at the counter clerk, to reunite with a group of friends over a bottle of wine and a gab session. But, this is not the time.

The “For the People Act” currently being proposed by House Democrats would transform the way the U.S. runs federal elections. Known as HR 1, the bill would make it substantially easier to vote. It would also counteract restrictive legislation enacted by Republican state legislatures in recent years.

Speaking about his ambitious infrastructure plans in a press conference, President Joe Biden recently stated, “One in five miles of our highways and major roads are in poor condition,” “More than one third of our bridges” need repair, and “we rank 13th globally in infrastructure.” These statements probably don’t sound surprising. Americans seem to believe that our infrastructure is, as some people say, “crumbling.”

After a 10-year hiatus, earmarks are coming back to the U.S. Congress. Democrats and Republicans alike repudiated the practice of letting congressmen direct federal spending to specific projects and enterprises around the start of President Barack Obama’s administration. Now both parties have decided to revive it, with reforms.

As more Americans roll up their sleeves for a potentially life-saving vaccination, we are called by moral imperative and social justice concern to reflect on the reality that countries without the Western world’s economic capital are being left behind.

President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan has a lot for the tech industry to like.

Last year, while a global pandemic and the accompanying economic uncertainty ravaged the country, political corruption was ranked the second-most important issue among voters. This wasn’t an anomaly; the American public has ranked “political corruption” and “corrupt government officials” as one of their leading fears for the past five years.

There is a natural human instinct to declare victory before it is actually achieved. From the Chicago Tribune’s infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline to wide receiver DeSean Jackson spiking the football before he reached the end zone that cost the Philadelphia Eagles a touchdown some years back, people under stress can make bad choices. Sometimes, the impact is merely comical as with a football game or instant collector’s item newspaper. But then there are times when such pronouncements can have deadly consequences.

A Ferrari is surely a wonderful sports car, but let’s be honest: Most of us couldn’t afford the day-to-day maintenance, let alone the sticker price, and these beautiful creatures are hard to drive on America’s pothole-plagued streets, and a massive pain in the butt to repair when they break down. So you can imagine the raised eyebrows earlier this year when a top U.S. Air Force general compared the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jet — decades and hundreds of billions of dollars into a lifetime that will cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion — to that Italian dream machine.

The United States is making and distributing COVID-19 vaccines so fast that production will soon outstrip demand, leading officials to ask: What should we do with the extra doses? Most answers have focused on the home front: Dozens of states, including California, are rapidly opening vaccination eligibility to all adults, and President Joe Biden has doubled the speed of his initial rollout calendar, now calling for 200 million Americans to be vaccinated by the end of April.