Looming sequester cuts pose grim challenges for city officials
The city of Berkeley is preparing for significant reductions in funding for social services as a result of cuts related to the federal sequester.
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Tag Archives: Congress
The cost of college must decrease
Affordable higher education is essential to a strong middle class
Editor’s Note: This is a general op-ed sent from the White House to address a college audience. In my State of the Union address, I laid out ways Democrats and Republicans can work together to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth — a rising, thriving middle class. We
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Second chances for the second-rate
The Critic Who Counts
Here’s to second chances, I guess. Congressional approval ratings reached record lows this year, according to a September Gallup poll. Widespread ambivalence toward President Barack Obama’s first term in office dominated American political discussion from 2009 until the 2012 elections, affirmed by job approval ratings that hung around 48 to
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Fall from grace
HIGHER EDUCATION: The federal government’s removal of the six-month interest grace period for student loans is detrimental and far-reaching.
Students have good news and bad news. Let’s start with the good news. On June 29, Congress reached an agreement to keep student loan interest rates at 3.4 percent, two days before they were scheduled to double. Then there’s the bad news. The federal government is removing the six-month interest grace period for student loans, undergraduate and graduate, and will no longer cover interest on graduate student loans.
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Immigration policy’s reasoning, approach are problematic
Obama’s announcement has left members of the Latino community celebrating around the country and the GOP furiously reacting to his decision. Putting the public response aside, the impact of the policy change may not be quite positive as some may think.
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Obama, students push Congress to prevent student loan interest rate increase
President Barack Obama and college students around the country continue to push for congressional action to stop the doubling of student loan interest rates.
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Dream on
NATIONAL AFFAIRS: We are happy with President Barack Obama’s new immigration policy and hope it leads to the passage of the federal DREAM Act.
We applaud President Barack Obama’s move to stop deporting young immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. It does not give immigrants amnesty or a pathway to citizenship. However, the president’s action is a momentous step in the right direction.
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Letters: June 4 – June 10
Arguments against Proposition 28 make fallacious claims This letter is in response to the editorial “On good terms,” originally posted June 4, 2012. There are many sound arguments to be made against term limits, but allowing legislators to “worry less about reelection” is not one of them. It is one
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Giving up the ghost
NATIONAL ISSUES: Conservative politicans need to stop using Obama’s birth control mandate to score quick points this election season.
Political arguments often blur perceptions between right and wrong. In allowing religiously-affiliated institutions to shift the cost of birth control to the health insurance companies they contract, President Barack Obama fulfilled a moral obligation to provide uniform healthcare to all Americans and a political obligation to compromise with respectful dissenters.
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Gabrielle Giffords unifies the House … temporarily
