It now costs $600 to become a U.S. citizen.  The new fee is nearly double the old one, and fees have increased by nearly 100% for other common procedures such as petitioning for a relative to come to the United States, and by 300% for resident aliens (green card holders) to move to citizenship.   How far can this fee-for-services model go when we are welcoming new citizens into our national community?  (more…)

Americans move a lot.  And when they move, they often hire movers.  Moving companies have become notorious for tricks with pricing, not showing up at the prescribed time, and even holding household goods in their trucks for weeks during payment disputes with families.  As Susan Stellin reports in the New York Times, the federal government has an organization dedicated to protecting the interests of people moving across town or across the country.  It’s called the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration,  a part of the Department of Transportation.  While their primary focus is on large vehicle safety standards, they also offer a website for people planning a move that allows you to check the record of a moving company.  The website is protectyourmove.gov.  For Susan Stellin’s report on the hazards of moving, click here.

If the public isn’t committed to environmental change, it won’t happen.  The gradual decline of the EPA Superfund program shows that when public attention runs out, the money runs out, the work stops, and people’s health begins to suffer.  (more…)

With only 7000 members and the chance to serve all over the world, the Foreign Service has long been among government’s most prestigious career options.  Now the State Department is accelerating its recruiting and looking for more officers with foreign language fluency, particularly in Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese.   See Stephen Barr’s story from the Washington Post here.

The Wall Street Journal’s Damian Pallet reports that the Justice Department is investigating whether African-Americans and Hispanics have been unfairly subjected to higher mortgage interest rates.  See the full story here.

Americans are used to the economy being strong.  The 1990s were boom years, and even after the Internet bubble popped, the recovery came relatively soon and we didn’t have to kick one of our strongest habits – borrowing.  As Tomoeh Murakami Tse and Dina ElBoghdady write in the Washington Post, it could be the end of easy money.  (See their article here).  What are the short-term consequences of an economic collapse?  The political ramifications if the downturn comes around November 2008 – or just after that?  Earlier recessions and periods of high inflation – in the early and late 1970s, for example – changed the way America viewed itself and the world.  Will a downturn now change Americans’ economic outlook over the long term? 

Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, sees America’s corporate tax system as a drag on the U.S. economy, but "corporate lobbyists are not expecting him to do anything about it," Edmund Andrews writes in the New York Times.  See article here.

Excellent reporting helps the public understand where the money goes in government. In the case of the president’s helicopters, it appears there is nowhere to go but up. Jonathan Karp and Scot Paltrow of the Wall Street Journal raise issues (see their article here) about Marine One, the presidential helicopter, that should concern taxpayers, journalists, and public servants. The Navy is ordering twenty-three of these aircraft from Lockheed. Last time I checked we had only one president (two if you count Cheney).  (more…)

David Carr of the Times writes about the gradual demise of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the real difficulty of getting facts from our government, in large part because of “agencies that flout the law through recalcitrance or ineptitude.”  See Carr’s commentary here.

As television broadcasters turn to digital signals, broadcast spectrum is opening up and the FCC is getting ready to auction access to that spectrum to the highest bidder for use in wireless services.  The question is, who can use the spectrum?  Will only certain companies and their wireless devices have access, restricting consumer choice?  Google and other companies are pushing for broader use of the newly-available spectrum.  Corey Boles and Kevin Delaney of the Wall Street Journal report here.