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Jan 2005... On Labor Day, he was a favorite to be Treasury Secretary should John Kerry win the White House. At yearend, he had left under a cloud. The charmed career of Franklin D. Raines -- a poor kid from Seattle who climbed through Harvard and a Rhodes Scholarship to become White House budget director and CEO of Fannie Mae (FNM ) -- crashed to a halt on Dec. 21. That was six days after the Securities & Exchange Commission's top accountant declared that mortgage giant Fannie misstated earnings for 3 1/2 years, leading to an estimated $9 billion restatement...

Death toll up to 17,400; overdue report describes PETA's deadliest year ever WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An official report from People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), submitted nine months after a Virginia government agency's deadline, shows that the animal rights group put to death more than 97 percent of the dogs, cats, and other pets it took in for adoption in 2006. During that year, the well-known animal rights group managed to find adoptive homes for just 12 pets. The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is calling on PETA to either end its hypocritical angel-of-death program,...

The Education Intelligence Agency is proud to present the 2005 Public Education Quotes of the Year, in countdown order. Enjoy! 10. "After all these years, I'm sorry to say my recommendation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline." -- Roy F. Baumeister, professor in the department of psychology at Florida State University. (January 25 Los Angeles Times) 9. "When the students don't learn, the school must change." -- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, addressing the National Governors Association. (February 27 Los Angeles Times) 8. "If the United States is to preserve our system of free public...

WASHINGTON: The US Army said 83 soldiers committed suicide last year, more than a quarter of them while deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Ten soldiers took their own life in the first three months of this year, the army said. With 83 deaths in 2005, the suicide rate for active duty soldiers was 1.29 per 10,000 persons, up from 1.10 per 10,000 the year before and the 25-year average of 1.24 per 10,000, the army said. The rate for civilians from the same demographic group was 1.98 per 10,000 persons, the army said. Of last year’s suicides, 25 were by...

Think you pay a lot for gas? Perhaps you'd prefer to live in Venezuela. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Gasoline prices in the United States, which have recently hit record highs, are actually much lower than in many countries. Drivers in some European cities, like Amsterdam and Oslo, are paying nearly 3 times more than those in the U.S. [Snip] Nation City Price in USD Regular/Gallon Netherlands Amsterdam $6.48 Norway Oslo $6.27 Italy Milan $5.96 Denmark Copenhagen $5.93 Belgium Brussels $5.91 Sweden Stockholm $5.80 United Kingdom London $5.79 Germany Frankfurt $5.57 France Paris $5.54 Portugal Lisbon $5.35 Hungary Budapest $4.94 Luxembourg...

Silicon Valley in 2005 continued its steady climb out of the depths of the bust. While the year didn't exactly qualify as a boom, it nonetheless looked pretty good by the numbers. Silicon Valley's 150 largest public companies notched up record profits and record revenues in 2005 for the second straight year, according to the Mercury News' annual SV150 survey. For the first time since 2001, the companies added a significant number of jobs. While much of that hiring was outside the valley, the region also experienced an uptick in employment for the first time in four years, according to...

If you've ever been frustrated after an airline lost your luggage, you're in the good company of millions of others. An estimated 30 million bags were temporarily lost by airlines in 2005, and 200,000 of those bags were never reunited with their owners, according to an industry report released Monday. The report by SITA Inc., a company that provides technology solutions for the air transport industry, also noted that "the problem of mishandled baggage is worsening on both sides of the Atlantic." The 30 million misdirected bags comprised only 1 percent of the 3 billion bags processed last year by...

Despite a flourishing economy American workers are less confident about their financial security than they were two years ago. The U.S. has enjoyed four straight years of economic growth, but most families have lost ground: In 2005, more than 80% of American workers saw their inflation-adjusted wages fall for the second year in a row. While the economy has been growing since 2001, all the benefits of that growth have gone into corporate profits, says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, a Pennsylvania-based consultant firm: “Corporate profits’ share of the national income is at a 60-year high—and that has...

In 1981, as a member of a traveling theater ensemble, I won an Oscar-night betting pool by correctly guessing more Academy Award winners than my fellow actors. The secret of my success: I knew that the winners were determined as much by Hollywood politics as on the merits. Back then, of course, "Hollywood politics" meant who was liked or disliked by his peers, who was the "sentimental favorite," who was "due" for an award, etc. Increasingly, however, the "politics" driving the Oscars -- and Hollywood itself -- is politics pure and simple. I write a few weeks before this year's...

Washington, DC [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) announced that the U.S. ethanol industry set annual production records in 2005, producing just less than 4 billion gallons (3.904 billion gallons) and averaging nearly 255,000 barrels of ethanol production daily, according to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). "These figures represent not only the tremendous growth our industry is experiencing, but also the future growth that will occur," said RFA President Bob Dinneen. "Demand for ethanol will only continue to grow as refiners remove MTBE from the marketplace and more Americans switch to this clean burning, renewable fuel,"...

The International Shark Attack File (ISAF) investigated 105 alleged incidents of shark-human interaction occurring worldwide in 2005. Upon review, 58 of these incidents represented confirmed cases of unprovoked shark attack on humans. Incidents involving sharks and divers in public aquaria or research holding-pens, shark-inflicted scavenge damage to already dead humans (most often drowning victims), attacks on boats, and provoked incidents occurring in or out of the water are not considered unprovoked attacks.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. NTU released its annual rating of Congress today. If you haven’t visited today, make sure to Click Here for the pdf and Here for the Database.

Washington Business Journal - February 16, 2006http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2006/02/13/daily20.html LATEST NEWSBusiness Pulse Survey: Should Metro embrace more advertising? Click here to vote Washington Business Journal - 4:46 PM EST Thursday XM Satellite Radio loses $666.7M in 2005 Ben HammerStaff Reporter XM Satellite Radio reported sales increases and much higher losses for the fourth quarter several days after director Pierce Roberts Jr. resigned and warned of a "crisis." The D.C. company's stock price fell 5 percent, or by $1.27, to close at $23.98 Thursday. The broadcaster generated fourth-quarter sales of $177.1 million, compared with $83.1 million a year earlier and 2005 sales...

NEW YORK - Complaining about the musical guests at Super Bowl halftime shows may be a time-honored tradition, but you've got to hand it to the NFL and ABC this year: When they handed over their precious 12-minute time slot to the Rolling Stones, they were giving the people what they wanted. That's because the Stones, wrinkles and all, were the most popular act in the United States in 2005, at least when it comes to the cash they generate. The band tops Forbes' list of last year's biggest money makers in music, generating some $168 million in record and...

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Under Howard Dean's leadership last year, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) raised about $50 million less than the Republican National Committee (RNC). And the DNC spent every dime (and then some) that it did raise last year. Mr. Dean and the DNC entered the 2006 election year with less than $6 million in cash on hand. Indeed, the DNC had less money in the bank at the beginning of 2006 than it had on Jan. 1, 2005, just several weeks before Mr. Dean arrived. Meanwhile, with $34 million in cash on hand at the beginning of 2006, the RNC had...

U.S. FORECLOSURE MARKET REPORT Nearly 847,000 Properties Enter Foreclosure During The Year; Florida, Colorado and Utah Post Nation’s Highest Foreclosure Rates. Irvine, Calif. – January 23, 2006 – RealtyTrac™ (www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released year-end data from its 2005 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which showed that 846,982 properties nationwide entered some stage of foreclosure in 2005, and a 25 percent increase in the number of new foreclosures from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. RealtyTrac publishes the largest national database of pre-foreclosure and foreclosure properties, with more than 550,000 properties in nearly 2,000 counties...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California, the nation's leading farm state, lost 500 farms in 2005 as agriculture continued to consolidate to bigger operations and urban development consumed more land, says a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While California's closures represented less than 1 percent of the state's remaining 76,500 farms, the number of farms in the state has fallen for seven straight years _ a loss of 10,500 farms _ reported the USDA. California state conservation officials estimate urban growth alone covers 50,000 irrigated acres of farmland yearly. Last year, state farm acreage dropped by 300,000 acres. Nationally, California's...

Among the Intellectualoids It's been years since I've paid attention to Time magazine's choice for Man of the Year or, more recently, Persons of the Year. The whole contest has grown yawningly predictable and far too PC. But at my local news stand recently I was nearly knocked off balance by the absurd contrast of Time's Persons of the Year cover: there, scowling through crimson shades was the super-cool Paul "Bono" Hewson wedged between Bill and Melinda Gates like a big nerd sandwich. I could perhaps understand putting Bono on the cover of Time in 1990 after the release of...