Search query: maryland

Secession, a word common 150 years ago, is once again gaining steam in several states. In the quest for a government that is more representative of the people, groups of different ideologies want to break away from the majority. However, this separatist movement is unlike the days leading up to the Civil War; it is bloodless and involves regions of states separating from the state itself. Rural areas want to disconnect from urban areas; conservative groups want to break away from governments th

Concerns about rising tuition and how students can afford to finance their major investments in post-secondary education are widespread. Solid insights into these questions require accurate and up-to-date information about prices. reports on the prices charged by colleges and universities in 2013-14, how prices have changed over time, and how they vary within and across types of institutions, states, and regions. We also provide information on the net prices that students and families actually p

The history of voting rights in the U.S. has been a long battle of disharmony and disenfranchisement since the country’s formation and although freedom and voting are frequently associated with one another in our current culture, restrictions to true freedom in this regard still remain unsettled, contentious, and often unperceived. While democracy was forming in the colonies, the Old World ideology that it was nothing short of mob rule was held strongly by many prominent colonists, thereby limi

Campaign finance reformers and California based government transparency group Maplight held an AMA on Reddit Wednesday. The two-hour event addressed growing public concern over the high-profile Supreme Court case, McCutcheon v. FEC and the challenges posed by potentially unlimited spending on elections. A common theme from questioners was the contention that the role of money in politics should be removed or diminished. Responding to a question, Trevor Potter (former Chair of the Federal Electi

Tatiana Grozetskaya // Shutterstock A study from the University of Texas-Austin, one of the most comprehensive on methane leakage from shale gas emissions to date, found that 99 percent of the greenhouse gas escaping from wells being prepared for production could be captured by state of the art equipment. The study’s findings were celebrated by environmentalists, but immediately criticized by two Cornell University scientists, Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea, whose 2011 study found fracki

Zack Frank / shutterstock.com New Hampshire proves to be one of the more innovative states in its electoral process. In its House of Representatives, districts are allotted a number of representatives to serve based on their population. Some districts have only one representative, but others have as many as eleven. They are elected through a process of multi-member district voting, where the citizenry casts as many votes as there are seats to be filled instead of voting for each seat separatel

Demand, meet Supply Amidst some disenchantment with both major political parties, the chart above shows, when looking across the 50 states, the share of votes earned by candidates that were not either Democratic or Republican has fallen significantly for U.S. House of Representative elections since 2000. The State Data Lab resource (Votes Cast for House Election – Other), developed by Truth in Accounting, shows that states with relatively high shares of non-major party votes in 2000 also had s

A recent trend in the naming of legislation is to include the purported benefits in the title, hence, the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”—aka Obamacare. Unfortunately, experience has shown that legislation titles tend to be diametrically opposed to reality, as in the “paperwork reduction act”. Consequently, it came as no surprise that Ralph Hudgens, Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner, has asked for a 30 delay in approving plans submitted by seven insurance companies. In his request t

Dear IVN Readers, As the media brings you 24/7 news coverage of a British baby, we are proud to do real investigative reporting on things that matter to the foundation of our democracy and a productive civil discourse. Follow along this week as we cover the Hawaii Democratic Party's attempt to prevent nonaffiliated voters from having the right to participate in the primary elections, or the Republican v. Independent head-to-head match-up in the 52nd district resulting from California's new non

USS Enterprise at Supic Bay // Credit: Dual Freq via Wikimedia Commons The 20th Century began with a rising power in Asia whose nakedly expansionist aspirations and increasing belligerence produced dark clouds over East Asia and winds that reached across the globe. So has the 21st Century. In 1901, Japan was still in the convulsions of the “Meiji Restoration,” by which in the aftermath of Japan being forcibly opened up to the world by the 1853 visit by US Commodore Matthew Perry, this land of