The President of the United States makes an annual salary of $400,000 a year for doing one of the toughest jobs in the world. While the pay may seem relatively pared to CEOs of major corporations, the real payoff for es once they exit the White House. President Obama, for example, has been out of office for exactly 99 days an has already earned at least $800,000—two years worth of a president’s salary—for giving one speech and one interview. Most...

What just happened? Yesterday the governor of Puerto Rico announced the island would seek to deal with its $70 billion debt crisis in federal bankruptcy court, marking the largest municipal “bankruptcy” filing in U.S. history. How did Puerto Rico’s debt crisis happen? During the Spanish-American War in the late 1890s the U.S. military invaded the Spanish-owned island of Puerto Rico. After the war ended, the U.S. retained control, making the islands an unincorporated territory and the residents U.S. citizens. In...

Note: This is post #15 in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Cabinet position:Secretary of Homeland Security Department: Department of Homeland Security Current Secretary:John F. Kelly Succession:The Secretary of Homeland Security is 18th (and last) in the presidential line of succession. Department Mission:“To secure the nation from the many threats we face. This requires the dedication of more than 240,000 employees in jobs that range from...

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, has called for a second national referendum on independence from the UK. Fleeing Westminster is to her Scottish National Party (SNP) as leaving the EU was to UKIP: its passing passion and the party’s raison d’etre. However, should Scotland leave the UK, it could prove troublesome for a nation that is already struggling. Significant obstacles could leave its economy stagnant. Simply put, Scotland is in poor fiscal shape, and leaving the UK could remove...

In a radio address on July 24, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the 100-day session of the 73rd United States Congress between March 9 and June 17, a session thatproduced a record-breaking volume of new laws. Despite the fact that the 100 days referred to a legislative session and not the beginning of a presidency, the term has e a metric for what a new president can plish and how effective they will be during their term. For...

Note: This is post #31 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Trade makes people better off, but how? In this video economist Tyler Cowen discuss the importance of specialization and division of knowledge, and how specialization leads to improvements in knowledge, which then lead to improvements in productivity. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d mend watching them at 1.5 to 2 times the speed. You can adjust the speed at which the video...

Inside Gherla Prison by Richard Gould (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) The latest issue of Religion & Liberty is, among other things, a reflection on the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the mitted by Communist regimes. For the cover story, Religion & Liberty executive editor, John Couretas, interviews Mihail Neamţu, a leading conservative in Romania. They discuss the Russian Revolution and current protests against corruption going on in Romania. A similar topic appears in Rev. Anthony Perkins’ review of the...

Europe mitting “suicide” due in large part to its rejection of its own values, according to an op-ed just published in the UK. Author Douglas Murray is an atheist and no social issues warrior. Nonetheless, he highlights the role that encroaching secularism, relativism, and cultural self-doubt play in the approaching European endgame: Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument. Those in power seem persuaded that it would...

“Jesus not only sought to bring a spiritual salvation,” says Abraham Kuyper in this week’s Acton Commentary, “but also countered human misery and did so up until the very end.” He fed the thousands and healed the sick; the blind could see, the mute could speak, and the dead were raised. This was in no way just a peripheral matter for him, as is proved in that, when John the Baptist investigated his messiahship, Jesus did not tell his messengers...

Yesterday the Trump administration released its tax-reform plan, which the White House is calling the “biggest individual and business tax cut in American history.” Here is what you should know about the plan: What are the goals of the tax reform plan: The stated goals are to: • Grow the economy and create millions of jobs • Simplify our burdensome tax code • Provide tax relief to American families—especially e families • Lower the business tax rate from one of...