Tuesday, September 30, 2008

This Weeks Congressional Research Service Reports

Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a research agency of Congress and writes reports at Congress's request. These short reports (usually 10-40 pages long) cover recent topics of concern. This week only brings us CRS reports on economic issues, national security, government employees, and much more. While these reports are in the public domain there is no central database available to the public. To get a copy of a CRS report you can request it from your Senator or Representative. This list is compiled from CRS reports discovered by OpenCRS and Secrecy News:
Interested in historical CRS reports? If you are here at the Boulder campus, check out the LexisNexis Congressional database, which has reports back to 1916.

Not on campus, but still want access to additional reports? The library has a guide linking to various additional sources of CRS reports.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

Lawmakers worked over the weekend and have released a bill on the economic stabilization/bailout/recovery/etc. (pick your preference). Here are some resources to read on the bill:
  • Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 This is it. This is the bill that we have all been waiting to see and read. Remember the first version (see Wednesday's blog post), was only 3 pages, this version is 109.
  • President Bush's statement This is the text/audio/video release of the President's statement on the bill brought forth this morning.
  • Congressional Record Now I am guessing that most of you may not have heard of the Congressional Record, but it is a record of what is said on the House and Senate floor. If you want to see that back and forth discussion on this bill, in public, this is the place to go. It won't have the backroom discussions from this weekend, but I assure you some of the discussion will be repeated on the floor.
  • Wall Street Journal coverage Not everything from the Wall Street Journal is available for free online, but a lot on this topic is and as one of the leading financial newspapers in the US, it is a good place to go.
Still want more? Well, a little research is never amiss, why not check out the library's guides to Business and Economic Information.

GAO Releases this week

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This week they investigated a variety of issues, such as information and nuclear security at Los Alamos, Medicaid and tooth decay in children, the Secure Border Initiative, nuclear smuggling, NATO enlargement, and disaster recovery. If you would like to know more about the GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Related Products
Correspondences
Testimonies
Reissued Products

Friday, September 26, 2008

China's Melamine Scare Spreads to Exported Products

Today BBC News reports that Chinese company Guanshengyuan has stopped domestic sales and exports of its White Rabbit candy, made from milk, because the product has been found to contain the industrial chemical melamine. Thus far four babies have died and more than 53,000 children in China have become ill from drinking melamine-contaminated powdered milk.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has encouraged five countries to recall all milk powder imported from China. WHO's website features a number of resources on the melamine contamination and the chemical's effect on public health. Yesterday WHO released a report on toxicity, safety and risk assessment, possible human exposure, and guidance on food health concern with regard to melamine contamination.

Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a statement on the melamine situation and alerted consumers to seven Mr. Brown coffee and tea products that are being recalled due to possible melamine contamination.

For additional information on food safety in the U.S. and around the world, see our subject guide.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Government Plan on the Economy

Unless you have been hiding under a rock (and I can't blame you if you have), you have probably heard about the government plans to deal with the economic crisis. Today, rather then getting into a debate about is it a good idea or not, I thought I would give everyone a few places to read some of the discussion going on in Congress and in the Executive Branch:
Still need more information on banking issues, check out the library guide.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Congressional Research Service (CRS)

Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a research agency of Congress and writes reports at Congress's request. These short reports (usually 10-40 pages long) cover recent topics of concern. This week only brings us a number of CRS reports on economic policy, foreign policy, ballistic missiles, and much more. While these reports are in the public domain there is no central database available to the public. To get a copy of a CRS report you can request it from your Senator or Representative. This list is compiled from CRS reports discovered by OpenCRS:
Interested in historical CRS reports? If you are here at the Boulder campus, check out the LexisNexis Congressional database, which has reports dating back to 1916.

Not on campus but still want access to additional reports? The library has a guide linking to various additional sources of CRS reports.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Researching the Colorado Ballot Initiatives

The 2008 elections take place in just over six weeks, and individual candidates--particularly the presidential contenders--are at the forefront of everyone's minds. But voters should also be prepared for the issues-based initiatives that will appear on ballots this November. Colorado voters in particular will be presented with a lengthy list of ballot initiatives: 14 amendments and 4 referenda to be exact. How does one find clear, balanced information about each of these many ballot measures, you might ask? The best place to start is with your state government's website.

Coloradans don't have to wait for a copy of the informative Blue Book to arrive in the mailbox--this publication is already available online. The Blue Book, aka State Ballot Information Booklet, contains a summary and analysis of each ballot measure, a brief discussion of the arguments for and against the measure, an estimate of the measure's fiscal impact on the State, and the full text of each amendment or referendum.

For additional information about the initiatives, such as petition approval procedures and links to the Colorado Constitution and statutes that would be affected by the ballot measures, see the Colorado Secretary of State Elections Center. The Colorado State Publications Library also provides some good links to information about issues in Colorado.

If you need additional information about issues on the 2008 Colorado ballot, we provide helpful subject guides to Colorado State Resources and Elections and Voting.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

GAO Releases this week

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This week they investigated a variety of issues, such as digital television transition, electronic waste, Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), and terrorism insurance. If you would like to know more about the GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Correspondences
Testimonies
Presentation By The Acting Comptroller General
  • "The Role of the U.S. Government Accountability Office," by Gene L. Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the United States, before members of Parliament from Afghanistan, Liberia, and Timor-Leste participating in a program sponsored by the House Democracy Assistance Commission. GAO-08-1171CG, September 18, 2008
    http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d081171cg.pdf
Reissued Product
  • Women's Earnings: Federal Agencies Should Better Monitor Their Performance in Enforcing Anti-Discrimination Laws. GAO-08-799, August 11. [Report revised September 12 to add comments by the U.S. Department of Labor.]
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-799
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08799high.pdf

Thursday, September 18, 2008

The Fed Bails Out AIG

Shortly after the U.S. Treasury Department took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (see our September 7 blog post), the Federal Reserve agreed to loan $85 billion to insurance behemoth American International Group (AIG). The buyout, which gives the U.S. government control of AIG, is detailed in the New York Times. You can read the Federal Reserve's justification for the move in its official press release.

For a more critical analysis of the Fed's latest action, check out TV/radio news program Democracy Now's Wednesday broadcast, in which host Amy Goodman discusses the AIG bailout with former investment banker Nomi Prins and University of Missouri Professor Michael Hudson. The interviewees mention that the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (1933) ended the mandatory separation between commercial banking and investment banking in the United States. This 1999 repeal they refer to is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and you can find a U.S. House of Representatives Conference Report about this act via GPO Access.

For additional resources (both governmental and non-governmental), we recommend that you check out our subject guides on Banking, Banks, and Credit Unions, Business and Economic Information, and Debt and Budget Information.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

CRS reports this week

Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a research agency of Congress and writes reports at Congress's request. These short reports (usually 10-40 pages long) cover recent topics of concern. This week only brings us a few CRS reports mainly on foreign policy. While these reports are in the public domain there is no central database available to the public. To get a copy of a CRS report you can request it from your Senator or Representative. This list is compiled from CRS reports discovered by OpenCRS:
Interested in historical CRS reports? If you are here at the Boulder campus, check out the LexisNexis Congressional database, which has reports back to 1916.

Not on campus, but still want access to additional reports? The library has a guide linking to various additional sources of CRS reports.

Monday, September 15, 2008

House Bill Would Amend NIH's Public Access Policy

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Friday that the House of Representatives is considering a bill, the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, that would amend a National Institutes of Health policy requiring all NIH-funded researchers to submit electronic copies of their manuscripts to PubMed Central, a free government database of biomedical and life-sciences journal articles, and to make the material available to the public within 12 months of publication.

You can read a summary of the policy on the National Cancer Institute's website. The House's Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on September 11, 2008, to debate the bill. The committee's website features a video webcast of this hearing.

If you would like to learn more about copyright issues or read already-passed laws concerning copyright, we recommend that you check out our online subject guide on this topic.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

GAO Releases this week

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This week they investigated a variety of issues, such as Operation Iraqi Freedom, aviation security, the highway bridge program, and oil and gas royalties. If you would like to know more about the GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Correspondences
Testimonies
Reissued Product

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Interior Department Inspector General Reveals Ethics Violations in Minerals Management Service

Yesterday the Denver Post reported that Department of Interior workers in Washington and the Denver metropolitan area engaged in illicit sex and drug abuse with oil company employees and accepted thousands of dollars in gifts while managing energy contracts, according to three reports released yesterday by the Dept. of Interior's Inspector General. You can read the Denver Post article here.

According to the reports, employees at the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service Royalty in Kind division violated ethics rules repeatedly from 2002 to 2006. You can find redacted versions of the reports concerning former Lakewood (Colorado) division head Gregory W. Smith, the MMS Oil Marketing Group in Lakewood, Colorado, and Federal Business Solutions Contracts.

You can find out more about the Interior Department's Inspector General by going to his office's website, where you can search for additional reports available online. For more information about what federal inspectors general do, see this government web page devoted to the topic.

If you'd like to do more exploration of government agencies' interactions with oil companies, we recommend that you check out our subject guide on energy.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

OPEC decision to reduce production of oil

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided today that "[s]ince the market is over-supplied, the Conference agreed to abide by September 2007 production allocations (adjusted to include new Members Angola and Ecuador and excluding Indonesia and Iraq), totaling 28.8 mb/d, levels with which Member Countries committed to strictly comply" (from press release on meeting).

This is a possible reduction of 520,000 barrels of oil from the daily supply. This means that the reduction we had seen since last week (see graphs from the Energy Information Administration) may be over.

Want to read more about this? Check out the Washington Post's "OPEC to Pare Back Production by Enforcing Its Own Quotas."

Want more energy information? Check out the library's guide.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Bush Announces Troop Withdrawals from Iraq, Increases in Afghanistan

Today President Bush gave a speech at National Defense University announcing that the U.S. will withdraw 8,000 American troops from Iraq by February 2009. You can read a full transcript of the speech at the White House's website. He also discussed plans to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, explaining that some troops that were to be deployed to Iraq will now be deployed to Afghanistan.

In his speech President Bush discussed how the war has progressed in Iraq. You can read more about stability and security in Iraq by going to the Department of Defense's web page, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq." For more information on military action in Iraq, note that there is an official, multinational website providing specifics about Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If you need more resources about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, see our subject guides on Terrorism Resources (this page contains specific sections focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan) or Military Information Resources and Periodicals. We also offer country pages containing links to government websites for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congressional Research Service Reports this week

Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a research agency of Congress and writes reports at Congress's request. These short reports (usually 10-40 pages long) cover recent topics of concern. This week brings us CRS reports on the Iraq, defense, climate, and much more. While these reports are in the public domain there is no central database available to the public. To get a copy of a CRS report you can request it from your Senator or Representative. This list is compiled from CRS reports discovered by OpenCRS and Secrecy News:
Interested in historical CRS reports? If you are here at the Boulder campus, check out the LexisNexis Congressional database, which has reports back to 1916.

Not on campus, but still want access to additional reports? The library has a guide linking to various additional sources of CRS reports.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the US government

Despite the fact that is a weekend, the government has managed to get a lot done. The US is now putting the companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in "conservatorship." Want to read more about this? The Treasury Department has gathered the links to the government resources in one web page.

Want to read some media reaction? Check out the Washington Post's "U.S. Announces Takeover of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac: Embattled Mortgage Firms in 'Conservatorship'" or Wall Street Journal's "U.S. Outlines Fan-Fred Takeover."

Want more resources? Check out the library guide on Housing and Business and Economic Information.

Friday, September 05, 2008

GAO Releases This Week

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This week they investigated a variety of issues, such as the 2010 Census and Medicare. If you would like to know more about the GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Correspondence