How Much Tuition-Free Public College Would Cost The Government

The Article: Here’s Exactly How Much the Government Would Have to Spend to Make Public College Tuition-Free by Jordan Weissmann in The Atlantic.

The Text: A mere $62.6 billion dollars!

According to new Department of Education data, that’s how much tuition public colleges collected from undergraduates in 2012 across the entire United States. And I’m not being facetious with the word mere, either. The New America Foundation says that the federal government spent a whole $69 billion in 2013 on its hodgepodge of financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants for low-income students, tax breaks, work study funding. And that doesn’t even include loans.

If we were we scrapping our current system and starting from scratch, Washington could make public college tuition free with the money it sets aside its scattershot attempts to make college affordable today.

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Koch Brothers Are Killing Solar Energy

What do you do when renewable energy costs are falling and state governments are mulling over mandating them? You lobby for fines for penny-pinching, environmentally-savvy consumers who are trying to make that switch. And guess what, this is hardly the free market for which they supposedly advocate.

The Christian Persecution Myth

Everyone knows it’s not Christians who are allowed to be persecuted; it’s everyone else.

Why Public Transit Is Always Underfunded

The Article: Public Transit Is Underfunded Because the Wealthy Don’t Rely on It by Keith Barry in Wired.

The Text: Another report has come out in support of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), an innovative way to provide public transit at a low cost with dedicated bus lanes, stops, and schedules.

The study (PDF), from pro-transit group Embarq, found that BRT drastically reduced commute times, improved air quality, and cut road fatalities in congested cities like Bogota, Istanbul, Johannesburg, and Mexico City. And we already know that BRT is one of the most cost-effective public transit investments a municipality can make.

The catch? In most cities examined in the report, those benefits only extend to low- and middle-class residents. (In Johannesburg, the poorest residents did not use BRT).

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The Ambien Effect

Sleepiness. Memory loss. A Freight-train libido if you’re Tiger Woods. Ambien has a wealth of well-known effects, but what many pill poppers don’t realize is that it seems to have the power to normalize functions within certain types of damaged neurons.