President Joe Biden is marking the anniversary of his first year in office having the second-lowest approval rating of any Oval Office holder since World War II. Many political insiders blame the President’s popularity challenges more on poor messaging and high expectations than lack of legislative accomplishments. Some are arguing he should focus on the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure law now being implemented and its benefits for the average voter. Instead, this White House spent the past two months pressing forward on polarizing legislative proposals doomed to fail.

The Internet is among the best-known government-funded inventions, but it is not the only one used by Americans. MRI machines, fiber optics, LED lights and even those yellow barrels we all see on the highways and freeways across the country were created using federal government grants.

In a rare move, the U.S. Supreme Court scheduled an emergency oral-arguments hearing on Friday, January 7 for the OSHA employer workplace vaccine mandate and the health-care-worker mandate. The Court typically only accepts written briefs in place of oral arguments in emergency cases but accepted to hear from attorneys.

The U.S. Congress is packing it in for 2021 with Democrats having failed to agree among themselves to move President Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had set a Christmas deadline to pass a bill the U.S. House cleared on November 19. 

According to the National Association of Manufacturers, the average manufacturer in the United States pays $19,564 per employee per year to comply with federal government regulations.

As expected, the legal challenges flooded in against OSHA’s Federal Vaccine mandate for employers with 100 or more workers after the Department of Labor published the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) on November 5.

OSHA recently issued an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) mandating that employers with 100 or more workers implement a vaccine mandate and/or testing policy by Jan. 4, 2022, with mask and other requirements for other unvaccinated workers taking effect Dec. 5, 2021.

As we ease back into the increasingly unfriendly skies, Google has launched a tool to help us all – a flight search engine that tells us the emissions per passenger for that trip. Google is catching up to a reality the airlines and their aircraft and parts manufacturers are coming to realize: Just as governments target passenger vehicle emissions, they are increasingly focused on the aviation industry.

While negotiations in Washington, D.C. continue over tax rates, it looks increasingly unlikely Senate Democrats will have the votes to raise the C-Corporation rate from 21% to at least 25%, as planned.

On October 4, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai gave a speech outlining the next steps the U.S. would take on trade policy related to China following an eight-month review.