Last year, a hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) chemical fluid disclosure “model bill” was passed by both the Council of State Governments (CSG) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It proceeded to pass in multiple states across the country soon thereafter, but as Bloomberg recently reported, the bill has been an abject failure with regards to “disclosure.”

That was by design, thanks to the bill’s chief author, ExxonMobil.

What I find most ironic about these CEO deficit hawks complaining about the “uncertainty” that is hurting the economy is that they are the ones responsible for helping to create said uncertainty to begin with.

It has been a long road, but the Republican Party’s embrace of the idea of privatizing Medicare via a voucher system is now complete. The GOP will add Paul Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program to their official party platform, based on a draft version likely to be ratified.

Depending on how the Supreme Court rules this month regarding the individual mandate, some of the law’s supporters many soon start looking for a replacement which can serve a similar role in getting more people to buy insurance.

There have been several housing-related reports this week, some better than others, so analysts have been reading the entrails to determine whether the housing market is finally starting to hit bottom and turn around. The answers are mixed — some regions are doing better than others — but we still seem to have a ways to go before the national market starts stops falling and begins to pick up in any meaningful way.

Little Tommy Friedman, aka, WOTD, laments about the decayed state of American infrastructure, announces America needs a renewal and then proposes the man to do it . . . good grief.

The editors at Bloomberg have a good op-ed calling for the federal government to raise the pathetically low minimum wage. It is truly pathetic that a very business friendly, business news company is doing more to actively promote raising the minimum wage than a Democratic President and Congress.

Once again, the economic community is scrambling to find the reasons why they were suprised by the March 2012 jobs report. The monthly report from ADP had private sector jobs at 209K increase for March 2012 which apparently led many economists to predict a similar number for the official report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that was released on Friday.

While wages and benefits for most American are either stagnant or slipping, compensation for corporate executives are rising rapidly, with major increases occurring over the last year. The recovery is not helping different major income groups equally.

I found the Bloomberg editorial response to Greg Smith’s resignation letter from Goldman Sachs to be so terrible that ironically I think it is a more damning criticism of the current destructive culture on Wall Street than Smith’s original piece. The editors at Bloomberg basically try to paint Smith as naive and stupid,