On Jan. 25, Cayuga Medical Center paid the federal government a $3.5 million settlement after the hospital was cited for six infractions of physician recruitment and patient referral regulations. 

The Occupy movement at Cornell and across the country may still be disorganized and lack a defined goal, but it has brought a number of important issues into the political discourse of the country and the campus.

The lecture was part of a series of lectures held by the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Although most speakers are Cornell faculty, Ott came to Cornell after Virginia Winkler ’14, read Ott’s book, Not One Drop, and sent Ott an email. After reading the e-mail and learning Winkler was a student at Cornell, Ott requested to come to Cornell to give the lecture.

 Prof. Suzanne Mettler's paper defines government policies that are not visible to ordinary citizens as the “submerged state.” 

The refrain often thrown around now is that the Obama administration is unfriendly towards the business community.  That this complaint may be tiring to some does not make it untrue.  In September the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is one of those charged with implementing healthcare reform, put insurance companies on notice for,

People may appreciate the Golden Globes, Grammys and Oscars, but few outside the research world may pay attention when scientists receive awards.

With the election of Scott Brown to Congress, meaningful healthcare reform seems a lot less likely than it did a few months ago. The issue is so divisive that without a filibuster-proof super majority in the Senate, most political commentators just don’t think reform is possible at all. Yet, beneath the intractable debate between the parties over things like single-payer systems, public options and end-of-life counseling, there is actually a lot of common ground.

For example, not many in Washington would tell you that insurance companies should be able to deny coverage for preexisting conditions. Furthermore, all would agree that minimizing the costs of administering any sort of reform measure must be a priority given the already out of control national debt. There are also real implementation issues, as well as federalism and states-rights concerns associated with a large, national health insurance program.

The compelling thing about all this is that it is quite possible — with the closing of a minor loophole — to achieve real progress on many of the issues which Republicans and Democrats share common ground on.

Last week I wrote about how Senator Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) wanted funding for political science research to be removed from the National Science Foundation. His defining its funding with as a waterboarding (fiscally speaking) of future generations was certainly the more striking aspect of his work, but apparently politician science is being given a rather thorough evaluation in terms of viability as a field of study. According to the New York Times , however, even supporters of political science acknowledge that its viability--while undeniable--can be somewhat vague.

On Tuesday, the Senate debated an amendment put forth by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). Coburn's Amendement proposed a cut-off of funding for the National Science Foundation's political-science program.