When grocery prices surged across the United States during 2021 and 2022, most consumers blamed inflation. Rising fuel costs, supply-chain disruptions, labor shortages, and broader economic pressures appeared to offer a straightforward explanation for higher food bills. A newly settled antitrust case involving Agri Stats, Inc., however, has renewed a more complex debate among economists...
Introduction Hiring of newly minted Master of Business Administration graduates has softened for a third consecutive year, with placement rates at several of the most selective U.S. programs falling to their lowest levels in more than a decade. The shift has reopened a long-running debate over the value of the degree at a time when...
Picture a trench somewhere along the eastern front in Ukraine. It’s dark, it’s cold, and the soldiers in it have done everything right — dug in deep, parked under tree cover, stayed quiet. For most of military history, that would have been enough to stay hidden for a night. Then a faint buzzing drifts in...
New Housing Proposal Would Bring Back Controversial Property Transfer Tool New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly announced housing strategy is reigniting debate over one of the city’s most controversial affordable housing enforcement tools. Unveiled on May 26, the administration’s “Block by Block” housing initiative includes a program known as “Fix the City,” an enforcement...
Many consumers assume that free apps earn revenue through advertising. However, some popular mobile applications generate additional income by collecting and sharing user data—including information about driving habits. Privacy advocates, regulators, and consumer protection groups have increasingly raised concerns about how driving behavior data gathered through smartphone apps can ultimately influence auto insurance underwriting decisions....
The global automotive industry is quietly undergoing one of the largest business model transformations in its history. For more than a century, automakers generated revenue primarily through vehicle sales and financing. Today, companies including General Motors, Ford, Stellantis and Tesla are pursuing a different objective: turning every connected vehicle into a recurring revenue platform. According...
Introduction A license plate is, by itself, an anonymous string of seven or eight characters. The privacy implications of the surveillance economy documented in Parts 1 and 2 of this series depend entirely on the ability of commercial actors to convert that string into a named individual — with an address, a phone number, a...
Introduction State motor vehicle agencies collected at least $282 million selling driver data to private companies in fiscal year 2024, as Part 1 of this series reported. That figure, however, represents only the regulated portion of the U.S. license plate data economy. A parallel and substantially larger ecosystem of private surveillance networks, smart-billboard analytics platforms...
Introduction State departments of motor vehicles collected at least $282 million in fiscal year 2024 by selling driver and vehicle records to private companies, according to a public-records investigation by InvestigateTV released in October 2025. The figure reflects responses from only 23 of 50 state agencies, suggesting the national total is materially higher. The disclosures,...
The former Aeromarine landfill in Keyport, New Jersey, is drawing renewed attention as environmental advocates and residents question whether decades of inadequate oversight contributed to ongoing public health concerns. The site has become part of a broader statewide conversation about New Jersey’s aging landfill infrastructure, unfunded remediation obligations, and the long-term environmental risks tied to...