CFMA - Valley of the Sun

You know that song you hear every New Year's Eve? The one about not forgetting old acquaintances. Did you ever wonder what that phrase is in the chorus? Is it: For old ang zine Far hold ang zyne For old aunt Gzyne Farheld ang zyne Farheld ang sign For old ang sign For old angsign Foothold and sign For all the aunts of mine Actually, it's not any of these. On New Year's Eve, the most common song for most English-speaking people to sing is "Auld Lang Syne." Isn't it funny how it's possible to sing and hear a song so many times and have no idea what it means? And wouldn't it be funny if it meant "Big Pink Elephants"? A good sub-question is, what language is it? It turns out that "Auld Lang Syne" is an extremely old Scottish song that was first written down in the 1700s. Robert Burns is the person whose transcription got the most attention, so the song is associated with him. According to this page , a good translatio...

By CARL HULSE Published: December 26, 2013    WASHINGTON — With the next budget deadline just weeks away, top lawmakers said this week that they had made significant progress negotiating a huge government-wide spending bill that gives the once mighty congressional Appropriations Committees an opportunity to reassert control over the flow of federal dollars.        “We have a chance to prove to the rest of the Congress that we can produce bills,” Representative Harold Rogers, the Kentucky Republican who is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in an interview.        The past few years have proved frustrating for members of the spending panels. With House Republicans unable to come to terms with Senate Democrats on a budget, the government has mainly functioned under a series of continuing resolutions that have taken the Appropriations Committees out of the game.   ...

Now that Congress has approved a budget bill that includes a sizable spending hike for the rest of fiscal year 2014, construction industry officials will gear up to battle with advocates for a wide range of other interests for a share of those dollars.   The budget bill—the result of a deal between House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.)—won final congressional approval on Dec. 18, when the Senate passed it on a 64-36 vote. The House cleared the measure six days earlier by a wide margin.   The immediate next focus is the measure's $44.5-billion hike in overall 2014 discretionary spending. The bill split that sum between the broad defense and nondefense sectors, but provided no line-item details. It will be up to the appropriations committees to allocate those funds among the many federal construction and nonconstruction programs. The appropriations panels' chairpersons, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md....

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) predicted Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will negotiate on comprehensive immigration reform next year, despite Boehner's declarations to the contrary. The Democratic leader argued that Boehner has a new willingness to confront Tea Party groups and this, in turn, gives Reid confidence he will not have to break up the Senate immigration bill to negotiate a series of piecemeal reforms with the House. “I think that John Boehner will conference with the Senate. Why wouldn’t he? He’ll have a lot of pressure from his members now that the election is getting closer,” Reid said in an interview with The Hill. “Some of his members are in very marginal districts, where they need to do something on immigration,” he added. Boehner has vowed he would not let the Senate bill, which spans more than 1,200 pages, reach the negotiating table. The most controversial element of the package is a provision granting a pathway to citizenship for millions o...

12/17/2013 by Bernard M. Markstein        Reed Construction Data announced today that the value of November construction starts, excluding residential contracts, rose a solid 12.5% to $25.0 billion after increasing 5.0% in October. Since the starts data are not seasonally adjusted (NSA), caution should be used in analyzing monthly movements. Year-over-year comparisons are often used, as they remove much of the seasonal effects. Starts were up a less spectacular 2.0% compared to November 2012. The year-to-date starts data, which totaled $250.5 billion, were up a decent, if not overwhelming, 4.3% from the same period in 2012. The value of construction starts 1 each month is summarized from the Reed database of all active construction projects in the U.S., excluding residential construction. Missing project values are estimated with RSMeans building cost models. Monthly commercial starts have experienced some ups and downs over the course of this ye...

By Lori Montgomery , Published: December 18 E-mail the writer J. Scott Applewhite/AP - Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) discusses the compromise spending plan during a television news interview on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 12/18/13 Congress declared a holiday truce in the budget wars Wednesday, sending President Obama a blueprint for funding the government through 2015. But the next skirmish was already on the horizon: an election-year fight over the national debt. The budget deal that passed the Senate on Wednesday amounts to a handshake agreement to avoid a government shutdown when a temporary funding measure expires Jan. 15. However, the accord does not address the need once again to raise the debt limit, setting up a potentially complicated confrontation in late February or early March.   That fight would come just months before midterm congressional elections, and the GOP is deeply divided over tactics t...

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