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Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is one of the most powerful politicians in America. She's the top-ranking woman in the House GOP, and her political ambitions and trajectory have been debated everywhere from Capitol Hill to the pages of Glamour magazine. But when she walks into locally owned businesses like Maid Naturally in Spokane, Wash., she's just Cathy.

In the final week before the election, she stopped by the Spokane-based cleaning business and sits down to chat with co-founders Ruthanne Eberly and Heather Brown. McMorris Rodgers puts them at ease quickly, and before long the three women are swapping stories about what it's like to balance family and work.

"Do you have some tips now as to how to keep employees longer?" McMorris Rodgers asks the pair, who launched their business together in 2006. Since then they've expanded, moving from working out of their homes to a larger space.

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Eberly and Brown agree that keeping their employees around, especially in a business where people tend to come and go, comes down to building strong relationships.

That's something McMorris Rodgers understands. She's built a career on it.

"I find myself reminding people that Congress is also built on relationships," she tells them. "It's about building relationships. It's like anything you do in life, and you have to make that a priority."

McMorris Rodgers has a few priorities: Representing Eastern Washington in the House — a job she's held for a decade — and heading up the House Republican Conference where she is one of just 19 women.

The 45-year-old also has three young children. Her 1-year-old daughter flew cross-country with her during her most recent trip back to Spokane.

"I was single when I was elected, then I got married," she tells Eberly and Brown. "So I kind of eased into it. Got used to the business up-front, then I got married, added the kids."

This is how McMorris Rodgers connects with the women she meets on the trail, the very people her party needs to attract. She's down-to-earth, folksy even, and she makes everything personal.

But she is also politically savvy.

McMorris Rodgers says she never dreamed she'd be in politics herself, but she was appointed to the Washington statehouse at the age of 25. She went on to beat two members of the leadership to become the state's first female minority leader. Then, she decided to run for Congress.

"I just decided I was going to muster up all the courage I had, be a risk-taker, go see what I could do," she says.

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First elected to Congress in 2004, McMorris Rodgers is set to easily win re-election to a sixth term. But she's not taking that for granted. All in one day this week, she participated in a debate with Democrat Joe Pakootas, visited local businesses, chatted with eighth graders at a middle school and fired up a Republican women's group.

She often brings up her roles as a wife and mother while campaigning, saying the challenges she faces are just like any other working mom in America. But she bristles at the notion that she's "window dressing" for a party trying to refresh its brand.

"That's what the critics like to suggest," she says when asked about the public debate over whether her rise is simply because she's a woman. "Even when I was asked to give the response to the State of the Union this year, there were some that immediately started saying 'Well, it's only because she was a woman' versus that I was someone who could really connect with people or that I could deliver an effective message on behalf of the Republicans."

McMorris Rodgers says she wants to see more women run — and get elected — to Congress. That's why she's taken on a leadership role, raising money for female Republicans and mentoring them, too.

"So many women have never even considered running for office themselves. They think that's something someone else does," she says.

McMorris Rodgers says she knows what that's like. Before she decided to run for Congress, she'd been thinking about getting out of politics.

Now, a decade later, she says she doesn't want to be a "seat warmer." She wants to maximize her opportunities and her influence.

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She chose not to enter the race to be House Republican whip after Eric Cantor, who was defeated in a primary, chose to leave his leadership post. She says she's excited for another year serving as GOP conference chair.

But there appears to be a path open for McMorris Rodgers. The question is: does she want it?

Asked point-blank what her next chapter looks like, she says "we'll see."

"One thing about serving in Congress, it kind of comes in these two-year chunks," she says. "For the next Congress, I'm seeking to continue to serve as conference chair. And we'll see what other opportunities come. So much of that is being the right person at the right time."

Taser International is reporting a big jump in demand by police departments for "body cameras." The company, one of the biggest providers of body cams to police departments, says 2014 sales of its "Axon Body" model are up 300 percent over last year, and sales of its more expensive "Axon Flex" camera have doubled.

And what's interesting is that this spike started well before the August shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

"We were getting onesies, twosies, ten here and there in the first few years," says Steve Tuttle, Taser's vice president of communications. "And then in the last year, right before Ferguson hit, we hit this part where it was the fastest-growing market segment for the company. Then Ferguson hit!"

This may be a measure of the longer-term pressures that police departments have felt to adopt this technology. New Orleans bought cameras for all its patrol officers this spring, in an attempt to convince the Department of Justice that its police department has reformed itself enough to get out from under federal monitoring.

Albuquerque is another troubled police department that has embraced the cameras. And last year, a federal judge ordered the New York Police Department to set up a body camera pilot program, as a remedy for constitutional abuses committed by officers practicing "stop and frisk."

But the body cameras have not been a cure-all. In New Orelans, the independent police monitor has been repeatedly frustrated by the apparent non-existence of videos in incidents of alleged police brutality. Officers say they forgot to turn the cameras on, or they blame technical problems.

And even though body cameras have become a popular rallying cry, post-Ferguson, most departments are still taking a wait-and-see attitude. The cameras cost upwards of $400 per unit, and the real long-term costs come over time. It's not cheap or easy for departments to manage the thousands of hours of video generated by the devices, and a big new source of revenue for Taser International is "Evidence.com" — essentially a cloud storage service that promises police departments greater simplicity in the management of this new "content."

body cameras

The dustiest portion of my home library includes the 1980s books — about how Japan's economy would dominate the world.

And then there are the 1990s books — about how the Y2K computer glitch would end the modern era.

Go up one more shelf for the late 2000s books — about oil "peaking." The authors claimed global oil production was reaching a peak and would soon decline, causing economic chaos.

The titles include Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression, Peak Oil Survival and When Oil Peaked.

When those books were written, worldwide oil drillers were producing about 85 million barrels a day. Now they are pumping about 93 million barrels.

NPR/U.S. Energy Information Adminstration

Despite growing violence in the Middle East, oil supplies just keep rising.

At the same time, the growth rate for demand has been shrinking. This week, the International Energy Agency cut its forecast for oil-demand growth for this year and next. Turns out, oil demand growth — not production — is what appears to have peaked.

Now prices are plunging, down around 25 percent since June.

What did the forecasters get so wrong? In large measure, their mistake was in failing to appreciate the impact of a relatively new technology, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Because of fracking, oil is being extracted from shale formations in Texas and North Dakota. Production has shot up so quickly in those areas that the United States is now the world's largest source of oil and natural gas liquids, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia.

This new competition has shocked OPEC. Members say they want to maintain their current market share, so they are keeping up production and even boosting it.

Bottom line: The peak of production is nowhere on the horizon.

So are the authors of "peaking" books now slapping themselves in the head and admitting they had it all wrong?

Some are, at least a bit.

Energy analyst Chris Nelder wrote a book in 2008 titled Profit from the Peak. The cover's inside flap said: "There is no doubt that oil production will peak, if it hasn't already, and that all other fossil fuels will peak soon after."

In a phone discussion about his prediction, Nelder said "my expectation has not materialized."

The surge in oil production in Texas and North Dakota "has really surprised everyone," he said. "If you had told me five years ago we'd be producing more oil today, I would have said, 'No way.' I did not believe at all that this would happen."

But while he acknowledges that oil has not peaked yet, he says it might soon because "oil is trapped on a narrow ledge" where it must stand on stable prices. Holding the price of a barrel steady around $110 for years allows energy companies to invest in fracking operations.

Over the past three years, those are exactly the conditions drillers have enjoyed. Oil was sitting pretty on a stable plateau of roughly $110 a barrel. But now, as global growth slows, the price is plunging, down to around $83 per barrel.

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"China is cooling off quite a bit. Much of Europe is slipping back towards recession," Nelder said. If oil prices stay low for long, frackers may need to stand down. "There is a lower level [in price] where they just can't make money," he said.

And with OPEC pumping so much oil now to hold down prices, maybe they are using up their supplies more quickly. "Depletion never sleeps," he said.

So perhaps Nelder has been wrong so far, but could be right before too long.

That's what Kenneth Worth thinks. He's the author of Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression, a 2010 book. He says the fracking boom has been so frenzied in this decade that drillers may have extracted the cheapest oil already. With fracking, oil supplies "deplete very rapidly. You have to keep drilling really fast," he said.

With prices now so low, the money to keep up the frenzy may not be there.

So maybe the "peaking" predictions weren't wrong, just premature. Then again, at some point, any forecast can turn out to be right, he says. "If you take enough of a timeline, eventually we're all dead," Worth noted.

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At any big-box store, you can find the annual holiday mash-up now on garish display: Halloween costumes are stacked next to the decorative turkey napkins and pre-lit Christmas trees.

It's time to celebrate the Halloween-Thanksgiving-Hanukkah-Christmas-New-Year season!

This year, most merchants are optimistic, predicting strong sales throughout the peak shopping period. Let's start with Halloween, with its sales of costumes, candy, cards and pumpkins. This year, the National Retail Federation predicts Halloween revenues will hit $7.4 billion, up from last year's $6.9 billion.

Decorations will drive much of that spending, up to $2 billion, the trade group says. A generation ago, Dad might carve a pumpkin into a jack-o'-lantern, and that was that. Today, front yards are filled with electronic bubbling cauldrons, animated jumping spiders and talking witches.

Another positive factor for retailers is that Oct. 31 falls on a Friday, which allows for more Halloween parties. And this is good news for party-throwers: Candy will cost, at most, just a few pennies more than last year.

"Halloween candy price inflation has slowed tremendously over the past couple of years, thanks to depressed raw sugar and refined sugar beet prices," IHS Global Insight U.S. economist Chris Christopher said in his analysis of the holiday.

Icing on your pumpkin cake: It will be cheaper to drive to those Halloween parties because gasoline prices have dropped dramatically in recent weeks to around $3 a gallon.

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Need one more reason for optimism? Congress is not in session. "Last year's federal government shutdown in the first half of October put a damper on consumer mood in the run-up to Halloween, and more importantly to the holiday retail sales season," Christopher said.

And that's what merchants are really looking for: signs that a good Halloween will lead to an even stronger holiday season. The retail group is predicting a robust increase in spending in the year's final two months.

The NRF's annual Consumer Spending Survey found the average person celebrating Christmas, Kwanzaa and/or Hanukkah will spend $804.42 this year, up nearly 5 percent over last year's actual $767.27.

"Overall, consumers feel better about where they stand compared to a year ago, and as such could find themselves stretching their dollars to give their loved ones a holiday season to remember," Prosper's principal analyst Pam Goodfellow said in a statement.

That prediction feels right to Antoine Kent, who was visiting New York City and shopping for a ninja costume for his godson. He believes the economy is strengthening enough to allow for more spending through the holidays.

"It seems like it's getting a little better each year," Kent said.

For the moment, he only needs to focus on Halloween because his 8-year-old godson was clear: "He said, 'Find me a ninja.' "

In case you are wondering: Yahoo says this year's most searched-for Halloween costumes include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Frozen princesses.

By Christmas, most shopping lists will shift to electronics. Analysts are predicting the hottest gifts will include iPhones, digital fitness products and video games.

NPR Business Desk intern Robert Szypko contributed to this report.

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