The U.S. is headed for "the most predictable economic crisis in history," as Eskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's former White House chief of staff, once put it.
Why? Because of the mountain of federal debt that we keep making bigger.
For the first time since the late 1940s, U.S. debt is roughly equal to U.S. GDP.
We already spend more on interest on the debt than we do on Medicaid and defense.
What Netanyahu seems not to grasp, however, is that there are many opportunities Israel can seize in order to right the ship in the wake of the myriad challenges that have cropped up in the nearly 300 days since Hamas’ devastating assault. Tragically, he is missing them all.
Democrats [have been] clinging to a fleeting strategy of getting their befuddled shell of a candidate/incumbent president across the Nov. 5 deadline. Now, they are left only with a new, unknown candidate and their worn-out narrative that our Democracy is under attack.
Meanwhile, it is the Democrats who took a wrecking ball to Democracy. After concealing President Joe Biden’s mental capacity... they gutted the primary process... by switching South Carolina’s primary to the head of the schedule, knowing it was the safe haven that saved Biden in 2020.
But if Joe Biden is not fit to run as a candidate for U.S. president as many people now believe, how is he fit to serve as president until Jan. 20, 2025?
The American public will expect details on who knew about Joe Biden’s declining capacity and when, and Connecticut residents will want to know how elected Democrats here feel about supporting candidates associated with an obvious coverup that threatens democracy.
Arab nations have begun to swing behind the idea of a multinational peacekeeping force for Gaza and the occupied West Bank, as they try to develop a viable postwar plan for the region.
The draft proposals are among multiple options being debated as Arab and western states, desperate to see an end to the conflict, struggle to lay out a path towards regional stability and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
On April 29, the Connecticut House passed a bill mandating that specific state agencies allocate 15% of their annual advertising budgets to locally owned media starting July 1, 2025. The measure passed largely along party lines, 92-53. The bill remains under consideration in the Senate, with no vote yet scheduled.
The Founders understood the critical need to keep the press free from government control.
The financial reliance of local media on government funding could result in a reluctance to publish content critical of the government.
National Public Radio (NPR) is currently embroiled in a scandal following an essay by Uri Berliner, a 25-year veteran at NPR, alleging that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”
Several dozen Democratic members of Congress, including former speaker Nancy Pelosi, have sent a letter to US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for a halt on arms transfers to Israel following an IDF strike in Gaza that killed seven staffers of the World Central Kitchen, including a dual US citizen.
“In light of this incident, we strongly urge you to reconsider your recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike is completed,” the House representatives wrote.
The British government is coming under escalating pressure to suspend arms sales to Israel after the strike on a convoy in Gaza that killed seven aid workers, including three Britons.
More than 600 lawyers and retired judges sent a letter to the government, arguing that the sales violated international law.
A plurality of American voters think Israel has gone too far in responding to the October attacks by Hamas, and a growing share believes the U.S. isn’t doing enough to help the Palestinian people, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds.
Connecticut taxpayers, saddled with a pension system for state workers and teachers marked by decades of underfunding, glimpsed a ray of hope in 2017 when legislators embarked on a path toward accountability and fiscal discipline by enacting “fiscal guardrails.”
Now, state unions under the umbrella of the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition are clamoring for the removal of the fiscal guardrails that were constructed to prevent the same unions from driving taxpayers over the cliff. The staggering state debt of more than $80 billion, including unfunded pension debt from the state workers’ and teachers’ pension funds, bonded debt, and health-care liabilities, was the result of years of irresponsibility and political horse-trading with state unions that were all too eager to negotiate benefits without a sustainable funding plan.
Omitted from Gov. Lamont’s 35-minute State of the State budget address Feb. 7 was a two-word phrase that hangs over every important issue and initiative that will arise in the critical short session of the General Assembly this year.
“Fiscal guardrails,’’ may not mean much to the public outside of Hartford, but it casts a long shadow over the business in the Capitol over the next three months. If on May 9 we can look back and see that our elected leaders preserved our budgetary restraints and chose to live within our means, then this session will have been a success.
Republicans have doubled down in support of the fiscal guardrails they have long supported and that were finally adopted in 2017 into state law in overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion. We have proposed codifying the state’s existing budgetary constraints — spending and borrowing caps, and use of excess revenue restrictions, known as the volatility cap — into our State Constitution.
