Last week, while testifying before the U.S. Congress, the new head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Jerome Powell acknowledged that the U.S. government is not on a sustainable fiscal path. CNBC has a video excerpt of Powell’s testimony on February 27, 2018, which came in response to questions asked by Representative Bruce Poliquin (R-ME),…
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Will the $20+ trillion national debt come to be used as a weapon against the U.S. in President Trump’s recently announced new trade war? It’s a situation that has been threatened before, as we saw with Saudi Arabia during President Obama’s tenure in office, and it is something that we have seen other nations…
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Where the practice of medicine is concerned, the field of chiropractic doesn’t have a strong reputation, which is attested by a Wikipedia article detailing a long list of scientific controversies and criticism of the field. Never-the-less, despite ongoing questions of many of its practices and their effectiveness as medical treatments, a limited number of…
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In an all too predictable move, the board of the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) pension fund has begun taking steps to try to bail itself out before it is forced to acknowledge that it has little-to-no prospect of paying out the excessively generous pensions that politicians have promised to local government employees…
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There is both bad news and worse news to report about the VA’s ongoing scandals of waste, fraud and abuse. First, the bad news. The Department of Vetarans Affairs is now immersed in a new scandal, one that reaches all the way up to the top ranks of the federal agency. Gabby Morrongiello of…
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When President Trump released his budget proposal for the U.S. government’s upcoming 2019 fiscal year last week, my first impression is that it was ugly. Having taken more time to review the proposed spending details included within it, I’d like to up the ante in describing it to “really ugly”. To see why, here’s…
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Even though he oversaw the production of President Trump’s ugly first budget proposal, there appears to be quite a lot to like about Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and also the legitimate interim director of the constitutionally–questionable Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Specifically, the thing to…
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President Trump released his first budget proposal yesterday. At first glance, it looks pretty ugly where the concept of fiscal responsibility is concerned. The following chart shows the amount of the U.S. government’s tax collections and spending that President Trump has proposed for the fiscal years of 2018 through 2023, where we’ve provided historical…
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The 20th government shutdown since the passage of the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 started and ended early in the morning of Friday, February 9, 2018, when, following a filibuster publicity stunt in the House of Representatives by minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and a more principled filibuster by Senator Rand Paul…
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If the claims of the League of California Cities is any indication, government officials at the county and local level will increasingly have to choose between providing services to the residents of their communities, or really generous pensions to the retired and retiring employees of their governments. Adam Aston of the Sacramento Bee describes…
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