Last May, the City of Los Angeles decommissioned its Memorial Sports Arena, lowering three flags that had flown over the facility — those of the United States, California, and Los Angeles County and City — for the last time before making way for a new $250 million sports development in Exposition Park. But there’s a…
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How many times have you followed a link that began with the “One Weird Trick” clickbait meme? Hopefully, a lot of state government elected officials and bureaucrats do this, which is why the title of this article is “One Weird Trick to Restore Solvency to State Pensions.” For the states that are so far…
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Years ago, when the U.S. government spent far less money than it does today and currently plans to spend in the future, elected officials created several trust funds as a way to set aside the “extra” money collected for dedicated purposes, so that it could spend the money later when it would actually be…
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Just when you think that the Department of Veterans Affairs might finally be starting to get its act together, along comes yet another example that demonstrates how far out of whack the priorities of its senior leadership and supervisors have been. A joint investigation by Open the Books and WSB-TV News of Atlanta, GA,…
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What should Americans expect to happen when Social Security’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund runs out of money in 2034? For many Americans, including those who are just starting to collect Social Security retirement benefits, that may seem like a long time away. But if current projections hold, well before 2034…
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The Democratic National Convention is going on this week, and much like the Republican National Convention last week, I’m once again planning to avoid watching any part of it. Life is simply too short to waste valuable leisure time on the empty promises of politicians who either won’t keep their grandiose promises or worse,…
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If you’re anything like me, you’re doing everything you can to keep from having to watch any part of the major party political conventions this month. That’s because these kinds of events are far too often long on political hyperbole and short on substance. Too many promises get made that have absolutely no chance…
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Each year the Congressional Budget Office publishes its Long Term Budget Outlook, it presents two different scenarios that project the future value of the publicly-held portion of the national debt: the Extended Baseline scenario and the Alternative Fiscal scenario. Because the two have very different assumptions behind them, the question of which scenario is…
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Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office published its 2016 Long Term Budget Outlook for the U.S. government. Investors Business Daily‘s John Merline identifies the main takeaway from this year’s edition of the CBO report. The nation’s long-term fiscal picture has grown considerably more dire over the past year, according to the latest forecast from the…
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Global Financial Data is a firm that maintains a big database the records lots of economic data going as far back as the year 1168. The firm recently produced the following chart showing the interest rates that the U.S. government has paid to its creditors on 10-Year debt securities issued by the U.S. Treasury…
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