Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

Category: Politics

Newsom Vetoes Bill to Give Unemployment to Strikers

by | 1954, 1 Oct 2323 | | 0 Comments

Good. Strikers are able to work and choose not to. They should not be eligible for unemployment. Newsom must be running for president or something.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California won’t be giving unemployment checks to workers on strike, with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoing a bill Saturday that had been inspired by high-profile work stoppages in Hollywood and the hotel industry.

 

Newsom, a Democrat, says he supports workers and often benefits from campaign contributions from labor unions. But he said he vetoed this bill because the fund the state uses to pay unemployment benefits will be nearly $20 billion in debt by the end of the year.

 

“Now is not the time to increase costs or incur this sizable debt,” Newsom wrote in a veto message.

 

The fund the state uses to pay unemployment benefits is already more than $18 billion in debt. That’s because the fund ran out of money and had to borrow from the federal government during the pandemic, when Newsom ordered most businesses to close and caused a massive spike in unemployment. The fund was also beset by massive amounts of fraud that cost the state billions of dollars.

 

The bill would have let workers who were on strike for at least two weeks receive unemployment checks from the state, which can be as much as $450 per week. Normally, only workers who lost their job through no fault of their own are eligible for those benefits.

Milwaukee’s money pit

by | 1049, 30 Sep 2323 | , | 2 Comments

Here is my full column that ran earlier in the week in the Washington County Daily News

Wisconsin’s legislative Republicans have announced a new proposal to fund renovations at American Family Field in an effort to keep the Brewers in Milwaukee for another generation. The plan is a package of $600 million in state, county, and city funding coupled with $100 million from the Brewers. This is the third or fourth such proposal (I have lost count), but all of the proposals make some rather sweeping assumptions that must be challenged before the taxpayers are put on the financial hook for another couple of decades.

 

The first assumption is that having a Major League Baseball team in a particular community is a net benefit to that community. The current funding plan reflects that perceived benefit with proportionally more funding being committed by the entities that stand to benefit the most.

 

The Milwaukee Brewers are a private, for-profit business. They provide entertainment for profit. The Brewers employ local people, attract people from out of state to spend money in Wisconsin, and anchor some economic development. In this respect, they are no different than many other businesses headquartered in the state like a robust manufacturer or technology firm that generates economic benefit — most of which flows into the pockets of business owners and their employees.

 

There is also an intangible benefit to the Brewers being in Wisconsin. A major sports franchise contributes to a community by providing a shared identity and point of pride. It is a unifying force. Measuring this identifiable, but unquantifiable, benefit is difficult. We must acknowledge that there is a significant amount of vanity influencing the debate. Many lawmakers who want the taxpayers to support the Brewers do so because they like supporting the Brewers. They are fans.

 

If we take the first assumption to be true — that the Brewers are a net economic and societal benefit for Milwaukee and Wisconsin — then we must challenge a second assumption. Should the taxpayers subsidize the success of this private business?

 

Politicians are notoriously opaque about deciding when and how taxpayers should fund the success of private enterprises, but it happens all the time.

 

Through tax incremental finance districts, favorable tax incentives, direct subsidies, and other means, taxpayers are constantly supporting private businesses under the auspices of economic development.

 

Such taxpayer support is not necessarily a bad thing, but it should be done with reticence and clear expectations as to the return that the taxpayers might receive for their forced investment in a private enterprise. Too often, politicians are lax in their due diligence and weak in their demands when doling out taxpayer money. Such is the benefit of them spending other people’s money where they can take a victory lap for the spending while never being held accountable if there is no return on the investment.

 

All such investments must be prioritized in the context of all of the other demands on taxpayers. Is fixing AmFam Field more important than funding law enforcement? Road maintenance? Snow removal?

 

Other economic development like technology or manufacturing? Is AmFam Field more important than lowering taxes and reducing the size of government?

 

There is no such thing as a free lunch. In a world of scarce resources, funding AmFam Field means that something else will not make the list.

 

All things considered, having the Brewers in Wisconsin is a net benefit to the state, but it does not rise to the level of justifying hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer support. Moreover, the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District, which owns and operated AmFam Field, has done a terrible job managing the facility to be self-sustaining.

 

A quick look at the SWPBPD’s 2022 financial statements shows that they are running chronic losses. The only sources of revenue are $905,000 from rent from the Brewers, $300,000 in license plate revenue from the vanity plates, $4,500 in miscellaneous, and they lost $7.1 million in investments. Add on the $10.5 million in expenses and the District lost $16.4 million. This operating loss was on top of the $9.9 million loss in 2021.

 

2022 was a brutal year for everyone’s investments thanks to Bidenomics, so we can forgive the investment loss. The financials, however, beg some questions. Why did the Brewers pay less than $1 million per year to use the facility in 2022? That is less than $12,000 per home game. Why has the SWPBPD not found other ways to bring in revenue for the facility?

 

Why have they not been renting out the facility for other events to generate more revenue? Why is the SWPBPD not getting a cut of the sponsorship and concessions money? There is a lot of money is flowing through that stadium that is not making it to the taxpayers who own it for use in its maintenance.

 

The SWPBPD did a commendable job paying off the stadium debt early, but they have not done anything in twenty years to build a self-supporting revenue structure once the five-county stadium sales tax ended.

 

They are supporting expenses by spending down the nearly $60 million in reserves that was generated by the now defunct stadium tax. It appears that the plan all along was to come back to the public trough to sustain the stadium’s operations and maintenance.

 

Taxpayers are rightfully dubious about spending more hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for a building that has been terribly managed for the benefit of one private business. Lawmakers should look to sell the facility to a private enterprise that can manage it profitably and end the taxpayers’ obligation for its upkeep. Even if the underlying assets are sold for below market value, the end of taxpayer obligations is a net benefit for taxpayers. If lawmakers cannot find a private buyer willing to make the investment, then we must ask again why taxpayers would.

A few notes on this column. First, I screwed up the acronym. The governing board actually goes by SEWPBPD instead of SWPBPD. I’m not sure that’s an improvement, but there it is.

Also, it turns out that the lease that the Brewers have with the SEWPBPD that was negotiated and put in place by lawmakers before the board was constituted prohibits the board from monetizing the stadium. Essentially, the Brewers have exclusive access and get any proceeds from renting it out, concessions, sponsorships, etc. As the lease is written, the Brewers – NOT the taxpayers – get all of the benefits of owning the stadium without having any of the obligations for its upkeep or improvements.

The taxpayers are getting hosed here. Privatize the stadium and get the taxpayers out of bearing the costs of this wealthy, private entertainment business.

Deflect and Disarm

by | 0938, 30 Sep 2323 | , | 0 Comments

I see that the Justice Department found their fall guy for leaking Trump’s tax records so that they can maintain a fig leaf of objectivity for the ignorant.

The Justice Department announced on Friday charges against a Washington, D.C., IRS consultant for allegedly leaking tax information associated with former President Donald Trump and thousands of other wealthy individuals to two separate news organizations.

 

38-year-old Charles Littlejohn was charged via a criminal information with one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information — indicating he is likely set to plead guilty to the charge.

 

The criminal information notes that while he worked at the IRS as a government contractor, he stole information associated with an unnamed high-ranking government official and disclosed it to a news organization. He also stole tax information from “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals and disclosed that information to a separate news organization,” the Justice Department says.

 

Government Shutdown Looms… Good

by | 1815, 29 Sep 2323 | | 0 Comments

This from the same government that shut down millions of businesses and forced tens of millions of people to go without a paycheck. Sorry, but that broke my Give a F***. Shut it down. Shut it down for a long time. Remind people that they can’t rely on government – not should they try.

With Congress failing to agree on spending, the U.S. is barreling toward what could be one of the largest government shutdowns in history.

 

Lawmakers have until the end of the day Saturday to reach a deal to keep much of the government open.

 

If they don’t, 3.5 million of federal workers are expected to go without a paycheck, millions of women and children could lose nutrition assistance, national parks would likely close and more.

Automakers Can’t Meet Onerous Government Regulations

by | 1704, 29 Sep 2323 | , | 0 Comments

Just remember that as Biden mouths support for auto workers, he is actively killing off their jobs.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration proposal to hike fuel economy standards through 2032 is not feasible and could cost automakers a total of more than $14 billion in fines, an automotive group said Friday.

 

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents General Motors, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Hyundai and others, said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Corporate Average Fuel Economy proposal “exceeds maximum feasibility” and that the agency projects “manufacturers will pay over $14 billion in non-compliance penalties between 2027 and 2032”.

 

The fines would impact one in every two light trucks and one in every three passenger cars in 2027-2032, the group added.

 

A separate document viewed by Reuters said the Detroit Three – GM, Ford Motor and Chrysler-parent Stellantis – would face about $10 billion in CAFE fines in that period.

Senator Feinstein Dies

by | 0822, 29 Sep 2323 | | 0 Comments

RIP

Dianne Feinstein, the California senator who served for more than three decades and was a trailblazer for women in US politics, has died aged 90.

Feinstein was the oldest member of the US Senate and voted as recently as Thursday.

Yet another Senator who had been in office for the entirety of my adult life. She should have spent her final years surrounded by her loved ones at home instead of being wheeled around Washington like a macabre science experiment. Shame on the people who promote this elder abuse.

“Unemployment happens here first”

by | 1925, 28 Sep 2323 | , | 1 Comment

The technology to automate almost every fast food job is getting cheaper and cheaper. And tech doesn’t come in late. It doesn’t whine about the patriarchy. It doesn’t have body odor. It doesn’t steal from you. It just works. And if the customer gets a good burger with a lower risk of someone having spit in it… all the better.

(Reuters) -Fast-food workers in California will earn a minimum of $20 an hour and have a greater say in setting workplace standards under a new bill signed into law on Thursday by Governor Gavin Newsom.

 

“The future happens here first,” Newsom said at an event in Los Angeles, with labor officials and fast-food workers flanking him.

 

The legislation emerged as part of a broader compromise in which fast-food companies agreed to remove a 2024 ballot referendum asking voters to repeal a law aimed at improving wages and working conditions for employees.

 

Labor unions, meanwhile, dropped their push to hold fast-food corporations liable for violations committed by their franchisees.

The median fast-food worker in the U.S. earned $13.43 an hour in 2022, while those in California made an average of $16.60 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The new minimum, which takes effect in April, equates to an annual salary of $41,600.

Milwaukee’s money pit

by | 0721, 26 Sep 2323 | | 1 Comment

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

If we take the first assumption to be true — that the Brewers are a net economic and societal benefit for Milwaukee and Wisconsin — then we must challenge a second assumption. Should the taxpayers subsidize the success of this private business?

 

Politicians are notoriously opaque about deciding when and how taxpayers should fund the success of private enterprises, but it happens all the time.

 

Through tax incremental finance districts, favorable tax incentives, direct subsidies, and other means, taxpayers are constantly supporting private businesses under the auspices of economic development.

 

Such taxpayer support is not necessarily a bad thing, but it should be done with reticence and clear expectations as to the return that the taxpayers might receive for their forced investment in a private enterprise. Too often, politicians are lax in their due diligence and weak in their demands when doling out taxpayer money. Such is the benefit of them spending other people’s money where they can take a victory lap for the spending while never being held accountable if there is no return on the investment.

 

All such investments must be prioritized in the context of all of the other demands on taxpayers. Is fixing AmFam Field more important than funding law enforcement? Road maintenance? Snow removal?

 

Other economic development like technology or manufacturing? Is AmFam Field more important than lowering taxes and reducing the size of government?

 

There is no such thing as a free lunch. In a world of scarce resources, funding AmFam Field means that something else will not make the list.

 

All things considered, having the Brewers in Wisconsin is a net benefit to the state, but it does not rise to the level of justifying hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer support. Moreover, the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District, which owns and operated AmFam Field, has done a terrible job managing the facility to be self-sustaining.

 

A quick look at the SWPBPD’s 2022 financial statements shows that they are running chronic losses. The only sources of revenue are $905,000 from rent from the Brewers, $300,000 in license plate revenue from the vanity plates, $4,500 in miscellaneous, and they lost $7.1 million in investments. Add on the $10.5 million in expenses and the District lost $16.4 million. This operating loss was on top of the $9.9 million loss in 2021.

 

2022 was a brutal year for everyone’s investments thanks to Bidenomics, so we can forgive the investment loss. The financials, however, beg some questions. Why did the Brewers pay less than $1 million per year to use the facility in 2022? That is less than $12,000 per home game. Why has the SWPBPD not found other ways to bring in revenue for the facility?

 

Why have they not been renting out the facility for other events to generate more revenue? Why is the SWPBPD not getting a cut of the sponsorship and concessions money? There is a lot of money is flowing through that stadium that is not making it to the taxpayers who own it for use in its maintenance.

 

The SWPBPD did a commendable job paying off the stadium debt early, but they have not done anything in twenty years to build a self-supporting revenue structure once the five-county stadium sales tax ended.

 

They are supporting expenses by spending down the nearly $60 million in reserves that was generated by the now defunct stadium tax. It appears that the plan all along was to come back to the public trough to sustain the stadium’s operations and maintenance.

 

Taxpayers are rightfully dubious about spending more hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for a building that has been terribly managed for the benefit of one private business. Lawmakers should look to sell the facility to a private enterprise that can manage it profitably and end the taxpayers’ obligation for its upkeep. Even if the underlying assets are sold for below market value, the end of taxpayer obligations is a net benefit for taxpayers. If lawmakers cannot find a private buyer willing to make the investment, then we must ask again why taxpayers would.

Baltimore Biden Flubs Again

by | 1925, 25 Sep 2323 | , | 0 Comments

The flubs are one thing, but is anyone going to ask why we’re spending $40 billion on infrastructure for the Pacific Islands?

 

President Joe Biden got briefly marooned while announcing a plan to invest $40 billion in infrastructure for Pacific islands – then skipped over the acronym for the new program he was touting after botching the name during delivery.

 

Biden announced the Pacific Islands Initiative at the start of a White House summit for Pacific island nations.

 

‘We call it the P … PI … anyway, doesn’t matter what we call it, but that’s what it is,’ he said.

 

[…]

 

The acronym comment was just one of Biden’s flubs at the event.

 

In a bizarre comment, he said he and Mark Brown, the prime minister of the Cook Islands, were both from Baltimore, when neither of them are from Baltimore. Biden spoke of how the two nations would benefit from boosting ties, while announcing diplomatic relations.

 

‘The real reason is we are both from Baltimore, but that’s a long story,’ he said.

 

Biden was born in Scranton, which lies north of Baltimore, and attended the University of Delaware, and there was no apparent connection between Brown and Charm City. According to his official bio, Brown is a longtime government employee and former Agriculture minister who studied at Massey University in New Zealand and got an MBA at the University of the South Pacific.

 

Deadbeats Threaten to Continue Being Deadbeats

by | 2049, 24 Sep 2323 | | 0 Comments

Eff you… pay your bills, you deadbeats.

In fact, an August survey from student and education resource publication Intelligent.com revealed that 62% of respondents said they are considering boycotting loan payments in the fall as almost half of them doubt they will be able to afford those payments.

 

[…]

 

“Millennials like me have gone through so many economic crises and watched these corporations and banks get bailed out,” said Amanda Acevedo, a 37-year-old radiographer from Orlando, in a recent interview with Bloomberg. “Meanwhile, we can’t pay the student loans we were told we needed for success.”

AOC Blames Pandemic for Owning Tesla

by | 2009, 24 Sep 2323 | | 0 Comments

Um… okay?

Viewers were left scratching their heads on Sunday morning as Democrat radical Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained why she still owns a Tesla despite claiming she planned to replace it with a union-made model.

 

[…]

 

‘Er no look our car was purchased during the pandemic when travel, mass, before a vaccine had come out so travel between New York and Washington the safest way we had determined was an EV,’ she explained.

‘But that was prior to some of the new models coming out on the market that had the range available, but we’re actually looking into trading in our car now and hopefully we will soon.’
[…]
News of the Squad member’s Tesla emerged in 2021 when it was seen parked illegally outside a Whole Foods in Washington DC.

So, so, old

by | 1841, 23 Sep 2323 | | 2 Comments

Enough already.

When he was running for reelection in 1984, Ronald Reagan sought to make light of the fact that, at 73, he was the oldest major-party presidential nominee in American history.

 

“I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” he famously joked at a debate with Walter Mondale, the Democratic nominee, who was 56 at the time.

 

Reagan would have no reason to worry today. Both of the likely major party nominees in 2024 are significantly older than he was at the end of his first term: President Biden is 80, while Donald Trump is 77.

 

Congressional leaders are even older: Sen. Mitch McConnell is 81; Sen. Dianne Feinstein is 90; former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who just announced she is running for another term, is 83.

Idiots Protest for Destruction of Modern Life

by | 1730, 22 Sep 2323 | | 4 Comments

These people are morons who should be loudly ridiculed before being dismissed for their idiocy.

Bastida, now a 21-year-old University of Pennsylvania student, marched through the streets of New York City along with some 75,000 other activists on Sunday to demand the end of fossil fuels. She was also a part of the Climate Ambition Summit youth delegation convened by United Nations’ secretary general, António Guterres.

Notably absent from the summit was President Joe Biden, who skipped the event even though he was in New York for the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

 

To Bastida, Biden’s absence was one more indication that he’s out of step with many young Americans when it comes to climate change. Many Gen Zers, those born after 1996, said they feel they are being asked to grab the reins and demand that leaders take action, when it should be the other way around.

 

Leaders need to recognize all the tools they have at their disposal right now to make real change instead of waiting for younger Americans to grow up and do it themselves, said Jilly Edgar, 24, who works at the Climate Museum in New York City and joined the march on Sunday.

Americans Dread Upcoming Campaign

by | 2150, 21 Sep 2323 | , | 2 Comments

See: Owen’s column from earlier this week.

The survey of 1,636 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Sept. 14 to 18, offered respondents seven emotions — three positive, three negative, one neutral — and asked them to select any and all that reflect their attitude toward the 2024 campaign.

 

Dread, the most negative option, topped the list (41%), followed by exhaustion (34%), optimism (25%), depression (21%), indifference (17%), excitement (15%) and delight (5%).

In total, a majority of Americans (56%) chose at least one of the three negative feelings (dread, exhaustion or depression), while less than a third (32%) picked at least one of the three positive feelings (optimism, excitement or delight).

Couple Sues City Over Using Race to Award Contracts

by | 2102, 21 Sep 2323 | , | 0 Comments

I hope they win.

(Reuters) – A white married couple that owns two landscaping companies has sued Houston, claiming that the city’s requirement that certain government contracts be set aside for minority-owned businesses runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution.

 

The two businesses owned by Jerry and Theresa Thompson in a complaint filed in federal court in Houston on Tuesday said the city’s program violates their constitutional rights to equal protection. The city has said that the four-decade-old program ensures that historically disenfranchised people have an opportunity to participate in lucrative government contracting, and fosters a more competitive economic environment.

 

The lawsuit is the latest to challenge affirmative action programs since the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down race-conscious policies in college student admissions in rulings involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The suit was filed on the same day that an anti-affirmative action group sued the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, claiming the Army school’s affirmative action practices unconstitutionally discriminate against white applicants.

Under Houston’s program, the city sets annual numerical goals for awarding different types of contracts to businesses owned by minorities. Between July 2021 and June 2022, about 24% of professional service contracts and about 14% of construction contracts were awarded to minority-owned businesses, according to the city.

The rematch nobody wants

by | 0636, 19 Sep 2323 | | 16 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

C’mon, America. Are we really going to do this? In a country of over 330 million people with legions of brilliant, ethical, honest, compassionate and humble servant leaders, are we really going to be forced to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump? Is this the best we have to offer? If the polls are any indication, we are barreling headlong into choosing between these two terribly flawed grouchy old men.

 

The Democrats appear to be committed to nominating President Joe Biden to be considered by the voters for a second term. Biden’s cognitive decline is as obvious as it is distressing. The incidents of Biden getting confused, wandering off and rambling incoherently are increasingly frequent. His press conference in Vietnam last week was tragic. He rambled from inappropriate jokes to getting confused over questions and admitting, “I’m just following my orders here” to having his staff cut him off as he closed with, “I’m going to go to bed.”

 

As happens with many elderly people who are in cognitive decline, Biden’s unsavory personal traits have come to the surface. Unable to stop himself from wandering from a podium, he is now vacillating between strange whispering into the handheld microphone to shouting for no apparent reason. Biden has always been known for his prolific lying. He was even run off the presidential campaign trail in 1988 when he was caught plagiarizing. His sagging ability to think on his feet have him blundering into even more obvious lies. His claim last week that he was in Manhattan the day after 9/11 was disproven within minutes by video of him in Washington D.C. that day.

 

Biden’s years of rank corruption are also coming to the surface. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has released some of the evidence they have gathered about the Biden’s real family business. The evidence shows years of corruption where tens of millions of dollars from foreign bad actors flowed through a web aliases (Joe Biden had at least three) and shell companies controlled by Biden family members with Hunter Biden serving as the primary bag man. The product they were selling was allegedly access to one of the most powerful people on the planet — Joe Biden. The Biden family has not offered any other reasonable explanation for why foreigners have been giving them millions of dollars.

 

As if the lies, corruption, and slip into senility was not enough, Biden’s first term has been an unmitigated failure. Inflation has raged out of control eating into every American’s quality of life. People are struggling to buy groceries, cars and homes as real wages have stagnated. The Southern border is wide open with tens of thousands of illegal aliens flowing into our nation every month to eat at our overburdened social safety net. Our nation is running up our national debt to a nation-killing level. Our enemies and friends are laughing at us as the world order reorients away from a languishing lion.

 

Despite all of this, the Democrats seem dead set on propping up old Joe for another term.

 

The Republicans are not doing much better. Despite several fantastic alternatives who are younger, smarter, more conservative, more likable, and with better records in public office, the Republicans seem dead set on nominating former President Donald Trump.

 

Only three years younger than Joe Biden, Trump’s cognitive abilities are holding firm even as his stamina slumps with marathon rallies being replaced by short and infrequent campaign stops. His lifetime of lying is currently manifesting itself in a voluminous attempt to gaslight the nation as to his record and the records of his Republican opponents. His energies that were focused on the righteous populist anger of the average American in 2016 and 2020 have been redirected in 2023 to his lengthy list of personal grudges and electoral fantasies.

 

While the litany of indictments against Trump are the more the result of the Marxist weaponization of our judicial system than a true assessment of Trump’s behavior, he has always shoved past dowdy ethical to flirt with the skirts of law.

 

Trump’s record as president was decidedly mixed. He was exceptional in securing the border, deregulating, selecting conservative judges, pulling America back from bad international deals, destroying ISIS, and reigniting our economy. These remarkable successes are weighted down by his prolific spending, ballooning debt, and lethargy in adjusting government policy to the reality of the pandemic. Perhaps his greatest failure was his terrible selection of, and support of, government officials from Anthony Fauci to Christopher Wray. Instead of draining the swamp, Trump added to and protected it.

 

America deserves better than to have a presidential campaign that resembles two semi-coherent old men yelling at each other from opposite ends of the bar about the television channel. Or do we?

 

I ask again … are we really going to do this?

Hunter Seeks to Bully Whistleblowers

by | 0755, 18 Sep 2323 | | 1 Comment

Again it must be noted how the Bidens are on both sides of all of these machinations. It’s theater.

Hunter Biden has sued the Internal Revenue Service over claims agents illegally released his tax returns.

 

President Joe Biden‘s son claims the agency violated his privacy by unlawfully disclosing his records to members of Congress and to the news media.

 

[…]

 

It targets two IRS whistleblowers who testified to Congress about the income  Hunter received from his work with a Ukrainian gas company and their concerns about how Hunter was getting special treatment due to his last name.

The Fetterman Rule

by | 2007, 17 Sep 2323 | , | 0 Comments

The slovenly slide into mediocrity continues.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has quietly gotten rid of the dress code for members of the Senate in what’s seen as a way of appealing to the often casually dressed Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman.

 

Fetterman, like Schumer a Democrat, often causes buzz for those following the action on Capitol Hill by showing up in a hooded sweatshirt and shorts, though Republicans like Ted Cruz have also been seen before in sweats.

The Non-Spy Balloon?

by | 1435, 17 Sep 2323 | , | 3 Comments

Baloney.

It was surely the most bizarre crisis of the Biden administration: America’s top-of-the-line jet fighters being sent up to shoot down, of all things, a balloon – a Chinese spy balloon that was floating across the United States, which had the nation and its politicians in a tizzy.

 

Now, seven months later, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells “CBS News Sunday Morning” the balloon wasn’t spying. “The intelligence community, their assessment – and it’s a high-confidence assessment – [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon,” he said.

Student Debt Payments to Resume

by | 1859, 16 Sep 2323 | , | 8 Comments

Explain to me again why this is a hardship that America’s plumbers and factory workers should bear.

Mykail James has a plan for when payments on her roughly $75,000 in student loans restart next month. She’ll cut back on her “fun budget” — money reserved for travel and concerts — and she expects to limit her holiday spending.

 

“With the holidays coming up — I have a really big family — we will definitely be scaling back how much we’re spending on Christmas and how many things we can afford,” James said. “It’s just going to be a tighter income overall.”

 

In October, roughly 27 million borrowers like James will once again be on the hook for repaying their federal student loans after a three-year hiatus. President Joe Biden tried to use his executive powers to forgive about $400 billion in student debt last year, but the Supreme Court overruled that decision in June, and payments kick in again in October.

 

Now there are big questions about how those people — many of whom had expected to have at least some of their debt erased — may change their spending habits as they budget for student loan payments again. It could crimp the economy if a large share of consumers cut back simultaneously, especially because the resumption in payments comes just as the retail and hospitality industry begin to eye the crucial holiday shopping season.

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