How about some good news heading into the holidays? It comes from our nation’s farmers and ranchers.
The dictionary defines “deadbeat” as someone who deliberately avoids paying their bills. It’s an unflattering label, but for Illinois, it’s now their unofficial new nickname: the Deadbeat State.
Today, the good news is cars are safer, more fuel-efficient and emit fewer greenhouse gases. The bad news is today’s automobiles burn less gas and cars in the future will be fueled by cleaner electricity and even hydrogen.
In today’s dog-eat-dog world, change is constant and accelerating. Other countries are stealing our factories and jobs and are hungry for more. That is the new reality.
President Obama and the newly appointed Congressional federal debt reduction committee will need to look under every rock to find ways to save money and do things differently. Now, they’re getting some help from the private sector.
At the same time President Obama and Congress were locked in combat over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, leaders of state manufacturing associations from across America were meeting right here in Washington.
Americans live in an idealistic world where, no matter what happens, we’ll still be able to go home at night and switch on the lights or pull into a filling station and gas up the family SUV.
As the mayor of a small town in Montana, he put that principle into practice. Buying a new dump truck was not an emergency. If the city didn’t have the money to buy it, the answer was no. Even if state or federal funds were available to make the down payment, if the city couldn’t come up with the rest of the money, the answer was still no.
In 1975, as America was preparing to celebrate its bicentennial, Poland was a suppressed Soviet satellite state.
The Polish people were impoverished, had no right to free speech and if you wanted a job, you had to play ball with Communist Party bosses. Poland was a bleak land that had never recovered from World War II.
Partisan wrangling in Congress over the federal deficit and government spending has created gridlock. Not much else is getting done. Into that void have stepped federal bureaucrats who are circumventing Congress to implement sweeping policy changes.
As the price of gas passes $4 on its way to $5 a gallon, the finger pointing in Washington, D.C. has reached a frenzy as politicians rush to place blame. “Wall Street profiteers!” “Speculators!” “Big Oil!”
Washington voters have made it more difficult for state lawmakers to hike taxes by requiring a two-thirds majority to do so.
The Legislature’s response? Increase fees, instead.
Ask any wildland firefighter and they’ll swear by their “pulaski,” a tool that combines an axe and a mattock (similar to a pickaxe). It was invented by U.S. Forest Service Ranger Ed Pulaski in 1911, one year after the nation’s largest wildfire nearly took his life and left him permanently scarred. While Pulaski is remembered for his firefighting tool, it was the pain and suffering he and hundreds of other firefighters endured that led to today’s workers’ compensation system.
In our state, the governor must submit a balanced budget to the Legislature. That means government spending must equal tax collections. Unlike Congress, we cannot borrow or print money.
Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) has to rebalance the two-year budget passed by the Legislature last spring because revenue is $2.6 billion short of what lawmakers appropriated.
Now that voters have rejected I-1033, the sending limit initiative, the talk in Olympia has turned to raising taxes.
Recently, the Associated Press reported that hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being… Continue reading
When legislators come to Olympia later this month, they will not only face a $6 billion budget deficit, they must also change our unemployment insurance… Continue reading
