Author: Norman Leahy

Buried inside the Schumer-Manchin compromise spending bill are the usual kitchen sink contents that any large piece of legislation accumulates in order to help speed its passage. As this bill’s authors have the conceit (or is it the audacity?) to say this bill cuts inflation, reduces the deficit and presumably pays for a portion of all the giveaways it contains. How, exactly, would it do that? The old fashioned Keynesian way…raising taxes: The agreement would also raise roughly $470 billion through new tax provisions, the budget group estimates — the biggest of which will fall on the country’s large corporations.…

Never underestimate Congress’s ability to revive dead bills, and bad ideas, if enough money is used to revive them. Oh, and political need – that’s key, too. Such is the case with the revival and swift passage of a massive subsidy bill for the computer chip industry that, on its own, would have taken corporate welfare to bizarre new heights. This being Congress – and it also being an election year – the price tag ballooned with an extra $200 billion or so in federal spending, grants, giveaways and old-fashioned pork. It’s enough to make even the most cynical of…

It’s odd that an organization like the U.S. Federal Reserve, whose leaders are very, very chatty about monetary policy and whose researchers publish mountains of economic analysis every month, would be the target of a Chinese infiltration effort. (RELATED: Federal Reserve Announces Historic Rate Hike) But according to a report from Sen. Rob Portman’s office, the Chinese were working on building a network of informants inside the Fed for years: China tried to build a network of informants inside the Federal Reserve system, at one point threatening to imprison a Fed economist during a trip to Shanghai unless he agreed…

A group of House Democrats has decided it’s time to impose term limits on U.S. Supreme Court justices. While that’s a good idea – justices currently serve what are effectively lifetime terms, which has tended to make each Court pick more high-stakes than it should, or was ever intended, to be – the Democrats are pushing the idea for the worst reasons. According to reporting in The Hill: …[Georgia Rep. Hank] Johnson said the bench “is increasingly facing a legitimacy crisis.”“Five of the six conservative justices on the bench were appointed by presidents wholost the popular vote, and they are…

There may be shortages of certain goods and services and worries that there won’t be enough natural gas to go around this winter. What we have a surplus of right now are stories about the heat and how the heatwaves visiting some parts of the world this summer foretell a coming climate apocalypse. It’s easy, perhaps even tempting, to succumb to the doom mongering. That’s the human condition – we’re suckers for bad news. But not all is as bad as the headlines say, and in some ways, things are getting markedly better. The University of Colorado’s Dr. Roger Pielke,…

California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he’s not a candidate for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. But his most recent actions to “do something” about global warming are another indication the top job is very much on his mind. According to Bloomberg News, Newsom said he’s going to accelerate the Golden State’s push to a renewable energy future. What does that mean?  For one, more misery for California residents. Newsom wants: …an end to building gas-burning power plants, even as the move away from fossil fuels has threatened his state with blackouts and forced him to reconsider nuclear power. Would that…

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is catching flack for her comments that the economy isn’t in a recession and doesn’t look to be heading toward a recession in the near future. Speaking with NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” Yellen said: “You don’t see any of the signs. Now, a recession is a broad-based contraction thataffects many sectors of the economy. We just don’t have that,” Yellen said, but sheacknowledged the impacts of uncommonly high inflation numbers. Both of those things can be true – no officially-recognized recession, but galloping inflation that hurts living standards. The hue and cry that…

Symbolic gestures are a critical component of politics. Usually, they are deployed to show progress or growth – think of ribbon cutting ceremonies or dedications of new buildings. Opening things implies the future is getting better – and you have politician X to thank for it. What, then, are we to make of the new wave behind banning new construction? In California and elsewhere, the new political symbolism is to ban openings of things like gas stations because they represent an “addiction” to a failed, dirty, destructive past. One could also say the movement, such as it is, is devoted…

Back in May, President Joe Biden published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal laying out his plans for fighting inflation (which was then running at 8.6 percent). (RELATED: Responding to Biden’s Toothless Inflation Plan) Mr. Biden’s plan was really a dodge. He said the Federal Reserve “has a primary responsibility to control inflation.” That’s not entirely wrong – and make no mistake: the Fed’s inexcusable dithering on inflation will cost every one of us dearly over the months ahead. But what substance Biden did attach to his inflation-fighting was utter nonsense, a hodgepodge of anti-business pieties soaked in progressive…

The current conventional wisdom is President Joe Biden will run for reelection in 2024. He’s said as much and, generally, the party apparatus appears reconciled to the idea. But that doesn’t mean Democrats are happy about the prospect of Biden of running – 64 percent say they want someone else running in 2024. And some are getting vocal about the need for another choice. But before Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s most famous socialist, gets ready for a third presidential bid, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is out making noise and winning converts. His profile-building efforts have sparked rumors he’s running…even as Newsom…