Free Republic

The train wreck that is the state of Illinois has generated a lot of questions lately, including “Will its government ever pass a budget?”, “Will it ever pay its overdue bills?”, and “Is it possible for a state to go bankrupt?” Looks like we’re about to get some answers to these questions, along with one more: “What happens to the financial markets when people finally realize that Illinois is far from the only impending bankruptcy?” Today’s Wall Street Journal has an anecdote-filled article illustrating what certainly looks like a case of terminal financial mismanagement (How Bad Is the Crisis in...

Oops! Apparently, the state of Rhode Island had 150,000 people incorrectly placed on their voter rolls and nobody noticed. During the November election, the state had a total of 781,770 registered voters. That’s even after Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea purged the rolls of almost 65,000 names. Then she declared another 30,000 voters as “inactive.” Still, there were 150,000 more names of “fake” voters.

Illinois isn't the only state dealing with financial headaches these days. Connecticut, too, is facing big budget problems as major corporations flee the state's high taxes and its fiscal future gets murkier by the day. While Illinois is facing the possibility its credit rating hitting "junk" status, Connecticut has the distinction of the third-worst ratings in the country -- behind Illinois and New Jersey. S&P Global Ratings, Moody's and Fitch all downgraded the state last month -- which threatens to increase the cost of borrowing -- in what officials described as a "call to action" for state leaders. “We’ve been...

What else can possibly go wrong with our great country, the former “shining city on the hill,” that is being tarnished day by day by influential anti-American groups with huge coffers? Liberals from California and smaller blue states are exerting their influence on the electoral process in red states, determined to flip them to blue, and, by and large, are succeeding with the exception of the most recent election in Georgia’s 6th district where Democrats spent over $23 million, the most in the history of the House of Representative elections ever. I’m still scratching my head trying to understand the...

Full Title...........................Hawaii could become the first state to offer its citizens universal basic income after bill passes through both houses of state legislature.....................It may have been the last state to join the United States, but Hawaii may trail blaze and become the first to offer guaranteed basic income. A bill was recently passed through both the houses and state legislature in a unanimous vote that declares that all Hawaiians 'deserve basic financial security' and prompts state agencies to look over 'universal basic income' along with other policy. 'As innovation and automation and inequality disrupt our economy, we want to make...

The Illinois official responsible for paying the state's bills is warning that new court orders mean her office must pay out more each month than Illinois receives in revenue. Comptroller Susana Mendoza must prioritize what gets paid as Illinois nears its third year without a state budget. A mix of state law, court orders and pressure from credit rating agencies requires some items be paid first. Those include debt and pension payments, state worker paychecks and some school funding. Mendoza says a recent court order regarding money owed for Medicaid bills means mandated payments will eat up 100 percent of...

There is no such thing as free college tuition. While it may be free for the fortunate few who get a free college education, somebody pays for it, somebody always pays. And if you are wondering who that somebody is, all you have to do is look in the mirror. So, it would be refreshing if free-stuff politicians, like Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat -- the mix-and-match couple of Massachusetts politics -- actually took the time to thank the people who make their free-stuff giveaways possible. W

The administration of Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat who has been in office since 2011, projects a budget deficit of more than $5 billion over the next two years, thanks to generous pension benefits and the burden of servicing its big debt, plus falling tax revenue due to the exodus of large employers and residents reaching retirement age. Its budget woes, as well as concerns that they will be repeated year after year, helped lead General Electric in 2015 to consider moving its headquarters out of the state. Last year, it did exactly that. The state’s population is falling: Its...

More Parish Closings Nationwide - What Are We to Learn and Do? Msgr. Charles Pope • May 8, 2017 • It was recently announced that a substantial number of Catholic parishes will be closing in Connecticut. This is just the latest in a national trend that is likely to affect the diocese where you live, especially in the north. I’d like to offer some rather quick thoughts and then ponder what I think is the root cause for our decline. Bishops don’t close parishes, people do. While it may be juridically true that bishops formally certify or give recognition...

Oregon may soon become the first U.S. state to allow residents to identify as "nonbinary," neither male nor female, on their driver licenses and identification cards. Transgender Oregonians say the change would validate their identities and make them safer as they hand over their licenses at restaurants, health clinics and airports. Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles officials say they have had no opposition to the change, which they first announced plans to carry out last summer.

In 2014, the most recent year that a county level breakdown is available, 54% of counties (with 11% of the population) have no murders. 69% of counties have no more than one murder, and about 20% of the population. These counties account for only 4% of all murders in the country. The worst 1% of counties have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 68% of murders. As shown in figure 2, over half of murders occurred in only 2% of counties.

The California Senate passed Senate Bill 54 on Monday, barring state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources to help federal immigration authorities. Senate Bill 54, also known as the "sanctuary state" bill, passed the Senate in a 27-12 vote, CNN reported. "Our precious local law enforcement resources will be squandered if police are pulled from their duties to arrest otherwise law-abiding maids, busboys, labors, mothers and fathers," Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, who authored the bill, said in a statement. De León claimed the bill is "a rejection of President Trump's false and cynical portrayal...

The Department of Homeland Security added the entire states of California and Connecticut to its list of U.S. jurisdictions that hinder cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in detaining illegal immigrants. Both states had enacted legislation called "Trust Acts," allowing local law enforcement to ignore ICE's requests to detain certain illegal immigrants in custody.

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams, this time with a side of dissent. About three dozen demonstrators descended on the mansions of Connecticut’s 0.01% over the weekend to protest Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy’s new budget, which includes jobs cuts and changes in pension funding. As part of the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless” tour, protesters—many of whom work in the area—left mock tax bills at the ritzy homes of hedge fund bosses like Ray Dalio and Steven Cohen, asking them to pony up over $1.2 billion between both of them. “Income inequality is out of control in this country, and...

Based on the results of this year's study, if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those treated in the award-winning facilities: Nearly than 89,000 additional lives could be saved; Over 61,000 additional patients could be complication free; Over $5.6 billion in inpatient costs could be saved; The average patient stay would decrease by half a day; Over 300,000 fewer discharged patients would be readmitted within 30 days; Patients would spend nine minutes less in hospital emergency departments per visit. If the same standards were applied to all inpatient care, the impact would be even greater.

Government finance is now the greatest source of controversy in Connecticut, owing to billion-dollar deficits and an epic debt load that ensures high taxes for many years to come. In national politics, Connecticut is deep blue: Its entire congressional delegation is Democratic, and it hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 28 years. But the GOP has recently notched strong gains in the state legislature. Though it’s far from clear which party will prevail, the fight for control of state government will depend on who can better respond to broad public recognition that Connecticut needs a new fiscal model....

The $64,000 question for Democrats seeking to fight back against Donald Trump and a Republican Congress between now and the 2020 elections is whether their recent problems in turning out their voters, especially in nonpresidential contests, can be changed by the energy of a burgeoning anti-Trump resistance. The first real answer to that question may have occurred this weekend in a special state-senate election in the “First State,” Delaware. And though it would be unwise to assume it to set a reliable pattern, in this one case Democrats passed the test. The contest was over a seat in a state-senate...

One of the good aspects of federalism is that it allows states to go their own way. As Justice Louis Brandeis put it, they can be “laboratories of democracy.” Unfortunately, that often means that interest groups will capture state legislatures and have their political allies push through foolish legislation that will harm most of the state’s residents while benefiting just a few – mainly their members. (That, incidentally, was true in the case that inspired Brandeis’ observation, New State Ice v. Liebmann. Fortunately, the majority ruled against Oklahoma’s scheme for cartelizing the ice business.) Two states, New York and Rhode...

California’s voter registration system is “highly susceptible to being compromised,” because of immigration policies protecting the Golden State’s 2.4 million illegal immigrants, authorities have told Fox News. The integrity of elections may be compromised by a lack of oversight of non-citizens registering and voting, said Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow for the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation. “If you are talking about California, the state is apparently relying on the illegal alien to tell the state they shouldn’t be registered. There is still an honor system,” said von...

A Republican lawmaker in deep-blue Hawaii is considering switching parties to become a Democrat after she was pressured to give up her leadership role for criticizing President Donald Trump. Rep. Beth Fukumoto said Republican Party members asked her to resign as Minority Floor Leader after she spoke at the Women’s March in Hawaii. In her speech she called Trump a bully and said his remarks were racist and sexist and had no place in the Republican Party. […] In Hawaii, there are only six Republican representatives in the House — including Fukumoto — and the state Senate is all Democratic...