Free Republic

More than 300 bridges in Connecticut — carrying 4.3 million vehicles daily — are considered structurally deficient. Highways in the Bridgeport-Stamford area are so congested motorists waste 49 hours a year in bumper-to-bumper traffic. And 62 percent of Connecticut’s major roads are in such poor condition they cost motorists $681 annually in vehicle repairs, according to TRIP, a national transportation think tank. Given those challenges, the three men seeking to replace Gov. Dannel P. Malloy could be making transportation the centerpiece of their campaigns. But instead, these candidates for governor are offering mostly modest plans to fix the state’s infrastructure...

f you want good roads, you have to pay for them. It’s not just the politicians in Madison and Washington, D.C., who have failed to learn that lesson. It’s the people of Wisconsin, too.

Entitlement cuts, tax increases, howling seniors: This is our future, whenever we choose to face it. The Manhattan Institute’s Brian Riedl isn’t trying to trigger the libs. His new plan to stabilize the debt doesn’t gut welfare, doesn’t repeal the New Deal — hell, it doesn’t even keep tax increases off the table, which practically makes him a lefty pariah in modern GOP circles.But it’s still going to alienate just about every elected official across the political spectrum, because it illustrates what it would actually take to get our mushrooming deficits under control. We’re talking weaker Social Security benefits, a...

North Carolina officials are trying to figure out how to unwind parts or all of a 2014 public-private partnership that is building managed toll lanes on a Charlotte-area highway.Ever since the ink dried on North Carolina’s first transportation P3 contract, the plan to relieve severe congestion in the Charlotte region has generated controversy.Public opposition remains just as fierce today to the project that will add express lanes on Interstate 77, even though more than one report says the deal with I-77 Mobility Partners LLC, a consortium led by Cintra Infraestructuras S.A., was properly authorized and permitted.The 26-mile-long project is designed...

It's that time of the year again when we find out how deep in the red our country is thanks to the 2018 edition of the Mercatus Center State Fiscal Rankings. The study authors, Eileen Norcross and Olivia Gonzalez, find that when you rank states by their fiscal health, you can identify the best and worst state. But the scariest finding is that no state is really fiscally healthy. Norcross and Gonzalez are very transparent about each decision behind the study methodology. They use states' own audited financial data to create five different indices (cash solvency, budget solvency, long-term solvency,...

It's dispiriting, for anyone who cares about the sheer capacity of government to implement policy, to learn that the Department of Education has failed to process 99% of requests for student loan forgiveness submitted by some 1.2 million borrowers who believe they qualify for a discount program aimed at helping those engaged in public service jobs. The report from the Government Accountability Office, based on its review of the Obama-era program, does not do much to instill more trust in government. But that's not the most important problem with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. The core idea — that...

The cost to construct the five-mile extension of the Gilcrease Expressway and the toll charged to motorists using it will be higher than initially reported, the executive director of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority said Thursday.Tim Gatz told a group of local officials gathered in Tulsa for an update on the project that the roadway is now estimated to cost approximately $330 million to $340 million, or about 10 percent more than originally thought.Late last year, Gatz told the same working group that motorists driving private vehicles could expect to pay a toll of $1 to $1.50. The toll is now...

For years central banks had been keeping rates near 0%, or below, and at the same time printing over a hundred billion dollars’ worth of fiat currencies each and every month to purchase bonds and stocks. That is all changing now. ... fourteen major global central banks are either in the process right now, or have indicated that they be will next year, in the process of raising interest rates. At the same time, QE on a global net basis will plunge from $180 billion per month at its peak during 2017, to $0 by December…and will then go negative...

In the exact spot where Hurricane Katrina demolished the Plaquemines Parish Detention Center, a new $105 million jail now hovers 19 feet above the marsh, perched atop towering concrete pillars. Described by a state official as the “Taj Mahal” of Louisiana corrections, it has so much space that one of every 27 parish residents could bunk there. But on an average day in the first half of this year, more than 40 percent of its 872 beds went unoccupied, making it one of the emptiest jails in the state, records show. And because of its isolated, flood-prone location, the jail...

Congress admits to having already spent $21.5 trillion (that’s $21,500,000,000,000.00) they don’t have. If you are a taxpayer, your share is a little over $58,000. What your senators and representatives would rather you didn’t know is that our reported debt is like an iceberg: what you see is only the tip. 90 percent of the iceberg lies under the surface. The dirty little secret is that we are obligated to pay around $115 trillion – on top of the national debt – to programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. [...] Altogether, the U.S. federal government has run up a...

The full scale and scope of the student loan debt bubble is far from fully understood. Millions of young Americans continue to be encouraged to go to massively expensive universities for useless undergraduate degrees. The result has been a generation of young people with thousands of dollars in debt and no preparation for today’s job market. Parents and their high school aged children need to take a serious look at whether college is a sound investment anymore. Statistics are regularly thrown around about how college graduates make much more money than those with a high school education. But what about...

Two recent stories caught our eye. One noted that, even after President Trump's tax cuts, Americans spent more on taxes than they did on food and clothing. The other noted that, as interest rates and the debt rise, the U.S. will soon spend more on interest than on defense. What gives? The fact is, the cost of government is soaring, largely because of uncontrolled spending. This shouldn't be a surprise. At the federal level, despite the moral posturing about debt by both parties, the U.S.' debt has soared from less than $10 trillion a decade ago to more than $20...

In recently released numbers, the Treasury Department announced the government, after accounting for some scheduling quirks, ran a $152 billion deficit in August. The budget deficit was $107.7 billion in August 2017, 41-percent less than the newest data. These numbers are startling, but the reality is that the nation’s debt load is actually much, much worse. Washington uses an outdated, inaccurate accounting system that contributes greatly to America’s fiscal irresponsibility. The quality of financial reporting practiced by the U.S. would make Enron blush. The U.S. government is using accounting practices that I would not allow in a first-year business school...

"We're going to launch our own satellite — our own damn satellite to figure out where the pollution is and how we’re going to end it," Brown told the audience at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco..."In California, with science under attack, in fact we’re under attack by a lot of people, including Donald Trump, but the climate threat still keeps growing," Brown added. "So, we want to know, what the hell is going on all over the world, all the time?"..."If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite," Brown said back in...

Ten years have passed since the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, the worst financial panic since the Great Depression.  Now it seems that some of the lessons learned back then are being forgotten.  Growing debt burdens in emerging markets are igniting new fears of a crisis that could shake economies everywhere. This time, the debt is not mortgages or deficit spending.  The new crisis involves corporate debt and bonds. What is setting off alarms is the recent collapse of the Turkish lira, which has lost more than forty percent of its value.  Turkish banks and companies borrowed heavily over the past few years to finance infrastructure...

By virtually any yardstick, the U.S. economy is doing great. Unemployment is near a two-decade low. The stock market is strong. Corporate profits are at record highs. Yet a report out this week finds that almost half of Americans are having trouble paying for basic needs such as food and housing. The Urban Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank, surveyed more than 7,500 adults about their experience making ends meet. It found that about 40% of people ages 18 to 64 faced some sort of hardship last year. “It’s certainly surprising and disconcerting that so many people are having difficulty...

For Alexandria Butler-McDow, 28, going to university didn’t provide the freedom and financial security she'd hoped for. After graduating with an associate’s degree from the California Culinary Academy (CCA) in San Francisco, CA, in 2008, Butler-McDow struggled to find a job that would allow her to support herself and her disabled mother while also paying off her enormous student loan bill. Hopeful that a more advanced degree would help her make more money and better manage her debt, Butler-McDow went on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in culinary nutrition, concentrating on clinical dietetics at Johnson and Wales University (JWU) in...

NEW YORK (AP) — The government’s top official overseeing the $1.5 trillion student loan market resigned in protest on Monday, citing what he says is the White House’s open hostility toward protecting the nation’s millions of student loan borrowers. Seth Frotman will be stepping down as student loan ombudsman at the end of the week, according to his resignation letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. He held that position since 2016, but has been with Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since its inception in 2011. Frotman is the latest high-level departure from the CFPB since Mick Mulvaney, President Donald...

It's been a few weeks since Donald Trump fired the opening salvo in a trade war with China, slapping tariffs on a range of Chinese-made goods. Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own — and since then, the rhetoric on both sides has been unrepentant. Much of the focus has been on nervous financial markets, and how the war could affect the fortunes of US farmers and manufacturers — but how do things look from China's side? Is the trade war the biggest threat to China's economy, or does the country have more pressing problems — like its massive debt?...

When financial markets cratered in late 2007, state pension officials assured lawmakers and the public that the damage to government retirement funds was only temporary. Pension funds are long-term investors, their story went, and pension systems would recover as soon as the market did. When lawmakers in Montana, for instance, asked the state treasurer whether they should be worried about the government’s ability to meet its retirement obligations, he confidently advised them to “go fishing” instead. They should have ignored him and taken action to bolster the state’s pension system, which has never recovered from the market crash. Montana’s retirement...