It seems that California’s plastic bag ban has been a failure, but that is not stopping lawmakers from trying to impose a second bag ban.
Interest on the national debt is rapidly becoming the biggest single category of spending by the U.S. government. As of May 2024, the amount of money spent to pay interest owed to the federal government’s creditors surpasses the annual amount it spends on national defense.
The U.S. government’s budget deficit in 2024 will be 27% larger than the Congressional Budget Office predicted just four months ago.
A recent visit to Argentina confirmed my sense that President Milei is on the right track despite what his critics on the left and the skeptics on the right are saying.
Diamond Shruumz chocolate bars come in various popular flavors, including dark chocolate, cookies and cream, fruity cereal, and birthday cake. Each bar costs about $25—and contains trace amounts of magic mushrooms.
The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia hosted an online discussion recently about the new book The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning. The conversation featured the book’s author, journalist A. J. Jacobs, and NCC president and CEO Jeffrey Rosen. I encourage readers to watch the entire discussion; this post will focus on only a short excerpt.
A Newsweek investigation finds that at least 350 food and beverage products are under recalls mandated by the Food and Drug Administration. A short list of these products includes cookies, shellfish, cucumbers, frozen pizzas, frozen fruits, pasta, salad kits, smoked salmon, hummus, shrimp, lemonade, granola bars, cantaloupes, and ice cream.
In April, Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) announced a proposal for a bipartisan and bicameral bill, now known as the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA). Right out of the gate, the bill was controversial. An updated version of the House bill was released on May 23rd, yet the updated language did not fix the most problematic provision, which allows federal regulations to preempt state privacy laws.
Upping the ante following the initial weaponization of the dollar in 2022, the United States and a number of allied nations have agreed in principle to begin distributing profits on seized Russian assets to Ukraine. Interest payments on securities in which hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Russian foreign exchange reserves were invested, including US, European, and other sovereign bonds, would thus be transferred into a trust account accessible to the Ukrainian government. The US assertion of this undertaking was codified as the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act, signed into law by President Biden on April 24, 2024.
On Halloween 2023, hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller identified what he called the “worst fiscal blunder” in the history of the U.S. Treasury. That blunder occurred in the early months of the Biden administration and accelerated the U.S. government’s unsustainable fiscal path.
