GOP Betrays Voters… Again

December 15, 2023 By Paul E. Scates

On a U.S. Treasury Department website is this opening statement: “The U.S. government has spent $1.06 trillion in fiscal year 2024 to ensure the well-being of the people of the United States.” (italics mine)  That’s since October, barely two months!  At this rate, your “representatives” in the House and Senate are on track to spend $7 trillion again in 2024.  Are you feeling that “well-being” yet?

Still, this week the Senate passed the $886.3 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by a vote of 87-13, with only six Republicans voting against the 3,000-page boondoggle.  That’s right, all the other “conservative” GOP senators (like Cruz, Tim and Rick Scott, Rubio, Cotton, Johnson, Blackburn, et al) once again pulled the football back at the last minute, Charlie Brown, and left you, the hapless and gullible GOP voter, humiliated…and on the hook for another almost trillion dollars in debt. ......To Read More..... 

• The NDAA’s ‘Warrantless Backdoor Surveillance’ of Americans Gets Approved by the Senate

CBDCs are Coming! CBDCs are Coming! – Swamponomics

CBDCs arriving soon, oil supply deficits, and shrinking bank lending.

By Andrew Moran July 18, 2023 @ Liberty Nation News

Governments and central banks worldwide are bullish on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). They will be the new normal in the coming years. At first, these digital currencies will complement physical money, marketed as a benign scheme to compete on the international stage and prevent China from ruling the world. As the years go by, CBDCs will put the kibosh on cold hard cash, serving as a functional surveillance tool – and that future may not be too far away.

Invasion of the CBDCs

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a financial institution owned by member central banks, released the results of its December survey of 86 central banks. The study determined if they were working on the two types of CBDCs (retail, wholesale, or both), how the work is coming along, and what their motivations are for devising such a technology. BIS researchers learned that half are launching experiments for pilot CBDCs, with one-quarter beginning to pilot retail CBDCs. Not too many were engaged in wholesale CBDCs.

The most notable finding from the July 2023 report was that as many as 24 CBDCs could go live by 2030, buoyed by many developing economies that are itching for an advantage. By comparison, there are only a handful of CBDCs in circulation today: the Bahamas, China, Eastern Caribbean, Jamaica, and Nigeria.

“More than 80% of central banks see potential value in having both a retail CBDC and a fast payment system, mostly because a retail CBDC has specific properties and may offer additional features,” BIS wrote in the report. “The survey suggests that there could be 15 retail and nine wholesale CBDCs publicly circulating in 2030.”

In 2023, many advanced markets have been experimenting with CBDCs, such as Japan and Russia. The US, Europe, and the UK are still in the research phase of the process. Future generations, whether in America or overseas, will suffer the consequences of introducing government-approved digital currencies. For now, based on various polling, the public is adamantly opposed to CBDCs and the countries that have launched these digitized versions are seeing little adoption.

Got Oil?

The second half of 2023 will be a compelling time for international energy markets, particularly crude oil. Investors might not be showing concern, but there are growing expectations that a vast oil supply deficit is looming, as many producers have reduced output volumes. The only event that could prevent this from occurring is a worldwide recession. But who even knows if this will transpire?

According to the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Short-Term Energy Outlook, oil demand will exceed supply in the year’s second half. In addition, the EIA anticipates that inventories will maintain a steady decline over the next five quarters. This, of course, will raise energy costs, with Brent, the international benchmark for oil prices, projected to climb to $81 per barrel this year and $84 a barrel in 2024.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) noted that global crude demand was robust enough to contribute to tighter stockpiles from July to December. While China’s economic recovery has been disappointing, the IEA says consumption trends remain strong. “Even in sluggish economic growth, China and other developing countries’ demand is strong,” IEA chief Fatih Birol told Reuters. “Taken together with the production cuts coming from key producing countries, we still believe that we may see tightness in the market in the second half of this year.”

Since the sharp selloff last month, crude oil prices have rebounded. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent have climbed nearly 6% this month to $76 and $80, respectively. Unfortunately, this could contribute to a higher headline inflation rate and bolster gasoline prices, which have surged close to 11% year-to-date.

Dude, Where’s My Banking Data?

The Federal Reserve presented the public with the good, the bad, and the ugly on the H.4.1 and H.8 data front. First, the positive development: US banks have witnessed deposit inflows of $104 billion, the second consecutive weekly jump. The bad news: Large bank loan volumes have diminished for two straight weeks, tumbling about $8 billion. The ugly: The central bank’s Bank Term Funding Program, which was launched after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, rose again after falling in the previous week. The emergency lending facility continued to firm above $100 billion. Suffice it to say, the banking turmoil might be stabilizing, but there is plenty of risks that need to be monitored.

Read More From Andrew Moran

All opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Liberty Nation.

Deficit Spending and Inflation

February 26, 2023 by Dan Mitchell

In this segment from a December interview, I explain that budget deficits are most likely to produce inflation in countries with untrustworthy governments.*

The simple message is that budget deficits are not necessarily inflationary. It depends how budget deficits are financed. If a government finances its budget deficits by selling bonds to private savers and investors, there is no reason to expect inflation.  But if a government finances its budget deficits by having its central bank create money, there is every reason to expect inflation. So why would politicians ever choose the second option? 

For the simple reason that private savers and investors are reluctant to buy bonds from some governments. And if those politicians can’t get more money by borrowing, and they also have trouble collecting more tax revenue, then printing money (figuratively speaking) is their only option (they could restrain government spending, but that’s the least-preferred option for most politicians). Let’s look at two real-world examples............To Read More....

Democrats and Republicans Are Both Deluded About the Nation’s Fiscal Outlook, By James C. Capretta February 24, 2023 - The competing budgetary myths of Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin. Both want to be seen as defenders of the middle class, and so they pledge to restrain deficits and debt without imposing any costs on families of average means. To hit spending and revenue targets, they contend that sacrifice is only required by less favored constituencies, although they differ on who should be on the receiving end of this concentrated fiscal pain. The problem for both is that, with the budget outlook deteriorating rapidly, their tales are becoming more implausible by the day. Voters may not mind in the short run, but eventually, reality will catch up. At that point, it will become clear that both parties have been peddling wishful thinking instead of serious plans because a sustainable fiscal course correction will require new policies that affect large numbers of Americans...............

High Tax, Big Spending States Are Out of Money

By Stephen Moore February 28, 2017 This Appeared Here

Governors and state legislators say they are running out of money again, and many are demanding tax hikes to close budget gaps. Here we go again. The cycle in state capitals from Albany to Sacramento is always the same: spend when times are good, tax when times are bad, and repeat.

More than half the states are facing big deficits this year, and they are mostly blue states like California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, New York, and Oregon. Wait. These are the highest tax states with some of the deepest pools of red ink. There’s got to be a message here.

But some ‎red states have money woes too. The biggest fight is in Kansas where the Republican-dominated legislature recently passed a massive income tax hike that would raise taxes on every small business in the state and every wage earner with income above $15,000. Fortunately, governor Sam Brownback vetoed the GOP tax hike, but they will be back.

So what is the source of the budget crises from coast to coast? First, on the revenue side, tax receipts are down because states‎ are front-line victims of the slow-growth era of the Obama years. When the U.S. economy sputters at only 1.6 percent as it did in 2016, state and local tax revenues barely trickle in. So much for the liberal spin that Obama left behind a healthy economy.

Revenues have plummeted in oil-producing states like Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Liberals are pushing big tax increases in each of these states that not so long ago gorged on new spending during the years of high prices. North Dakota had one year that the budget rose more than 50 percent.
The best thing Washington can do to help states is to pass the Trump tax cuts so we get faster economic growth. Nothing heals state budgets quicker than a dose of prosperity.
 

 The major reason states are in financial trouble is the eight-year state spending binge that almost no one is reporting on. Chris Edwards, a fiscal analyst at the Cato Institute, has run the numbers. He reports that “state general fund spending has soared 32 percent since 2010.” The National Association of State Budget Officers predicts a 4.3 percent hike in fiscal 2017 budgets — twice the inflation rate.
One reason state budgets have spun out of control is Obamacare. Some 20 million Americans have been added to state Medicaid rolls. For now, the feds pay most of the costs. But in several years the patients will still be on Medicaid but the costs will be shifted to the states. All the more reason to repeal Obamacare as rapidly as possible before the Medicaid caseloads grow by millions more.
It’s worth noting that many of the blue states that signed up for the Obamacare Medicaid expansions now face the biggest deficits.

Will tax hikes solve the problem? The answer can be found in Connecticut and Illinois. ‎These two states passed multi-billion-dollar income tax hikes “on the rich.” Both have seen their economies get crushed by the out-migration of tax filers to avoid the tax hikes. Today their deficits are still gigantic. Connecticut faces a near half-billion-dollar deficit and Democratic governor Malloy is calling for his third mega-tax increase to stop the red ink. Illinois has at least $6 billion in unpaid bills following its biggest tax increase in history.

Spending discipline and pro-growth tax reforms are the best formula for reviving state budgets. If Republicans who control 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers think they can tax their way back to prosperity, don’t be surprised if they find themselves back in the minority after 2018.

A Current Burden of Deficit Financing

Donald J. Boudreaux  – October 11, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research

My late Nobel-laureate colleague James Buchanan made many important contributions. Among the most significant is his proof, first offered in 1958, that Adam Smith and other classical economists were correct to argue that government projects that are funded with debt are ultimately paid for by the future citizens whose taxes must be raised (or whose government benefits must be reduced) to get the funds necessary for repayment. (Randy Holcombe and I explain further here.) With deficit financing, today’s citizens-taxpayers impose costs on tomorrow’s citizens-taxpayers.

It’s possible, of course, that today’s citizens-taxpayers can use deficit financing also to bestow benefits on tomorrow’s citizens-taxpayers. If, for example, government borrows money today to build a hydroelectric dam that will operate successfully for decades, tomorrow’s citizens-taxpayers get not only the liability of having to pay for this dam but also an asset in the form of the dam’s capacity to generate electricity. But even if citizens-taxpayers tomorrow unanimously agree that the value to them of the dam is higher than is the amount of taxes they must pay for the dam, the inescapable reality is that these future citizens-taxpayers are the individuals who pay for the dam. The dam is not free, and no means of fancy financing or accounting shenanigans can make it so.

Yet those of us who today explain that deficit-financed government projects are paid for by tomorrow’s citizens-taxpayers too often lose sight of a real burden that deficit financing does often impose on today’s citizens-taxpayers. This burden is excessive growth of government that harms the current generation.

When Buchanan explained the dangers of deficit financing, he almost always assumed that all members of the current generation are united in their interests to live at the expense of future generations, and that the current generation pursues those interests knowledgeably. For example, the current generation of citizens-taxpayers might unanimously welcome a $50 billion increase in defense spending if it is paid for with borrowed funds – that is, paid for by future generations – but not if this spending must be financed out of current tax receipts. Because deficit financing is possible, however, the government uses this method of financing to expand the defense budget by $50 billion. Today’s citizens-taxpayers purchase, and enjoy, an excessive amount of national defense only because they get to pass the bill onto their children and grandchildren. In this example, deficit financing imposes no burdens on anyone in the current generation.

But examples such as this one mask an important feature of reality. Because today’s citizens-taxpayers are quite diverse in their interests, preferences, understandings, and economic positions, government projects undertaken today and funded with debt can impose real burdens on at least some of today’s citizens-taxpayers. This conclusion holds even though it remains true that the full burden of paying for such projects falls only on tomorrow’s citizens-taxpayers.

Suppose, for example, that a majority of today’s citizens-taxpayers in America conclude that it’s a good idea to nationalize the steel industry. Further suppose that a Supreme Court ruling prohibits government from simply seizing steel mills; the Court rules that if government wants to acquire steel mills it must pay market prices for these firms. Finally suppose that upon learning that the market price is $500 billion, Americans today are unwilling to have their taxes raised by this amount for this purpose. If deficit financing were unavailable, the steel industry would remain in private hands.

Deficit financing, however, is available. By borrowing the $500 billion to purchase steel firms, government enables that subset of Americans who support nationalization of the steel industry to achieve their policy goal without having to pay for it. The entire $500 billion will be repaid in the future by citizens-taxpayers not yet born.

But there is nevertheless a burden that emerges in the current period from this deficit-financed policy move – namely, the inefficiencies that immediately arise from the nationalization. The amount of resources consumed to produce each ton of steel rises inefficiently because government bureaucrats have fewer incentives than do private owners to ensure that mills operate efficiently. The costs of this excessive consumption of resources by government-owned steel mills ripple throughout the economy in the form of diminished outputs and higher prices of countless other goods and services.

In this example, nearly all Americans – and even some non-Americans – today suffer an immediate (and ongoing) burden as a consequence of this deficit-financed policy. Some Americans who are so ideologically enamored with the notion of industry nationalization might be content to bear this burden, while many other Americans might remain unaware that the higher prices they experience throughout the economy are a direct result of the nationalization. But the fact remains that, in this example, deficit financing imposes a real burden on the current generation despite the fact that full responsibility for repaying the loan falls only on future generations.

This example of a nationalized steel industry is, of course, hypothetical. But its lessons apply in the real world. For instance, to the extent that government subsidies of farmers and of aircraft producers are funded with borrowed money, similar burdens are created immediately: Resources are diverted from efficient to inefficient uses, causing even today’s citizens-taxpayers to suffer as a result of deficit-financed government programs.

Deficit financing – by enabling people today to free-ride on people tomorrow – allows government to expand its size and reach beyond that which would be obtained if government were required to fund all of its current expenses out of current revenues, with no opportunity for deficit financing. In short, deficit financing paves a path for the unwarranted and wasteful expansion of government activity. Only someone who is convinced that government will undertake only economically worthwhile projects regardless of the means of financing – or someone who doesn’t understand economics – can look favorably upon deficit financing by government.

READ MORE

Donald J. Boudreaux

Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with American Institute for Economic Research and with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University. He is the author of the books The Essential Hayek, Globalization, Hypocrites and Half-Wits, and his articles appear in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, US News & World Report as well as numerous scholarly journals. He writes a blog called Cafe Hayek and a regular column on economics for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Boudreaux earned a PhD in economics from Auburn University and a law degree from the University of Virginia.

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The Watchdog is at the Door!

‘Doping the vote’ in South Texas triggers federal indictments - Shady ballot brokers are “doping the vote” in the Rio Grande Valley, an election-watch group says. Now the FBI is on the case. “(The politiqueras) took voters to their weed man after voting,” Logan Churchwell, a spokesman for True the Vote, told Watchdog.org. Trafficking in petty cash and dime bags, politiquerasround up voters for South Texas candidates, nearly all Democrats. The pay-for-ballot activity has resulted in 11 federal indictments so far. Republicans are turning up the heat on state Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, a Brownsville resident and longtime political kingmaker in the Rio Grande Valley.

Drink up! Taxpayers back bad loans for country clubs, boats, wineries - The Small Business Administration has backed loans for wineries, country clubs and boat dealers who couldn’t pay back the loans. There have been more than $8.7 billion in unpaid debts since taxpayers started partly funding the loans that are supposed to be covered by fees on lenders…

Vermont's middle class is hurting - I recently wrote about how Vermont is leading the nation in the growth in income inequality, despite (or, as I believe, because of) the expanding list of progressive policies Vermont has enacted over the past few decades. Two other reports highlight a corresponding fact that Vermont’s middle class is dying faster than every other state but one – California. One report by the Pew Charitable Trust shows that Vermont’s middle class declined by 5 percentage points (From 52.4 percent to 47.4 percent) between 2000 and 2013. The second, by 24/7 Wall Street looks at the more recent time frame between 2009 and 2013, in which Vermont’s middle class income growth declined by 5.9 percent — the second worst record in the nation. As this report states:….Vermont[’s] progressive experiment has blown up in the faces of our middle class….

Six months after New Jersey red light cameras go dark,world hasn’t ended - Red light cameras were supposed to reduce crashes in New Jersey and make people safer, but since cameras stopped issuing tickets, pedestrians and drivers may actually be less likely to get into an accident. The red light camera lobby warned of the dire consequences if New Jersey’s cameras went dark. And in the six months since, they claim Jersey drivers are back to their old ways, running red lights with reckless abandon. In the first three months after the cameras went dark, red light running reportedly surged in one city. The Traffic Safety Coalition, a group that includes red light camera company Redflex among its ‘partners,’claims that red light running increased by 116 percent in three months. The coalition even put out this video touting the numbers:……

Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s combination presidential campaign and Obamacare promo tour stopped this week in North Carolina - A local TV host asked Kasich — one of few Republicans to embrace Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion— what he would say to North Carolina lawmakers “adamantly against” expanding Medicaid. “We’ve taken $14 billion over the next seven years back to our state, of Ohio money that we sent to Washington,” Kasich replied Monday before defending the program’s benefits for drug addicts, the mentally ill and the working poor. Obamacare promises an open-ended stream of new federal Medicaid funding; there’s no pool of Ohio or California or North Carolina money for states to dip into. Every state expanding Medicaid increases the total cost. Kasich’s attempt to obscure the facts didn’t surprise Mitch Kokai, communications director for North Carolina’s free-market John Locke Foundation. Kasich, Kokai said, hasn’t simply tried to justify his decision to expand Medicaid but has“doubled down on it and said others should do the same.” Kasich’s Obamacare expansion cost $3.7 billion in its first 17 months and is already $1 billion over budget. Enrollment is much higher than projected, and so are costs per enrollee.

Lawmakers: Failing schools need more than just money - Philadelphia schools are in line for a $70 million bailout from the City Council this week.But money will only solve so many of the problems facing the School District of Philadelphia. According to a pair of lawmakers, turning around its worst schools req uires more than just dollars and cents. State Reps. John Taylor, R-177th District, and Jordan Harris, D-186th, represent Philadelphia and both support legislation aimed at changing the way the state turns around the city’s worst schools. “For failing schools, money alone is not the solution,” the two wrote in an op-ed. “Statewide, there are 150 schools that are, by any measure, not serving their families. And they have consistently underperformed — in many cases, for more than a decade — despite receiving $1.3 billion in public funding last year alone.”…..

Report: Texas has $81 billion in hidden debt – Texas has $81 billion in hidden debt that doesn’t show up on balance sheets, according to a new study by Truth in Accounting. This means Texas is $62.6 billion short of the money it needs to pay its long-term bills, which the group calculates as equal to $8,300 per taxpayer. These figures do not include the $333 billion in bond debt run up by local government agencies, particularly school districts. When it comes to calculating unfunded liabilities, a few changes in assumptions can produce wildly different figures, so we took a closer look at Truth in Accounting’s numbers. The surprise here is that, if anything, Truth in Accounting is understating the magnitude of the problem…….Even the new accounting rules can understate matters. Texas’ major pension funds are advised by the same actuarial firm that was telling Detroit it could increase benefits right up until the city went bankrupt……Annual pension costs are calculated as a percentage of payroll. In household terms, this is like scheduling balloon payments and planning to cover them with a raise that never arrives. The result is much the same: a debt snowball that takes up more and more of the monthly budget but never shrinks…..

Lincoln schools to spend $150,000 to better ‘engage’ with people - In the wake of last year’s purple penguin fiasco, the Lincoln school board is on the brink of spending $150,000 to improve its “community engagement.” A district spokeswoman says the outlay isn’t a direct result of the controversy, but is intended to help the district better engage with the community, either by helping staffers better address questions and concerns or buying a software system, presumably to monitor social media. A Nebraska middle school made national headlines after discouraging teachers from calling students boys or girls. The school district generatednational headlines after middle school staffers gave teachers training documents advising them not to use “gendered expressions” by calling students“boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen,” but to instead use more generic expressions like campers, readers, athletes or even “purple penguins” to be more “gender inclusive.”…

Drivers licenses for illegal immigrants now accepted as employment documents – A change in guidance from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services makes driver’s licenses for illegals acceptable ID for employment, creating a new shortcut for illegal immigrants to get jobs. Federal law prohibits employers from hiring illegal immigrants. However, a recent change by USCIS requires employers to accept driver’s privilege cards as proof of identity, even though the cards are uniquely granted to individuals with no legal presence in the country. According to guidance USCIS issued in May, a driver privilege card issued by a state is an acceptable List B document for I-9 employment forms “if it contains a photograph or identifying information such as name, date of birth, sex, height, color of eyes, and address.”…..

VA quietly drops criminal investigation of whistleblower after year of intimidation - A social worker at a Louisiana Veterans Affairs hospital is no longer under criminal investigation by his employer for accessing a secret list that he used as proof to show that 2,700 vets languished – including 37 who died – awaiting care. It’s been a year since Shea Wilkes, a decorated Army Reservist, went to the media with evidence that the Overton Brooks VA Medical Center in Shreveport kept an off-the-books appointment list. The nationwide scandal that followed cost the VA secretary his job – and nearly cost Wilkes his position. He was demoted and harassed, and saw any future advancement evaporate while the VA Inspector General treated him as a suspect rather than a whistleblower. On June 24, Wilkes’ attorney received a phone call: The Inspector General agents had dropped their probe……

Will Colorado taxpayers be investors in Iran? - Since 2008, Colorado’s Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) has had a policy of divesting from companies known to be doing substantial business in Iran. If the recently-concluded agreement with Iran is upheld by Congress, that could be about to change. The taxpayers of Colorado and PERA members could find their retirement funds investing in that country. Daniel Greenfield, in Front Page Magazine, reports that Article 25 of the agreement requires the US government to pressure states and localities to adopt policies consistent with the lifting of sanctions (emphasis added):……

Lord of the Nannies: One Nanny to Rule Them All - It’s been two years since Mayor Bill de Blasiotook office in the Big Apple with a promise to rid Manhattan of horse-drawn carriages. He’s still fighting to get the ban through the city council, but it seems unlikely he’ll ever succeed. While the mayor is worrying about transportation from the 19th century, members of the city council are taking aim at the 20th century. A bill in front of the council would ban the use of helicopters in New York City for sightseeing tours, cracking down on an industry that thrills tourists and supports hundreds of jobs simply because cranky city council members don’t like the noise. Because if they could only get rid of the helicopters, New York City would be a quiet, peaceful, tranquil place, right? Both proposed bans, according to recent news reports, face the same opposition: a public that disagrees with them. The Wall Street Journal, on Sunday, took a long look at de Blasio’s effort to shut down the house-drawn carriages in and around Central Park. During his mayoral campaign, he said the rides were inhumane and promised to shut down the industry during his first week on the job.……..

Nanny State of theWeek: FDA bans trans-fats - Enjoy your brownies, donuts and other shrink-wrapped snacks while they last. That’s right, the federal government is coming for your stash of Hot Pockets, popcorn and Ding-Dongs. The federal Food and Drug Administration approved new rules last week that will effectively ban trans fats within three years, forever changing the face of snacking and fast food. Specifically, the FDA is going after partially hydrogenated oils, the main ingredient in the trans fats that liter the diets of many Americans. Food companies have until 2018 to remove the oils from their products. But does the government have the power to force people to eat healthy? The FDA is charged, in part, with protecting Americans from food that is unsafe to eat. They inspect meat, for example, to make sure we’re not going to get mad cow disease. The agency is now expanding that role to include trans fats, which the FDA has determined to be “no longer safe for use in food…..

Union boss wants teachers waging war for ‘social justice’ - While most Americans celebrated Independence Day, the National Education Association bemoaned America’s lack of “social justice.” In a July 4 speech bristling with leftist buzzwords, NEA executive director John Stocks implored union members to be part of a national “progressive” movement.  “America is not working for most Americans,” Stocks told several thousand representatives of the union’s state and local affiliates at NEA’s annual meeting. Stocks, a white male who was paid $412,398 with teachers union dues last year, blamed the country’s struggles on income inequality and institutional racism. “I personally believe that we cannot challenge institutional racism without understanding the insidious entitlements of white privilege in America,” Stocks said, noting that he himself has benefited from “white privilege.”…..

Christie promises to ‘tell it like it is,’ but hides truth in New Jersey- Chris Christie declared his candidacy for president Tuesday, promising America that he would “tell it like it is.” But his track record in New Jersey shows the governor has often gone to great lengths to hide the truth from taxpayers. “We are going to tell it like it is,” Christie proclaimed in a gymnasium packed with supporters at Livingston High School. “The truth will set us free.” In contrast, the governor has often forced New Jersey Watchdog and other news outlets to go to court to win release of public records the governor and his administration have refused to disclose….

SCOTUS will hear Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case- The U.S. Supreme Court announced this morning it will hear the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which seeks to eliminate agency shop fees that unions take from non-members. The game-changing lawsuit argues that forcing public employees to pay fees to unions they do not support is a violation of their First Amendment rights. The announcement was made during Tuesday’s “cleanup” session before summer break. The next regular SCOTUS conference is scheduled for September 28 and a decision on Friedrichs is expected by June 30, 2016. “This is an excellent first step,” Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network, told Watchdog. “We should know within a year if the justices will do the right thing and let all teachers and other workers have a choice whether or not to pay dues to a union, as is done in 25 states. We have choices everywhere else in life, why not with union participation?” The Friedrichs case would determine if workers should be required to pay “agency shop” fees to labor unions if they choose not to be a member. In many states, employees who chose not to associate with unions are still forced to pay a smaller membership fee for representation in collective bargaining……

Starting Wednesday, Obamacare will punish businesses who help employees with health care - Employers who reimburse their workers for health care costs will face massive tax penalties beginning Wednesday. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, with its mandate that all Americans purchase insurance and requirement for businesses to offer employees insurance plans, many small companies provided coverage by directly reimbursing medical costs or for the cost of private insurance plans. Businesses do it because that’s a less complicated process than dealing with an official health insurance plan, but continuing to do so after July 1 could cost them hundreds of dollars in fines each day….

Laid-off worker welfare program doesn't work, renewed anyway- A billion-dollar welfare program to help laid-off workers displaced by foreign competition has been saved from extinction, even though it’s been judged ineffective and wasteful according to the federal government’s own commissioned studies….

Ruffled feathers:Larger wind turbines bad news for birds, groups say - To supply more energy to more states across the country, the U.S. Department of Energy wants to see wind turbines get a lot bigger. But many bird lovers — the American Bird Conservancy in particular — don’t like the idea, saying taller towers and bigger blades make for a deadly combination. “This expansion, together with larger turbines and larger blades, will mean more birds will die,” said Michael Parr, chief conservation officer at the American Bird Conservancy. “Our position is, if there’s something you can do about it, you should. The Audubon Society also has concerns. “Our advocacy would be to get those (turbines) tested for impacts on birds before we deploy them on a large scale,” said Garry George, the renewable energy director of Audubon California.