US President Joe Biden warned Wednesday about the 'storm of the century' as Hurricane Milton churned toward Florida’s western coast. He and the head of his disaster management agency urged residents…

Meet Henry Davis, my new favorite person on the Internet! This guy is awesome, I don’t know how I missed seeing this when he made it last year. Behold, I give you “The Donald Trump Supporters Rally…

President Trump is rolling into Madison Square Garden on October 27th. He’s proving that even deep-blue Manhattan isn’t safe from the MAGA train. With the election down to the wire, he’s taking…

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Expect the unexpected, especially during the month before a U.S. presidential election. It’s called an October surprise.

One of biology’s greatest challenges.

This could trigger auroras as far south as Alabama.

Not the music he was raised on. The post “Watching him made me ill”: The artist that made James Hetfield sick to listen to first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

No matter the result of next month’s election, President Joe Biden will soon leave the White House. That makes it a good time for a nearly final assessment of his and Vice President Kamala Harris’ first-term legacy on federal spending and debt — a tragedy of epic proportion. Unfortunately, neither Harris nor her rival on the campaign trail has made a priority of fixing this problem. According to brand-new Congressional Budget Office numbers, the 2024 budget deficit is around $1.8 trillion. It’s heading to $2.8 trillion in 10 years, assuming a very rosy scenario. Worrisome too is that interest payments on government debt will eat up over 20 percent of revenue in 2025. As the Hoover Institution’s Joshua Rauh noted, if you remove the revenue earmarked for the Social Security Old Age and Disability Insurance program, that number jumps to 27.9 percent and rising. The federal government’s debt is now over $28 trillion by one measurement. That’s $2 trillion more than last year and $6 trillion more than when the Biden–Harris team entered the White House. This debt stands at 100 percent of America’s GDP, which, other than a one-year exception at the end of World War II, is the highest ratio we’ve ever had. Unlike in 1946, today’s debt is only going to grow. Indeed, debt-to-GDP took a nearly 30-year dive to reach 23 percent in 1974. Today, federal debt is projected — again, under the rosiest scenarios — to rise to 166 percent in 30 years. Now, the Biden–Harris administration isn’t the only one responsible for this debt spiral. Former President Donald Trump was also bad. As Brian Riedl wrote recently, “Trump had already signed legislation and executive orders adding $4 trillion to 10-year deficits before the bipartisan pandemic response added $4 trillion more.” That’s serious red ink. But when Biden and Harris took office, most of the pandemic was behind us. The economy was reopening, vaccination was underway, and the economy resumed growing. However, the end of this emergency didn’t mean a return to less spending and lower levels of debt. Biden had other plans. Instead of suggesting, like then-President Barack Obama did after the Great Recession, that he would halve the deficit in five years, Biden decided it was time to extend pandemic emergency programs. Three months into the term and four months after the last $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill, the Biden–Harris administration pushed through another $1.9 trillion bill. This spending was so out of proportion with the state of the economy, which faced an output gap of only $420 billion, that we suffered the worst inflation in 40 years. This wasn’t just a serious hit to the deficit — it also cost the typical family more than $10,000. The administration then decided to push several large, unpaid-for bills. Riedl lists some: “$1.4 trillion in new spending in omnibus appropriations bills, $620 billion in student loan bailouts, $520 billion for new veterans’ benefits, a $440 billion infrastructure law, a semiconductor bill, and $360 billion in new SNAP and health spending forced through by executive order.” Some economists wrongly insisted that adding debt is no big deal as long as interest rates are low. This condition certainly doesn’t apply to the Biden–Harris spending spree. Add it all up, including interest payments on the debt, and you get $5 trillion on top of what was already there. The impact of this irresponsible spending spree is plain to see in other CBO numbers. When Biden and Harris entered the White House, the budget deficit was a pandemic-influenced $2.3 trillion, and it was set to fall to $905 billion by 2024. As mentioned above, it’s now twice what it was supposed to be. Even this is nothing compared to what Biden and Harris hoped to spend. They tried to push out the $2.3 trillion Build Back Better bill. The Supreme Court blocked a much larger version of the student loan forgiveness program. This White House has been terrible for our finances. Now that Harris is running for the top job, she shows no signs of slowing the spending down. She wants trillions in tax credits for many different special interest groups, from first-time homeowners to parents to favored industries, and she continues to push through student loan forgiveness. Trump, with his expensive brand of populism, is only slightly better. No matter who wins the election, that person will inherit a gigantic deficit and major interest payments that will only go up, thanks to an entitlement-spending explosion no politician wants to acknowledge. Good luck to the next president, and heaven help the rest of us. Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post The Biden–Harris Fiscal Record Is Anemic. What Happens Next? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

For some reason, YouTube has recently decided that I really like 60-second skits about banks and insurance companies. I’m not sure what I managed to watch or say that persuaded the algorithm that finance is a passion of mine, but here we are. Among the gurus informing me that using ChatGPT to write a cover letter is the way to go (never mind that I’m not in the market for a job) and urging me to max out my 401k every year is Chris Kohler. He’s not a “business bestie.” He’s an Australian finance nerd with a wry sense of humor who may just convince you that the whole financial edifice we rely on needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from scratch. (READ MORE: ‘Antiracism’ is Coming for Medical Science) He’s roasted higher education and banks for coming up with the student loan system, major news corporations for lying about the economic situation most of the middle class finds itself in right now, and the incentives causing the housing crisis. But what he hasn’t talked a lot about (probably because he’s from Australia, where universal healthcare is the norm) is the mess of a healthcare industry we Americans have to deal with. Just this morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that inflation is still very much a real thing when it comes to health insurance. The average family premium costs an absurd $25,500 per year — that figure is $3,000 more than it was just two years ago, and it’s only expected to go up in 2025. For now, businesses are swallowing those costs, which may seem fine (unless you run a small business), but it won’t be when wages don’t go up as much as inflation has. The whole thing is a bit discouraging to dig into. Hospitals and doctors can charge exorbitant amounts ($450 for a 30-minute visit to a specialist or several thousand for an MRI), and most customers don’t care because it’s covered by insurance. You might think that insurance companies would then advocate for lower prices, and they do, but they also charge higher premiums. (READ MORE: Health Care: Trump vs. Harris) It’s a whole complicated mess of a system and, while we’re grateful for advanced medications and specialties that allow us to recover and thrive after a bout with cancer or a debilitating car accident, it’s tempting to wonder if there couldn’t be a better way to handle this whole thing. It’s not that universal healthcare is the answer (you just end up paying for it in taxes anyway), but rather that charging businesses (and small-business owners or self-employed Americans) $25,500 a year for an insurance policy that a family may or may not use just feeds the medical beast and drives costs up. At this point, it should be clear to election campaign teams that Americans are concerned about the rising costs of anything — especially anything they need to live happy and healthy lives (groceries, gas, housing, etc.). That would be why the Harris campaign, according to the Hill, has decided that it’s time to lean into health care. On Monday, the vice president promised on X that “Tim Walz and I will strengthen the Affordable Care Act, continue to take on Big Pharma, and cap the cost of prescription medication for all Americans. Because we believe that health care should be a right—not just a privilege for those who can afford it.” (READ MORE: Transgender Politics Shouldn’t Trump Science) Does that sound like a catchphrase for a campaign for universal healthcare? Yes. Because Kamala Harris is proposing to expand the Affordable Care Act. Now is probably a good time to remind Americans that Obamacare “increased the cost of health care and health insurance,” “increases Americans’ reliance on the federal government,” and is far more expensive per person than anticipated (a cost that taxpayers have to pay). So, let’s just get more of that, I guess? A solution to the rapidly spiraling problem of healthcare costs driving health insurance premiums does not make itself readily apparent. The part of me that is young and dumb thinks burning the whole thing down isn’t a bad way to go. Unfortunately, Edmund Burke was right: taking a blowtorch to institutions and systems is rarely the best policy. There are doctors out there, fortunately, who are at least trying to take primary health care out of the hands of insurance companies and massive hospital systems — kudos to them. They probably are the solution. The post Kamala Is Right: Healthcare is Broken. But Obamacare Isn’t the Fix appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.