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Fed chairman plans to stay on reserve board

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced last week that he's going to remain on the Federal Reserve Board until 2028 even as he by law surrenders his chairmanship. The announcement came even after President Donald Trump agreed to drop his unwise lawsuit against Powell for funding a $2 billion new Taj Mahal building down the street from the White House. Powell will be the first Fed chair to stay on the Fed's Board of Directors in 50 years. This isn't the way it's done. It's bad form. Only once did he come within spitting distance of his inflation target. February 2021 was the only ...

It is possible to defeat poverty

In 1964, former President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an "unconditional war on poverty." He warned it "will not be a short or easy struggle," but that "the richest Nation on earth can afford to win it." He was right that it wouldn't be a short or easy struggle. Johnson and Congress created a host of new federal programs, including the Job Corps, Head Start and the Office of Economic Opportunity. His "Great Society" programs included Medicare and Medicaid. In 1965, he signed a housing bill that included rent subsidies. It's grown from there. In 2022, the Cato Institute ...

Who is monitoring debt?

People of a certain age will recall a lyric from the Tennessee Ernie Ford song "Sixteen Tons": "Another day older and deeper in debt." I thought of that song as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth asked Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion budget for fiscal year 2027 to put the military on what he called a "wartime footing." Hegseth says the Pentagon needs the money for more drones, munitions and modernized systems. Though President Trump has denied it, bragging that we have the strongest military in the world, it would appear that the Iran conflict has significantly depleted U.S military ...

Ruling will promote corrupt electoral maps

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. cautiously praised the hard-won Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a "great step forward" toward removing obstacles that kept Black Americans from voting. It was. But last week, in striking down a voter redistricting map in Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken that embattled law and the movement that marched and campaigned for it on a disastrous step backward. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker expressed the sentiments of many Americans, particularly Democrats, saying of the high court ruling, "It is an attack on a crown jewel of our democracy." As an ...

‘Drill, baby, drill’ was beginning of energy policy wisdom

It's not 1973 anymore, and that's a very good thing for the United States. Back then, the U.S. imported more than a third of its oil, much of it from the Middle East, and it paid the price. Now, it's in a transformed position. "Drill, baby, drill" is arguably the most successful public policy of the past 20 years. It started life in 2008 as a catchphrase coined by Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, and has now been effected, with enormous economic and strategic benefits to the United States. As anyone who has filled up their car recently knows, we aren't immune ...

We lost one of great grumps

In every school, work or personal gathering, you need at least one grump for the group to thrive. Grumps do the work that no one else will. When everyone else is being mercilessly upbeat, they swim against the tide and complain. The grump may follow your inane rules — but grudgingly, oh, boy, will it be grudgingly — but they never let them pass unremarked upon. Where other folks try to fit in, the grumps stand out, not because they want to, but because they must. Even in a children's show like "Sesame Street," you need an Oscar the Grouch to balance out what otherwise ...