U.S. Inflation Tame Despite Food Price Rises
Washington (AFP) — Consumer prices in the United States rose a bare 0.1 percent in July despite strong gains in food costs, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The slowdown in consumer inflation after three months of faster gains left the year-on-year consumer price index (CPI) up 2.0 percent, a level the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy […]
Obamacare Cost Forecast Is Reduced 7 Percent By U.S. Fiscal Watchdog
By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Lower-than-expected health insurance premiums under Obamacare will help cut the long-term cost of the program 7 percent over the next decade, according to the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office. The government’s reduction of $104 billion in subsidies for those premiums was the main factor that […]
The Death Penalty and The Costs of an Obsession
WASHINGTON — The unseemly love affair of some American politicians with the death penalty is bad for justice and bad for our country’s standing in the world. It inflicts a wholly unnecessary moral stain on a nation that rightly preaches the rule of law to everyone else. Even more remarkable is the indifference that five […]
The Costs of Shutting Down
What happens to the state economy when the government shuts down? Minnesotans are finding out. The state government cut off most nonessential services on July 1, and unless Minnesota Republicans and Democrats overcome their recent budget impasse, the state economy will continue to suffer severe losses, some obvious and others more subtle. 22,000 state workers […]
Iraq and Afghanistan: The $4 Trillion Wars
This post was written by National Memo Editor-in-Chief Joe Conason. Anyone paying attention to the costs of US military action in Iraq and Afghanistan must have known that the President badly underestimated those numbers on June 22, when he told the nation that we have spent “a trillion dollars” waging war over the past decade. […]
Fatal State: California Spends $184 Million A Year On Death Penalty
The Supreme Court briefly invalidated the death penalty in the mid 1970s before reinstating it just a few years later. Since then, California, one of the few states that continues to carry out the practice on regular basis, has spent an insane amount of money killing criminals: Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on […]