Connecticut has joined a handful of states banning utilities from passing on the costs of lobbying the state government to energy consumers.
A new law, tucked into a package of bills signed by Gov. Ned Lamont last week, will prevent large investor-owned utilities from recovering the costs associated with lobbying, as well as legal fees, memberships, dues or contributions to a business or industry trade associations or groups, among other changes.
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WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — It’s been a busy start to what Gov. Kim Reynolds is calling a “big and bold” legislative session. The first bill the Republican signed into law was the Students First Act, a historic universal school choice bill allowing parents and guardians to tap into publicly funded education savings accounts to help cover the cost of private school tuition. Reynolds then signed a major medical malpractice tort reform bill capping noneconomic damages, a bill hated by personal injury lawyers but heralded by health care providers, hospitals, insurers and others who say costly litigation has helped push up health care costs. Now, Reynolds has her eye on big government. “We’re fighting hard every day to make government smaller,” the governor said at a recent Iowa campaign stop for Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. Reynolds’ mission: Trim Iowa’s 37 executive branch cabinet-level departments from 37 to 16. The plan calls for reducing state government office space footprint to “align with industry standards and generate cost savings” and consolidating technology systems and services. Reynolds also wants to align regionally operated community-based corrections programs within the Iowa Department of Corrections. The aim, the governor says, is to strengthen the corrections…
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Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) in studio to discuss the relation between state and local governments. Johnson called to decrease the number of Metro Nashville city council members.
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Members of the Connecticut General Assembly and top-level statewide officials receive significant pay raises Wednesday that include a jump in base salary for the part-time lawmakers from $28,000 to $40,000.
State lawmakers voted last May to approve the legislation that grants the pay hikes for themselves and other specified leadership positions.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed recovering journalist Clint Brewer in the studio to comment upon the local mainstream media reporting of the scathing DCS report released by Tennessee comptroller.
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As lawmakers convene in Atlanta on Monday for the start of a new legislative session, Gov. Brian Kemp wants to give state employees $5,000 raises and increase their benefits.
Two budgets are passed through the General Assembly every legislative session. Lawmakers must review and approve spending for the remainder of the current fiscal year, also known as the Amended Fiscal Year (AFY) budget, and approve the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
Kemp told state agencies in August not to propose spending increases for the next two years as a safeguard against uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Why are progressive regions of the country—especially in the old major liberal cities (e.g., Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle)—institutionalizing de facto racial quotas through “proportional representation” based on “disparate impact”? Why are they promoting ethnic and racial chauvinism, such as allowing college students to select the race of their own roommates, calibrating graduation ceremonies by skin color and tribe, segregating campus “safe spaces” by race, and banning literature that does not meet commissariat diktats?
Why are they turning into one-party political fiefdoms separating the rich and poor, increasingly resembling feudal societies as members of the middle class flee or disappear? What does it mean that they are becoming more and more intolerant in their cancel culture, and quasi-religious intolerance of dissent, on issues from climate change and abortion-on-demand to critical race theory and wokeness?
Isn’t it strange that there are entire states and regions wholly reliant on the money and power of “one-crop” Big Tech monopolies? And why, in the 21st century no less, are Democratic-controlled counties, cities, and entire states nullifying federal law?
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Governors in wildfire country had a message for President Joe Biden and Congress on Friday: it’s time for the federal government to step in and manage its forests because their state resources are running on empty.
In 2021, 83 large fires have burned more than 1.7 million acres in 13 states, the National Interagency Fire Center reports. Some 547,000 acres have been lost to fires in Oregon, where the state’s Bootleg Fire has swelled to 413,000 acres and has become the nation’s largest fire. While some 22,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel beat back the flames nationwide, states governments are calling on Biden to help them rewrite the nation’s firefighting playbook.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said as much to Biden on Friday at a virtual news briefing. More specifically, Newsom took aim at the U.S. Forest Service response to the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe that grew to 625 acres before creeping into Nevada over little more than a three-week span this month.
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When state health director Robert Gordon abruptly resigned in January, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer didn’t mention his $155,506-taxpayer-funded payout.
That sum was equal to nine months of Gordon’s annual salary and health benefits. The monies received by Gordon release the state from any potential legal claims.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss two articles citing California’s bad government and Chinese infiltration.
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A majority of registered voters in America favor pandemic-related policy decisions be made at the state and local levels, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.
Just over 50% of voters would prefer “letting state and local officials determine the appropriate policies for their communities,” while 37% favor “a national shutdown of the economy that closed all but essential businesses.”
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Americans have come together in the fight against the invisible enemy, but this situation has been made worse by some politicians who seek to take advantage of this pandemic and our recovery while so many are suffering. President Trump has been working around the clock to slow the spread of the Wuhan virus and get the economy going again, but Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have used this crisis to push their radical socialist agenda and grow the size of government. Twice now, Nancy Pelosi held American families, workers, and businesses hostage for days by delaying relief funding in the name of securing tens of millions of dollars for the Kennedy Center, pushing her Green New Deal, changing voting laws, and growing government to advance her radical socialist agenda.
Even more recently, there have been calls to give handouts to failing state and local governments, not because of the coronavirus, but because these states have been mismanaged and run irresponsibly. The American taxpayer should not bail out state and local governments for the reckless fiscal decisions made before the coronavirus.
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The United States Constitution does contain a few references relative to immigration and naturalization as well as to persons seeking to enter the United States in contravention of its laws — whether violently or non-violently and whether singly or in the form of a human tsunami. In its Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, the Constitution specifically grants Congress the power “To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization….” By expressly allocating this capacity to Congress, the Constitution seeks to prevent the confusion which would inevitably result if an individual state could itself bestow U.S. citizenship upon a person not born within the boundaries of that — or any other — state. Construing Clause 4, the United States Supreme Court, in the 1892 case of Boyd v. Nebraska ex rel. Thayer, defined “naturalization” as “…the act of adopting a foreigner, and clothing him with the privileges of a native [U.S.] citizen.” In Clause 11 of that same Article I, Section 8, the Constitution authorizes Congress “To declare War…and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water….” Interpreting Clause 11, the High Court ruled in the 1795 case of Penhallow v. Doane that the war power of the United States government is…
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