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$200 billion, $2.2 trillion, $900 billion, $1.9 trillion. Over a year, Congress has passed $5.2 trillion in extraordinary spending and President Biden wants another $3-4 trillion, split between infrastructure and social spending.

When a normal federal budget, pre-COVID, was $4.4 trillion, and with borrowing, not taxes, funding nearly half of federal spending, its not crazy to ask how much is too much, before we risk huge inflation.

Modern monetary theory is a trendy philosophy AOC is a fan that holds that the government can spend as much money as it wants. Drinks all around! Even if bondholders dont feel like lending to us to make up the difference in spending and revenues, the Federal Reserve can create new money through keystrokes, argues the first-ever MMT textbook, published in 2019.

The Fed has been doing that. In early 2008, the amount of money available in the U.S. economy was $7.5 trillion. By 2012, it had risen to more than $10 trillion. Much of this was the Fed printing electronic dollars, to encourage people to spend after the economy crashed: the Fed grew its own holdings from less than $1 trillion to more than $3 trillion.

(This may sound confusing, but it is no different than if you received a bank statement listing the amount of money in your checking account, didnt like it, and so took a pen and added some zeroes.)

That didnt cause inflation (sort of), so why should this?

But this time is different. In a year, the Fed has nearly doubled its own holdings (again, that pen!) from $4 trillion to $7.7 trillion. Money in the U.S. economy has risen from $15.4 trillion to $19.7 trillion, partly because people who have kept their jobs have so little to spend on, with travel and entertainment off limits.

People who lost jobs need relief. But relief is different from hosing the economy with cash.

The danger of too much spending is that it doesnt create productive goods or services; it just makes things cost more. Thats especially true because, when the economy opens up, people will spend the money theyve saved theyre already searching for plane flights.

As people can go places, theyll use stimulus to bid up the price of travel, or a restaurant meal. Its theoretically great if the flight attendant or the waiter get paid more, but they will also pay more for rent and gas.

What about infrastructure, Bidens new multi-trillion-dollar push? We need better, faster trains, and dams that dont break.

Obama spent $60 billion a year on infrastructure, so why not spend $500 billion a year, as the Biden plan reportedly proposes? Why not spend $500 trillion?

This could mean classic inflation: too much money chasing too few goods. Windmills need huge amounts of steel or fiberglass; burrowing tunnels requires specialized machines and experienced or trained workers. The price of key commodities such as copper is soaring, on the expectation of higher demand.

The academic version of modern monetary theory actually warns against inflation. Inflation is a real danger, wrote economist Stephanie Kelton in her MMT book. But the politicians havent read the fine print or dont really care.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institutes City Journal.

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$1 trillion? Why not $5 trillion! For progressives, the sky is no longer the limit on spending - New York Post

CLEVELAND, Ohio - There was a time, I think, when people not only knew what they stood for and why, but they basically understood what drove people on the other side of the political and philosophical spectrum. They might not agree, but at least they generally knew why they didnt agree.

In that way, the world made a certain amount of sense to us all.

But more and more, that seems not to be the case. We are an ever-increasing mystery to each other. This does not bode well for the chances of us reinstituting a cohesive society a shared goal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness even if we have different ideas on how to get there.

For one example, I spent much of the last four years answering questions from my liberal friends that went something like this:

How can you defend such a (pick your disparaging description) as (pick your orange-themed insult) to be your president?

Sometimes the questioners were combative and demeaning, deserving of neither time nor geniality. But often enough they were earnestly attempting to understand how I, a person they liked, could vote for such a man. I would try to explain that I separated the boorish human being from the policies I preferred over what I considered to be a catastrophic alternative and was generally met only with sad, perplexed looks and a shake of the head.

For my part, Ive had questions too, and now that liberals seem to be in charge of everything, its as good a time as any to ask them.

The questions arent focused on one person, as had been the case from the other side during the recent quadrennial. Not that Im a Joe Biden fan but most of these issues predate him. And besides, I know that the only reason he is president today is that hes not Donald Trump.

My confusion stems from cancel culture, which is nothing new. But although it has become the province of the left, I have a hard time putting the liberals I know and respect together with it. To paraphrase the most famous thing that Mark Twain didnt say, everyone complains about cancel culture but nobody does anything about it.

And my question is, why not?

Who really supports the excesses of cancel culture? And if most on the left dont, then how and why has it amassed such power?

The urge to ridicule is strong, but lets keep it respectful and earnest, because Id truly like to know the thinking.

Bari Weiss, a former columnist and editor for The New York Times who resigned last summer after her own brush with cancel culture, earlier this month wrote a powerful indictment of the movement, and a call to action in opposing it. You can find it at tinyurl.com/baricol, and it is well worth reading

Weiss left after an outcry from her Times colleagues forced the ouster of editorial page editor James Bennet for the sin of publishing an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton that called for using military force against recent rioters, which they said made them feel in danger. In her recent piece, she offers a partial list of those who have been punished by what she calls the illiberal left because of public wrongthink:

They are feminists who believe there are biological differences between men and women. Journalists who believe their job is to tell the truth about the world, even when its inconvenient. Doctors whose only creed is science. Lawyers who will not compromise on the principle of equal treatment under the law. Professors who seek the freedom to write and research without fear of being smeared. In short, they are centrists, libertarians, liberals and progressives who do not ascribe to every single aspect of the new far-left orthodoxy.

And instead of rebuttals, they are met with vengeful efforts to silence or punish.

Examples are everywhere:

A Rutland, Vermont, school principal named Tiffany Riley was fired last year because she made the following and similar statements on her personal Facebook page: While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose Black race over human race.

A UCLA lecturer named William Peris was investigated and condemned by the university for showing a film clip and reading Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in a virtual class on the history of racism, because both included the N word.

Actress Gina Carano was fired from her role in the Disney hit series The Mandalorian, and her action figure withdrawn, because she commented on social media that she thought there was fraud in the recent presidential election, and was skeptical about wearing masks during the pandemic.

In Burbank, California, middle and high school English teachers were warned not to use To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and other classic novels because of concerns over racist passages in the books.

And J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved Harry Potter books, has come under fire in recent months from several actors from the Harry Potter movies and many others, who have branded her transphobic, and a TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist).

Among her sins were her defense of a British government worker who lost her job for saying that people cannot change their biological sex, and for making fun of a headline on the environmental website devex, that used the term people who menstruate instead of women.

Dress however you please, Rowling responded in a tweet. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult wholl have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?

That seems a logical response to me, but that didnt stop her from being savaged by the woke mob and a host of former friends.

There are dozens hundreds of other examples, and more every day.

If your politics are progressive, does any of that make sense to you? If so, Id love to know why. And if not, why arent you calling your fellow progressives out on it? Is it just that youre afraid of being canceled yourself?

As Bari Weiss wrote, It is our duty to resist the crowd in this age of mob thinking. It is our duty to speak truth in an age of lies. It is our duty to think freely in an age of conformity Keeping the spirit of liberty alive in an age of creeping illiberalism is nothing less than our moral obligation.

Strong words, but is anyone listening?

Ted Diadiun is a member of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

To reach Ted Diadiun: tdiadiun@cleveland.com

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Why are progressives allowing cancel culture free rein? Ted Diadiun - cleveland.com

This column is part of our ongoing Opinion commentary on faith, called Living Our Faith. Find this weeks reader question and get weekly roundups of the project in your email inbox by signing up for the Living Our Faith newsletter.

Progressive bashing of evangelicals and Catholics is getting a little old, as is the converse. It is pointless, alienating and risks becoming an exercise in self-righteousness.

This is particularly so when the charge is that these groups are unloving and unaccepting without acknowledging that the meaning of the terms love and acceptance are part of the disagreement.

The most recent occasion for expressions of everything from progressive disappointment to progressive outrage was a statement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved by Pope Francis, declaring that homosexual unions cannot be considered licit, and therefore cannot be blessed.

Catholics, traditional evangelicals and Orthodox Christians find in the biblical narrative and the tradition of the church support for a particular understanding of the created order that they find intellectually coherent and emotionally satisfying. It appears in this document to be hierarchical and binary in its animal form, gendered with regard to humans, ordered by eternal laws, and embraced in its entirety by God, whose relationship with it gives it purpose and meaning.

The relationship of God to this created order is characterized by the word love, and thus the maintenance and restoration of this order is the essential act of love. The life of Christ, and particularly his death on the cross, is the ultimate act of divine love to restore this order.

When love is defined in this way, acts that discipline individuals into conformity with the created order are acts of love. They are human expressions of Gods relationship with Gods people over the millennia. There is no contradiction in saying that the Catholic Church loves LGBTQ persons and that it refuses to bless their marriages. The refusal to bless a particular homosexual behavior is an act of love intended to bring into, or keep LGBTQ persons within, the order of creation as taught by the church.

So as the full statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says: [it] is not intended to be, a form of unjust discrimination. The answer to the proposed dubium does not preclude the blessings given to individual persons with homosexual inclinations, who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching.

For Roman Catholics (and Orthodox and evangelicals), this understanding of the created order leads to tension with the basic assumptions of contemporary society. The modern world is built on concepts of human freedom, human self-responsibility, continual change/evolution/progress, and both personal and communal self-fulfillment. That quintessential modern document, the U.S. Constitution, tells us that we the people will take responsibility for the social order under laws that we will make.

In this modern context a distinctly progressive understanding of Christianity emerges. Similar movements emerged among other religions as well, most obviously in Reform Judaism, but also in Islamic modernism.

Progressive Christianity has broken from Catholic and evangelical views of how Scripture should be interpreted. It does not read the biblical narrative as a description of Gods unchanging order for creation. In Genesis 1 and 2, progressives find less a fixed order and more a process of ordering. That process is placed by God in the hands of human stewards. It is evolutionary as it responds to changing social situations and needs.

Not that progressives believe that humans are left on their own. They are not deists. Rather, the scriptural narrative reveals the fundamental principles God has put in place to guide the continual progress of creation under its own natural laws and human stewardship. And it promises Gods spirit in guiding the progress of creation.

For progressives Jesus Christ then comes to heal a creation and humanity whose ability to progress has been broken by sin. Through his death and resurrection, Christ, by his spirit in the church, restores humanity to its task overseeing the continual progression of the created order toward the reign of God as revealed in Jesus Christs own ministry.

While progressive Jews and Muslim dont share this particular understanding of Jesus role, they do share a focus on fundamental principles for ordering a society in the process of continual change and evolution rather than continuous reiteration of an eternal order.

And this leads to a progressive understanding of Gods love, and thus human love, that breaks sharply from the traditional view of love found in Roman Catholicism and evangelical Christianity.

For progressives Gods love revealed in Christ aims to fulfill as well as restore creation. Love accepts and embraces emerging forms of self-understanding and social relations so long as they move humanity and creation toward the ideals of Gods reign. Love accepts, even as God does, emerging ways of understanding and engaging in human relationships marked by faithfulness and fruitfulness; given that we still await the full revealing of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 7:19)

Perhaps put more sharply: For Roman Catholics and evangelicals, humans advance toward the glory of the children of God through a restoration of the original hierarchical, binary, gendered, human order while for progressives the movement is toward ways of being human too complex and diverse to be captured in that old order.

So ultimately there is little point in making accusations about who is or is not acting in love. Within their different frameworks for understanding progressives, Catholics and evangelicals all love LGBTQ persons. What they do not have is a shared understanding of what the word love means.

Nor, when it comes to it, do we Christians have a fully shared understanding of what it means to accept LGBTQ persons.

Almost all Christians, and no doubt Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and other religious people would affirm that LGBTQ persons should be accepted as fully human and fully in possession of their rights as citizens. However, progressives ask for more: that we accept LGBTQ experiences as giving an emerging insight into what it means to be fully human in Gods eyes. Only for progressives do those experiences offer a vision of Gods reign rather than exception to Gods rule.

In my wifes language there is a saying, like chickens talking to ducks. As if this is going to change anything. While my sympathies this may be clear in this essay, it seems unlikely that religious people, regardless of where they stand, can make the fullest contribution to society by attacking one another without even grasping why they disagree. So instead of quacking and clucking we might consider trying to find the common language I believe exists, or at least learn to be quiet long enough to hear and thus be heard.

Robert Hunt is director of Global Theological Education at Southern Methodist Universitys Perkins School of Theology. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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Progressive bashing of evangelicals and Catholics is getting old - The Dallas Morning News

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Allstate and Progressive are two well-known companies that provide a range of car insurance coverage options and discounts. In this article, we compare Allstate vs. Progressive costs, coverage and customer service to help you decide which one is right for you.

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In this article:

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As Allstate and Progressive are both leading auto insurance companies, you can likely find the coverage you need with either company, whether its a basic liability policy, usage-based coverage or even same-day insurance. Both providers offer other insurance products too like classic car insurance, as well as motorcycle, business, renters and homeowners insurance.

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*Accurate at time of publication.

The one thing Allstate offers that Progressive lacks is trip interruption reimbursement. If you get Allstates roadside assistance membership plan, you can get reimbursement for food and lodging if you have a breakdown or accident far away from home.

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One big difference between Allstate and Progressives usage-based programs is that Snapshot can raise your rates if you practice poor driving habits. On the other hand, if you dont drive safely using the Drivewise program, it just wont give you a discount. How much you can save depends on your driving, but Progressives website says its drivers save an average of $145 a year after joining Snapshot. Allstate doesnt disclose the maximum discount.

Between Allstate vs. Progressive, we found that Progressive typically offers more affordable auto insurance quotes for most drivers. This includes people with good driving records and people who have points on their records. In fact, we found that Progressive was the most affordable leading provider for high-risk drivers overall.

Allstate is generally more expensive than other top competitors like Progressive, Geico and State Farm. In the category of affordability, we rate Progressive 8.5 out of 10.0 stars and Allstate 6.5 out of 10.0 stars. That said, its still possible that Allstate could be cheaper for you, as discounts differ between the companies. For example, Allstate offers a new vehicle discount, but Progressive does not. On the other hand, Progressive offers a discount for owning a home, and Allstate does not.

Progressive has some extra money-saving features on top of its discount opportunities. These include:

Allstate and Progressive both have millions of customers, and most of those customers have positive experiences with each company. According to the J.D. Power 2020 U.S. Auto Claims Satisfaction Study, Allstates claims service is slightly better than the insurance industry average. The company scored 876 out of 1,000 points, while the industry average was 872 points. Progressive fared slightly worse in the study, scoring 856 out of 1,000 points.

Both companies have low customer satisfaction ratings on the BBB, which isnt uncommon for the insurance industry. Progressive insurance reviews rate the company with 1.11 out of 5 stars overall, and reviewers rate Allstate only slightly better, with 1.18 stars. Keep in mind that the number of reviewers only accounts for a small fraction of total customers. According to the NAIC, Allstate has a slightly higher complaint ratio than Progressive.

When comparing Allstate vs. Progressive, we rate Progressive higher in several review categories and have found that it is a cheaper option for most drivers. Progressive has comprehensive coverage offerings and mostly positive customer reviews, although Allstate scores better during the claims process.

Since prices are personalized to your unique driver profile, its a good idea to compare car insurance quotes from several companies. We rate Geico at 9.1 out of 10.0 stars and named it the Best Overall insurer of 2021 for its low prices and variety of coverage options. State Farm is another great choice. We named it Best for Students for its many discounts and programs geared toward student drivers. It earned a rating of 8.6 out of 10.0 stars in our comprehensive, industrywide review.

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Progressive offers cheap auto insurance quotes compared with Allstate and many other providers. In particular, Progressive tends to be affordable for high-risk drivers and even people who have a single accident or traffic ticket on their record. Progressive also offers a wide range of discounts that many drivers may qualify for.

No, Progressive and Allstate are separate companies. The Progressive Corporation and The Allstate Corporation are both independent, publicly held companies.

Yes, Allstate provides a wide range of coverage options that satisfy many drivers. The company has good claims processing and offers a decent selection of discounts.

Because consumers rely on us to provide objective and accurate information, we created a comprehensive rating system to formulate our rankings of the best car insurance companies. We collected data on dozens of auto insurance providers to grade the companies on a wide range of ranking factors. The end result was an overall rating for each provider, with the insurers that scored the most points topping the list.

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Allstate vs. Progressive: Which is better in 2021? - MarketWatch

St Louiss approach to public safety, housing, and other critical issues could undergo a significant overhaul if a new campaign to shift the balance of power in the citys Board of Alders is successful at the polls on Tuesday.

The Flip the Board campaign is challenging entrenched establishment candidates, including three incumbents, in favor of four first-time candidates: Shedrick Kelley, 40, facing two-term incumbent Jack Coatar in Ward 7; Bill Stephens, 27, seeking to unseat Ward 12s Vicky Grass, who is running for her first full four-year term; Anne Schweitzer, 33, whose Ward 13 opponent Beth Murphy is seeking a third term; and Tina Sweet-T Pihl, 50, who hopes to win in Ward 17 against fellow first-time candidate Michelle Sherod.

Alderperson Megan Green, a two-term progressive on the 29-member board, came up with the campaign after years of frustration with the policy priorities of those in power in city government. Green told The Appeal she wants to see more solutions that address the citys problems in a way that makes meaningful change for all residents.

Right now we have 11 solid progressive votes and oftentimes can get a couple of other people over to our side, said Green. So if we get these four people elected, I think that puts us squarely at 15, which is what we need to have a majority.

The four Flip the Board candidates are running on similar platforms of change, campaigning on public safety reform, sustainable economic development, and housing reform but bring with them different life experiences. Kelley, an emcee who goes by the stage name Nato Caliph, is a business analyst for Wells Fargo and a community activist. Pihl is an economic development and housing expert who has worked for local and national nonprofits. Schweitzer is a community organizer and publicist. Stephens is a St. Louis Public Library employee who celebrates being an openly gay man on his campaign site.

The thing about the four people is the diversity we have in terms of race, age, and gender, Pihl told The Appeal. I mean, its just amazing. If you look at our backgrounds, its quite rich in terms of that. I think its phenomenal.

St. Louis is still in the throes of a political upheaval that is rooted in the last decade of social and political change. Nearby Ferguson, where Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in 2014, was the catalyst for some of the most intense Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the Obama years. U.S. Representative Cori Bush, whose district includes St. Louis, was one of those protesters and organizers and is today a new member of the Squad of young Democrats pushing for change in Congress.

Although all members of St. Louiss current Board of Alders are Democrats, the municipal government can be hostile to policies that put working people first, such as allocating federal funding for the city and ensuring public safety is taken care of in an equitable manner, Green said. She cited the fight this year over police use of spy planes that roiled the boardit voted 15-14 to give preliminary approval to the dealas an example of how close the margins are. (The plan didnt move forward in part because of a failure to secure funding.) Green also said the resistance to the boards more left-leaning members agenda that centers city residents comes even as voters increasingly support federal candidates that back similar policies. That means the future is bright for ideas about city government that put people first, she told The Appeal.

Whether it is this election cycle or the next election cycle, I think that time is on our side as progressives, Green said.

The openness to debating spy planes, which would have allowed city police to keep an eye on residents for up to 18 hours a day, is just one example of what the slate hopes to change about the boards approach to governing St. Louis. Green, along with some fellow alderpeople, has fought multiple attempts to privatize the citys airport and advocated for closing the notorious Workhouse, the medium security detention facility in the city that mostly holds individuals awaiting trial. With more progressively minded members, she said, they could take more decisive action. To the Flip the Board slate, the citys prior approaches to issues like policing, public safety, and economic development are not workable.

Weve neglected to see real change or any type of progress in a lot of areas such as crime, child poverty, or housing insecurity, Stephens said. We cannot expect our city to grow if we dont address these fundamental issues first.

The four candidates are instead focusing on expansive reform.

We need to do some things differently, Schweitzer told The Appeal. We must end cash bail, which is justice only for people with home equity, and end the incarceration for offenders who arent threats to themselves or to others. We must address the root causes of crime and reinvest money into neighborhoods we have allowed to deteriorate. We must prioritize affordable housing, affordable healthcare, safe neighborhoods, good schools, jobs that pay well and a good way to get to them, and adopt a citywide tenants bill of rights.

Respecting the basic humanity of residents is essential for handling public safety, said Kelley, who describes the city as being at a serious crossroads in how local government works.

The city can no longer afford the indecisive and reactionary leadership that it has endured for far too long, Kelley said.

Key to reforming public safety, said Kelley, is closing the Workhouse. The jails conditions and upkeep have long been the subject of citywide criticism and anger. But despite the board last year unanimously passing legislation to close it before the end of 2020, the debate on how to do so drags on.

The city also needs to invest resources in its Civilian Oversight Board, said Kelley, and investigate police behavior. According to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight and the Marshall Project, St. Louis paid out more than $3.1 million between 2015 and 2019 in police misconduct settlements.

Studies (and real-life examples) from around the nation, and the world, have shown that policies that are smart on crime show much better results than ones that focus on being tough on crime,' said Kelley in an email to The Appeal. We cannot out-police our issues with crime, we instead need to reevaluate and reallocate funds away from a system that clearly isnt working, and try a new bold path forward.

Stephens told The Appeal that he sees addressing the underlying, systemic issues that lead to poverty and crime as essential to dealing with the citys issues.

We must give every person in this city the opportunity to succeed, said Stephens. We arent doing that right now and, without it, we wont be able to course-correct our current path.

When it comes to housing, Pihl said her time with the Anti-Displacement Working Group would allow her to teach the board about the best approach to the citys housing concerns.

We are looking at policies that can keep people in place in their homes, in the community, and that targets the same thing with evictions, with COVID-19 and everything else, Pihl said.

Those ideas, Pihl said, include helping fund home repairs and keeping property taxes low in neighborhoods with high displacement. With the loss of jobs and income during the pandemic, she said, those solutions are more important than ever.

St. Louis residents appear to want change, and the city government is in a moment of upheaval. Two major figuresMayor Lyda Krewson and Alderperson Joe Roddy, who represents Ward 17 and is the boards longest-serving memberdecided not to run for re-election. Board of Alders President Lewis Reed failed to carry a single ward in the mayoral primary, shutting him out of the citywide contest in April. No matter how the votes come in next month, the citys new leader will be a break from the status quo.

On March 2, St. Louis used for the first time approval voting, which allows voters to select more than one candidate; the two candidates in each contest with the highest number of votes are proceeding to Tuesdays general election. All of the Flip the Board slate advanced, and Schweitzer topped the Ward 13 incumbent Beth Murphy, 68.7 percent to 38.8 percent.

Schweitzer told The Appeal that relentless campaigning door to door paid electoral dividends.

When Ive been knocking on doors, people often tell me that Im the first person who has ever come by to talk about a campaign, and certainly the first candidate to have done so, Schweitzer said.

The rest of the slate still faces a fight. Kelley, in Ward 7, received 45.2 percent to incumbent Jack Coatars 58.9 percent; in Ward 12, Stephens had 36.1 percent to incumbent Vicky Grasss 48.6 percent; and in Ward 17, Pihl took 46.2 percent to Michelle Sherods 69.0 percent.

Though three Flip the Board candidates fell short of their opponents in the primary, Green believes theres a good shot to get voters on board for the general through superior organizing and spurring enthusiasm leading up to Tuesday. And once the public sees what the new group does in office, she believes, its more likely than not theyll stick with the progressive slate in future electionsGreen outpolled her opponent Jennifer Florida, a former alderperson, 74.3 percent to 30.7 percent in March.

Theres a lot of volunteer energy thats going into these three candidates campaigns at the moment, and thats whats going to carry them over, said Green. I know that they have people that are donating to them, not just in their wards, but from across the city, because they understand what having a progressive board will do for the entire city of St. Louis.

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These Progressive Candidates Could Flip The Balance Of Power In St. Louis City Government - The Appeal