We don’t know whether the Federal Trade Commission is right that forbidding noncompete agreements in labor contracts will increase wages by nearly $300 billion per year. Nor do we have a strong opinion about whether the ban can be carried out via regulation, as just proposed, or requires legislation like the wise bipartisan Workforce Mobility Act; the courts will suss out the inevitable legal challenges. Finally, we think it’s possible the FTC has written its rule a bit too broadly, touching almost all employees in almost all sectors of the economy.

The television split screen told the story.

California has seen so much rain in the last few weeks that farm fields are inundated and normally dry creeks and drainage ditches have become torrents of water racing toward the ocean. At the same time, most of the state is still in severe drought.

“Still decades and hundreds of billions of dollars away”: that was the sobering refrain from the recent nuclear fusion announcement that has already taken decades and cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars to get to this point of … wait for it … still being decades and hundreds of billions of dollars away.

Last month, nuclear fusion topped headlines around the world when scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced an essential milestone in developing this nascent technology. They achieved “ignition,” meaning more energy came out of a reaction than was needed to make the reaction happen in the first place. Despite some significant remaining challenges, there are strong reasons to believe a fusion-powered future awaits us.

Chaos reigned at the nation’s airports over the holidays. Lost luggage piled up unclaimed. Police were called to help calm passengers who were demanding answers. The grandkids didn’t make it in time for Christmas dinner.

The full-contact sport of football is one that is rife with risks. The public and the players have for some time known the dangers posed to the brain by the forceful blows to the head that occur during regular gameplay, leading first to concussions and then commonly and devastatingly to conditions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

A few years ago, I bought a used Tesla, not because I’m a car nut but because I had been a hypocrite. For years, I had been outspoken about the dangers of carbon emissions. Yet at the same time, I was driving an old gas-powered heap that got about 25 miles per gallon, and that sounded like a rocket launch every time I turned on the ignition.

This nation owes a debt of gratitude to Congress for passing the Electoral Count Reform Act as part of the $1.7 trillion year-end funding bill in one of the last acts of the lame-duck session.

The internet and social media have provided organizations and people with a great many windows on the world compared to the three major television stations of the 1950s.

This is peak season for conceiving babies. Coincidentally, this December has also seen a debate over whether and how to expand the child tax credit, and that debate has brought more attention to another one: Why have U.S. birth rates been dropping?

Few countries can be said to have truly responded adequately to the deadly threat of the coronavirus, and ours certainly isn’t near the top, with a poisonous fixation on individual liberty that shot even basic collective efforts to ward off the crisis.

Let’s get right to the point: If and when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Chuck Grassley ever again try to prop up their bona fides as supporters of U.S. troops and our allies abroad, they should be laughed out of the room.

In many ways, 2022 might seem like it was a pretty bad year for Americans on the political right. After all, the year saw record budget deficits, spending bills loaded with corporate welfare, a legally dubious student loan scheme, and disappointing election results for the Republican Party.

There’s no question that 2022 was challenging. A stubborn pandemic, Russia’s devastating war in Ukraine and the resulting inflation have all squeezed American families.

New Census Bureau numbers released last week reveal an unmistakable trend: High-tax blue states are losing residents to low-tax red states. Are elected officials listening?

The House of Representatives spent Friday passing the $1.65 trillion omnibus spending blowout, and the bill is loaded with earmarks and pet priorities from healthcare to public lands that few Members have bothered to read. This is no way to run a government, and compounding the embarrassment is that half of the lawmakers had already ditched Washington for the holidays.

The national debt is much like the weather. Everybody worries about the topic, but nobody wants to do anything about it.

Happy Holidays from the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce! For some in our community, this is a time to downshift and take time off work. For others, these are the busiest two weeks of the entire year at their place of business — all hands on deck!

It’s been one year since the last monthly Child Tax Credit (CTC) payment was issued.