Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

Punxsutawney Phil has a prognosticating brother, Punxsy Pol, whose specialty is politics. Pol emerged from his burrow today, one day in advance of Pennsylvania primary elections, and predicted six more weeks, months, years and even decades of bad government.

Pol has it easier than Phil when it comes to gazing into the future. Where Phil has all the vagaries of weather to consider, Pol need only count on an uninformed electorate.

Thomas Jefferson wrote often on the vital relationship between informed voters and the protection of freedoms. Jefferson wasn’t referring merely to knowing something about the candidates and the issues, but also knowledge of a nation’s history and general intellectual enlightenment.

Dolts and morons, the ignorant in general, make poor voters.

This helps explain why progressives in education teach little in the way of legitimate history, and instead flavor it with a twist based on the causes of the times.

All these misinformed school children typically grow into easily manipulated voters.

The current crop of voters tends to get half of its mission correct. They vote out of some sort of misguided sense of civic duty, but can’t take time in advance of elections to learn about candidates for whom they will vote.

I would periodically write of this during my newspaper career. Simply voting, without knowledge, is not fulfilling one’s duty.

If you doubt me on this matter, do a little experiment tomorrow. Ask a few people you know who voted to recite the list of candidates for whom they voted.

You likely will have a few solid responses and a lot of wavering on something as basic as recalling a name.

Ask for platform issues on which the candidates ran and you are likely to receive a blank stare.

Some will say these are only primary elections so it’s no big deal. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Clever liberals have found that they can cross over and influence Republican primaries by voting for candidates most likely to lose a general election to the Democratic candidate.

And the big money Soros-type liberal backers flood money into the campaigns of these lesser Republican primary candidates for much the same reason.

This doesn’t work – at least it shouldn’t – if the voters are educated on the candidates and the issues.

Alas, such is not the case. There’s still a little bit of time to acquire some election knowledge in advance of the trip to the polls tomorrow. Hopefully some of you will use that time wisely.

The United States is a ticking time bomb and we’re not referring to the ongoing debt limit kerfuffle, which is just another in a continuing series of such things.

The real problem is the ever-widening philosophical chasm between conservatives, who tend to deal in reality, and liberals, who reside deep in fantasy land.

The debt limit debate is but one aspect of that basic dichotomy. There is no near-term solution for this massive rift in the way the different camps of the populace operate.

And both sides are becoming increasingly frustrated by how the other half thinks and functions.

Conservatives can’t expect to change the minds of the fantasy people. After all, reality can be a female dog. Avoiding admitting to unpleasant truths seems to make life more bearable for the liberals.

And liberals are playing the long game, minting fresh morons ripe for indoctrination annually by dint of controlling public schools and producing functional illiterates deemed to be scholars. Unable to fend for themselves, these simpletons are eager to take advantage of all manner of government welfare programs, no matter what they are called.

Student loan forgiveness, aid for financial laggards to buy houses at the expense of the creditworthy purchasers, massive gifts to all things green, regardless of benefit, these are but a few of the allegiance-buying techniques of the liberals.

This educational failure is not peculiar to the U.S. There was a story out today that the United Kingdom is investigating grade inflation at the university level. If the student can’t earn the grade, due to lack of ability or effort, just give it to them.

Beyond the bastardization of the educational system, if the liberals believe they still can’t produce enough mental deficients to swell their ranks sufficiently, they also have the carrot-and-stick approach of government handouts to appeal to the older electorate and get them to abandon any semblance of fiscal conservatism in the pursuit of self-interest.

Think stimulus payments, all manner of tax credits and government pork projects.

Back to the debt limit problem: Conservatives in the ranks of the Republicans have passed an increase, but with provisions to cut back spending. They’ve mentioned such things as clawing back from the governmental coffers money already appropriated to deal with the COVID emergency, which even the government now admits no longer deserves that scary title.

Cutting spending when there is a debt problem makes sense to those who still possess any financial mental faculty. That’s why Liberal Democrats, lacking that acumen, are screaming about Republicans trying to gut government, failing to make Social Security payments, and going door-to-door slaying pet dogs and cats, too.

The reality is the U.S. owes more than the mammoth admitted-to total of $31-plus trillion. If, as would be the case with, say, a family or a corporation, one would include the unfunded future promises of Social Security and Medicare, the Cato Institute estimated slightly more than a year back that would add more than $160 trillion to federal debt.

Donald Trump, as he usually does, was able to slice through the bullspit during his CNN Town Hall earlier this week. CNN, being populated by delusional liberals, thought it could handle Trump the way Clueless Joe Biden is managed in his public appearances.

But, Trump is a raging stallion and Biden is a gelding. Given a live platform which denied CNN the opportunity to edit Trump, he got his points across on many hot-button issues. This included Trump positing that a default might not be such a bad thing.

This is a businessman who is credited (pun intended) with filing for bankruptcy with six of his concerns. There is life after bankruptcy. There is life after default.

Mother Hubbard Janet Yellen, the in-over-her-head Treasury Secretary moved on from being an in-over-her-head Federal Reserve Chair, is wailing about default being a death blow for the U.S.

As I’ve pointed out previously in this blog, the U.S. has defaulted before, at various times and in various ways, and we’re still here.

For those who are apoplectic about the possibility of default leading to losing world reserve currency status for the dollar, relax. We’re already headed in that direction as various world powers, fed up with the U.S. too often using currency control as a weapon of mass destruction, have been moving and continue to work toward making their transactions in their currencies.

It’s only a matter of time until the dollar no longer rules, joining the English Pound and other currencies who have been deposed as the world standard.

Running up ever more mammoth national debts only hastens the process.

That’s reality, something conservatives understand. Liberals won’t get that religion until it’s too late, and this flimsy financial structure implodes in the metaphorical manner of the World Trade Center.

The starting field of the Stanley Cup playoffs has been halved to eight, but the remaining teams provide a window into the Woke bent of the NHL.

Here’s a rooters’ guide so climate crazies and socialists can align with the team best representing their lunacy, and the rest of us can hope that teams with non-Woke sponsorship prevail.

The greatest dichotomy is present in the series between the Seattle Kraken and Dallas Stars.

Seattle, host city in the past to ongoing rioting, CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) and CHOP (Capital Hill Occupied Protest), predictably has some wacko sponsorship for its hockey team.

Said team, in only its second year of existence as an expansion franchise, leads its current best-of-7 series 2-1 and looks like a strong bet to move on in the chase for the Cup, thereby providing yet more evidence of the NHL’s penchant for being overly generous to new franchises.

Las Vegas, too, is a recent expansion operation that has experienced immense success due to the NHL being a combination Woke and Socialist organization. Think of expansion largesse visited on these newcomers as the NHL equivalent of forgiving student loans and subsidizing mortgages of poor credit risks at the expense of people with good credit ratings.

Existing NHL franchises such as Buffalo, which in 52 years of existence has exactly zero Stanley Cup championships, and hasn’t even made the playoffs since 2011 — losing in the first round then — might want to wonder why they even bother to flesh out the regular season field.

Seattle opponent, Dallas, is the social opposite of the Kraken. The Stars play in American Airlines Arena, celebrating a company that burns fossil fuel and emits carbon into the atmosphere in the interest of transporting passengers and freight to better the world.

How horrible. And Dallas is right smack in red state Texas. Just mentioning that causes leftists to whine of being traumatized.

Seattle, meanwhile, plays in Climate Pledge Arena, which sounds more like a lemon-scented spray-on climate polish than a sporting facility.

The Kraken helmet sponsor is Amazon, whose various sins are forgiven by the socialist crowd because it provides cheaper incense delivered to their doors. The Kraken jersey sponsor is the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. That’s so Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren.

Meanwhile, the Dallas helmet sponsorship is a two-barrelled approach of Energy Transfer for home games (a nod perhaps to a better reception in an oil-friendly state) and 7-Eleven on the road.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a curious contradiction of sponsorship. Canada’s serial playoff underperformers, despite spending the equivalent of the country’s GDP annually on salaries, finally made it past the first round this year, but are in a 3-0 hole to Florida in round two.

The Maple Leafs play in Scotiabank Arena. Nothing could be more fitting than a powerhouse financial institution as a sponsor for a freespending, underachieving hockey operation.

Maple Leaf jerseys bear a script Milk insignia, representing sponsorship by the Ontario Dairy Farmers. It was amusing to read the response on one fan site, in which the deal was headlined as “offensive, disgusting.”

Why? The milk business is a “terrible and controversial industry,” detrimental to animals, the environment and our health.

Ironically, Maple Leafs helmet sponsor TikTok was mentioned in the same screed, with nary a bad word about that.

This might seem curious considering TikTok is under a bit of bi-partisan fire for being a propagandizing and spying operation of the Chinese Communists. This doesn’t matter to the Woke types. They just want to post and/or view insipid videos.

Of the remaining eight teams, I find myself obliged to align with the New Jersey Devils and Edmonton Oilers for sponsorship reasons.

First, the Devils play in the Prudential Center. What is more American than a life insurance/financial services giant? That arena is nicknamed “The Rock,” an homage to Prudential advertising. And the Devils’ helmet sponsor is Prudential.

Edmonton plays in Rogers Place, sponsored by the Canadian communications megalith. The traditionalist Oilers will not besmirch their jerseys with corporate sponsorship, and keep their home helmets similarly sanitary.

On the road, those Oilers helmets have sponsorship from SkipTheDishes, a Canadian online food delivery service.

I once had Prudential life insurance, but, alas, switched to Northwestern Mutual for a better deal. If only I lived in Canada, I’d support SkipTheDishes with an order or two.

Meanwhile, let’s go Devils and Oilers.

Cambria County commissioner candidate John DeBartola has posted on Facebook of the possibility that a county Republican poll is indicating DeBartola and running mate Joseph Taranto are doing “better than expected.”

DeBartola alleges that as a response “outside money” will be used to raise awareness for a wallflower establishment Republican candidate in order to beat down the unendorsed DeBartola/Taranto primary challenge.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The bigger issue here is what can we expect from this DeBartola/Taranto effort in terms of their chance for success?

My brother told me the other day he has voted by mail for them, mainly because voting for the traditional Republican menu has done squat for the area. But, he was prompted to look at DeBartola and Taranto due to my urging. Alas, my circle of influence is relatively small, so I’m not sure I’m going to help produce many votes beyond my brother and me.

And I fear the DeBartola/Taranto message, which just might ring true to disaffected Republicans, is not getting enough exposure to garner the necessary votes.

I have yet to see a yard sign for the two. By way of contrast, my area (Southmont, Westmont, Upper Yoder) sports a disconcerting number of signs for the incumbent candidate who writes Facebook posts like English is his second language.

Some very savvy political types I know, in the lead up to the first Trump presidential election, noted to me his extremely wide edge in signage, indicating informed and motivated voters who might carry him to a surprise win over The Hillary.

It’s getting late in the election run-up for DeBartola and Taranto to mount any kind of advertising, direct mailing, or campaign rally effort.

Where Trump in his first run had national media that, like him or not, couldn’t ignore him, DeBartola and Taranto are being ignored by the local media.

They have a strong Facebook presence. But, as hard as it may be for Facebook warriors to digest, there still are a lot of people (read: voters) who do not frequent Facebook.

How DeBartola and Taranto can mount a late charge to graduate from doing “ better than expected” to winning is uncertain.

I hope they are out knocking on doors, pitching themselves as best they can. I hope their Facebook fans will take it upon themselves to tell the DeBartola-Taranto story to five or 10 people, in the pursuit of gaining votes.

Time is short, but the potential of a DeBartola and Taranto win sticking it in the face of our Republican keepers and telling them that we as an electorate are not satisfied with the same old stuff, would be glorious.

If you think Johnstown has more than its fair share of blah weather days, you’re right.

And if you think Johnstown seems to revel in this, right again.

I call these area precipitation worshipers the We Need Rain People. Let the sun shine for consecutive days and these people pop up saying stuff like “Things are getting awful dry!”

Amateurs mouth this sentiment on social media and in general conversation. Even the weather professionals tend to spout as much on broadcasts and web sites.

You’d think a town that has suffered through three major floods would not be so welcoming when it comes to clouds and rain.

A typical period of rain and overcast conditions that ranged for almost a week ended midway through Friday. Today, Saturday, was glorious, with abundant sunshine.

For those of us who have hobby cars we only take out in good weather, this means trying to cram a week’s worth of experience with the car(s) into a day and a half.

Responsible types – and I lump myself into that category – also need to use the rare nice days to accomplish other things, too, like mowing the grass. And so it was that yours truly, less than a month removed from a heart procedure and a couple of weeks past a knee mishap, found himself fitting grass mowing sessions between car joy rides.

The Mustang convertible got 30 miles or so of exercise yesterday afternoon and evening. I figured the grass still was too wet to mow well. At least that excuse sounded good.

But today, the late mother’s grass was mowed (it’s a long story) and then it was on to mow the son’s grass. I will get to my lawn Sunday – weather permitting and rain is forecast for the afternoon.

After doing my mowing chores today, and running to Burger King for myself and the wife who was cleaning out my late mother’s house (also a long story), it was time to ride the other Mustang, this a hardtop GT.

Just Friday afternoon, when the sun had reappeared after a long absence, I was telling a neighbor that I recall once reading how Johnstown rivals rain capital Seattle for rainy and overcast days. She was incredulous.

So, after putting the orange Mustang into its rented garage stall this evening, I took to the internet for some quick weather research.

What I found, in a posting from 2020 on the WTAJ-TV web site, is that Western Pennsylvania in general rivals Seattle, which has on average 156 overcast days a year. DuBois is ahead of that with an average of 162 overcast days each year and so is Pittsburgh, with 158. We in the Johnstown area trail Seattle by a tad, with 147 overcast days and Altoona is close by, with 143.

Any way you slice it, that’s more than our share of rain and overcast skies.

But this can be a good thing because it makes us appreciate those nice days, or stretches of same. It’s a reverse example of water tasting better in a desert.

Good weather quickly can be taken for granted. I recall one stretch of covering Pirates spring training in Florida when weather was beautiful for 10 consecutive days. It was boring in a way, and I found myself wishing for rain.

You can take the Johnstowner out of Johnstown, but . . .

The current narrative whopper making the rounds in regards to our debt ceiling “crisis” is that the United States risks its first ever default, as in failing to meet its obligations.

Those of us who attended schools in the good, old days, when history was taught without a revisionist slant, would recognize this as an outright falsehood. Incredibly, most of today’s populace buys this pap without blinking an otherwise comatose eye.

A reason might be provided by a recent U.S. Department of Education release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress that finds a record low 13 percent of Grade 8 students are proficient in history. Even more laughable, “proficiency” as defined by the Education Department is scoring 58.8 percent or better on a standardized test.

That was failing when I went to school, yet now it is deemed “proficient.”

It all reminds of a 2006 movie, “Idiocracy,” in which an average man participates in a hibernation study, is forgotten, and emerges many years later the most intelligent man around due to a rapid decline in the overall population’s intelligence.

Back to defaults: The truth is, if we fail to pay bills beginning in say, June, this would be just another in a long line of U.S. defaults.

Defaults began with the birth of this nation. The Continental Congress took to issuing currency, ‘continentals,’ in 1775 to finance things and, before that printing press had ground to a halt, the currency had been devalued to worthlessness. As a new country, we also chose not to repay debt to foreign nations.

That, my friends, is a default.

Between the Revolutionary War and our Civil War, the federal government left currency creation and debt-building to individual states and banks, resulting in many defaults, just not, technically, federal defaults. Still, most would concede that all the states and banks were U.S. entities.

Fast-forward to the Civil War and the need for a federal currency was great, so the greenback was created in August 1861.

Five months later, January 1862, the U.S. defaulted on these by refusing to redeem greenbacks for the specified amount of gold. New greenbacks were issued, without gold redemption qualities, and these proceeded to trade in the open market at severe discounts to their face value as war fortunes waxed and waned. Eventually, these greenbacks also went away.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt led a Great Depression default by devaluing the dollar and refusing to redeem World War I era Liberty Bonds for gold as promised.

In 1971, then-president Richard Nixon pulled off a similar default by ending the promise to redeem U.S. dollars for gold

And, in the longest-running, least-appreciated default, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has declined 97 percent since 1913, when the Federal Reserve was set up to address banking panics and to stabilize the currency.

Some stability, a 97-percent decline!

In 2023, the debt numbers are much greater, but the principle is the same. When debts become too burdensome to be repaid, they are defaulted upon.

Engineering a hyperinflation, and eventually paying back debts with relatively worthless dollars, technically would avoid a default. But, in truth, it would deny repayment in value, so that’s a default in my book.

Now you know our default history, even if most of the population remains blissfully ignorant.

On the heels of me trying to educate the gullible on the dark side of government (including the IRS) comes a report by The New York Post, quoting from a watchdog group OpenTheBooks, that the IRS spent $5 million in 2021 alone to arm its agents.

And you thought all that these IRS types needed to perform their duties were green eyeshades and a calculator to audit you. Only, of course, if you avoided paying your fair share of taxes.

Think again.

The IRS, as pointed out here before, has a political side to it and $80 billion in new funding is going to allow the IRS to add a reported 87,000 additional agents and arm them to the teeth.

That Post report cited 2021 spending of $2.3 for ammunition, $1.2 million in ballistic shields and more than another $1 million in rifles, shotguns and body armor.

This was to add to an arsenal that prior to 2020 amounted to 5 million rounds of ammunition for 2,159 special agents.

The job descriptions for proposed additional IRS agent hires includes “must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.”

I guess this is the sort of coercion the left fears it will need if and when it gets tax rates up the confiscatory 90 percent or so rate that would be necessary to fund all their socialist and green initiatives.

Maybe IRS agents can be co-opted to aid in the confiscation of those offending gas cooking stoves.

It seems that the the new-look IRS is going to be so well-armed that Zelenskyy will be envious.

Nothing to worry about here.

My English teacher the senior year of high school was a fine woman named Olive Katter, who got into trouble with administrators for speaking out about a tough principal being replaced by a milquetoast type. She was demoted from her post of department chair as punishment.

Many of her students set out with petitions calling for her reinstatement. I remember one long night canvassing Moxham. Back then, one could roam freely in Moxham after dark without regard for personal safety. It was, after all, 50 years or so in the past.

The lessons from this exercise were many, including, but not limited to, the realization that those in control cared little about the on-the-ground impact of their petty vindictiveness.

Miss Katter can thank her lucky stars she doesn’t teach in this period of out-of-control Wokeism. One day, while the class was reading some bit of classic literature, the word “gay” was part of the story, eliciting snickers from the students.

These days, the class would be sent straight to some Diversity, Equity, Inclusion indoctrination. And Miss Katter would have been right there with us because her response to our reaction was to lament that one of her favorite words had been co-opted to refer to sexual orientation instead of a state of being happy and carefree.

This all came to mind as I woke this morning – old meaning of having arisen from sleep, not becoming a ridiculous navel-gazer – and was greeted with the two granddaughters watching some PBS kids cartoon programming.

First there was some manner of Caribbean ethnicity family. Next up, a Filipino family. My tax money at work on PBS, which of course has no political agenda. Wink. Wink.

The first white faces to be seen were on the third show, which came after a channel change They were all animals with painfully white fur accented with black trim.

Take some time to view children’s programming, on various outlets, and you will be stunned at the messaging attempts from the Woke crowd.

I was curious to see if others were picking up on this. Apparently so. One story from 2021 on Idahofreedom.org, noted the folly of spending tax dollars to have Daniel Tiger teach kids about transgenderism, or PBS Kids insisting that three-month-old babies exhibit “white privilege.”

I’m not sure beloved Fred Rogers, he being a white male, could have passed the PBS gatekeepers these days. Rogers was a registered Republican – ick – but is well-chronicled to have been more in line with liberal ideals, so maybe he would have gotten a pass.

Next, I did some quick computer searching and made the mistake of reading a story from The New Yorker on those poor striking writers in Hollywood.

These are the Woke types who make it their life’s work to over-represent minorities of all stripe in their work.

One writer quoted recalled the good, old days of 2008 when she was happy to work in a writers’ room that was “half queer, majority female.” While she didn’t cite current numbers, it’s probably more so on both counts these days.

Funny how the stock Doesn’t Look Like America rubric of the Woke types doesn’t matter in cases such as this.

Having scored diversity over-representation, writers are on strike for, wait for it, MORE MONEY!

Let’s be clear here. People absolutely should not be discriminated against on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion or any other arbitrary determinant. But that should work both ways, and it doesn’t.

The Woke types never seem to be satisfied until they have dominated any situation, to the exclusion of opposing opinion and representation, be it racial, sexual, or matters of faith.

Even worse, they must re-educate those who do not buy their claptrap hook, line and sinker.

And they are everywhere, from government and public schools, to the boardrooms of beer producers. They play a large role in the decline of this nation as they succeed in changing it from a meritocracy to a pathetic Potemkin village celebrating the visual facade over legitimate qualification and achievement.

Bill Maher, heretofore a predictable proponent of all things political left, has had (pardon the pun) an awakening regarding Wokeism and has come to recognize it as the absurd caricature of liberalism that it has become.

Along a similar line, former leftist hero and current villain Elon Musk speaks of the “Woke mind virus” and its detrimental effects.

If you are content with this all-Woke-all-the-time state of affairs, continue to stay quiet and accept. If not, muster the courage to speak out and risk the wrath of the Woke warriors.

It’s been told to me that a member of the sheeple class questions my questioning of Clueless Joe Biden’s intent to hire brigades of extra IRS agents and arm them to the teeth as part of his effort to use governmental agencies as his own secret police effort.

If one pays their taxes, more IRS agents are no problem, or so the naive one posited.

Along that line, law-abiding citizens should not worry about the FBI. Oh, wait, the FBI falsified information to get warrants to spy illegally on Trump aide Carter Page.

FBI agents and administrative types have been found to have been lacking on ethical or legal grounds many times through the years, including often when the goal was to persecute one Donald Trump, or giving a free pass to Hillary Clinton for her email server problem.

Lack of political impartiality was cited specifically by Inspector General Michael Horowitz in his report on the Clinton matter, and he named then FBI director James Comey.

But, again, no need to fear governmental agencies if one is not doing anything wrong. Yeah, right.

I repeat, no need to worry about any government agency, certainly one sworn to uphold the law, because such agencies never would bastardize the law for political purposes.

Specifically regarding the IRS, two words, Lois Lerner. It was under Lerner’s watch that the IRS took it upon itself to give a hard time to conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status.

A governmental investigation maintained both conservative and liberal groups were given extra scrutiny. Yet a lawsuit filed by more than 400 conservative organizations was settled. I find no mention of a similar settlement with aggrieved liberal organizations.

Using the why-fear-more-IRS-agents-unless-you-are-a-tax-cheat logic, why settle a lawsuit if you are innocent?

The federal government – any government for that matter – is not inherently benign. That is particularly true these days when career bureaucrats are predominantly left-wing and all too eager to use their posts to impose their political philosophy.

The evidence is there if one dares to follow the news. But better to keep one’s eyes closed and continue voting a straight Democratic ticket.

Look how far that’s gotten our area as well as the country.

From the department of truth is stranger than fiction, locals celebrated over the weekend the emergence of Johnstown from financially distressed Act 47 status, which was followed up quickly on Monday by the United States moving ahead its timetable for potential debt-ceiling-induced default to early June.

To repeat, Johnstown, which has spent the past three decades and change living a Blanche DuBois existence — depending on the kindness of strangers — is supposed to be back in good fiscal health.

Never mind that a couple of sidebar stories to this Act 47 exit are that Johnstown ranks 194 of 206 small metropolitan areas nationally in terms of economic output and 341 of all 357 U.S. metropolitan areas in that economic category. Also, please disregard a $1 million anticipated loss in tax revenue as a result of add-on taxes, allowed to be charged by Act 47 municipalities that now must go away.

Johnstown looks more like an economic cadaver than a vital life form. But we’re no longer on the Act 47 shame list. And, of course, the tourism wave hasn’t kicked in fully yet.

Meanwhile, the aptly named Janet “Yellin’” Yellen told Congress Monday that despite the ongoing fiscal sleights of hand being practiced, the date for the federal government running out of money to pay obligations looms as early as June 1.

Yellen, our Mother Hubbard of monetary and fiscal policy, formerly served as chair of the Federal Reserve, which manages the nation’s money supply. These days, she cashes a check as Treasury Secretary, where her job is to make sure all of Clueless Joe Biden’s green initiatives and handouts to Ukraine are funded, not to mention such niggling details as paying Social Security benefits and interest on the burgeoning national debt, currently at roughly $31.5 trillion.

Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.

It is ironic that Yellen presided over loose monetary policies and artificially depressed interest rates as Fed chair, which helped get us into this fiscal mess. Now, she’s being forced to deal with the crisis she had a large hand in creating.

Too bad Act 47 status isn’t an option for the U.S., in which we’d expect the rest of the world to spend the next 30 years, give or take, bailing us out for our mismanagement.

House Republicans have passed a plan to increase the debt limit, but with accompanying demands for cuts in funding for Biden’s pet left-wing agenda items such as canceling student loan debt, giving blank checks to environmental crazies and turning the IRS into an armed branch of the secret police.

Biden’s handlers have vowed to paint the Republican plan as cutting veterans benefits and slicing border enforcement. It’s ridiculous but, considering the general idiocy of the electorate, it might work.

This federal debt problem has ripple effects for states and various municipalities in that it puts a crimp in handouts from Uncle Sam, said handouts being generally counted on to plug fiscal holes, sort of like individuals borrowing from the in-laws.

Based on past shortages of will, we would expect the U.S. debt ceiling to be booted upward with a last-minute deal. The over-under for that probably is Memorial Day.

Then we can begin counting the days until Johnstown once again slips beneath the fiscal waves and returns to the Davey Jones’s locker of Act 47. But the rules have changed, and three-plus decade stays there no longer are tolerated.

No sweat. By then, the raging success of Myopia 2025’s revitalization plan for the area should make any distressed status short-lived. Or not.