Blogs

If our households operated the way the United States does, members of our extended families would be planning an intervention to get us to see the error of our ways.

Why?

Fifteen years ago, our household was on track to pay off our assorted debts. We were doing that by spending less than the paychecks we brought home.

But now our household finances are in shambles. We gave up our fiscal discipline two decades ago and decided we could afford to be more freewheeling with our money.

For the past 15 years, we have lived off our credit cards, spending more each year than we brought home in income. Those credit cards now have astronomical balances.

The funerals are over, all 58 of them.

But the mourning goes on, as it has since that horrible night and as it will for countless nights to come.

The injured are slowly mending, an eye-popping 540 people.

But for some, they will never fully heal. Even if they do, many will be financially crippled for years to come.

It’s been one month, and that’s where things stand after that night of music and jubilation in Las Vegas was transformed into a nightmare in a matter of a few minutes and many hundreds of bullets.

There’s one more update you need to know about, too:

The Republican majority in Congress has, for all practical purposes, moved on and is letting the tragedy of Las Vegas slip into the dust bin of history.

Bettendorf's elected city officials meet this weekend to set goals and land annexation to assure the city's steady northward sprawl will no doubt come up for discussion.

The more pressing issue when it comes to future growth, however, is sewage. Specifically how will the city handle the growing treatment needs for future homes and businesses located more than 20 miles from the Iowa Quad-Cities' only sewage treatment facility?

My mother always told me never to speak ill of the dead.

For that reason I won’t go on at length about Antonin Scalia, the recently departed Supreme Court justice. My opinion wouldn’t be worth that much anyway. I didn’t know the man — I was never even in the same room with him.

However, I do find this avalanche of posthumous praise of him as “a judicial giant” and one of the great justices of our history a little gag-inducing.

The Iowa caucuses are upon us. Hooray, whoopee, and two cheers.

The contests mark the official beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, which already feels like it’s been going on for two years (because it has).

Some polls say that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican winner, others that Ted Cruz will be. Still others advise us to keep an eye on Marco Rubio, who’s sneaking up fast.

Is 2015 over yet? Is it safe to come out now?

What a bummer. Mass shootings, cops using unarmed civilians for target practice, the Middle East in rubble, terrorist attacks, Donald Trump.

Trump wasn’t the worst of it, perhaps. But he certainly was the most irritating.

It was a spectacle worthy of Tennyson — “Trump to the right of us, Trump to the left of us, Trump in front and behind. Into the valley of Trump rode the 300 million.”

Bettendorf's elected officials must be getting the message from constituents about the city's sky-high debt.

No, they haven't reined in their free-spending ways; the city just issued another $10.2 million in general obligation (GO) bonds.

But they have figured out how to make the city's debt appear smaller to voters, particularly prior to municipal elections.