With Maine looking like it will be the first state to shut down heading into the new fiscal year on Saturday morning and perhaps beating Illinois to the punch, moments ago Connecticut, as previewed last night, will also enter the new fiscal year without a budget, inviting rating agencies to downgrade it to Illinois' "barely junk" rating or perhaps making CT the first US junk-rated state.
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
After Maine Gov. Paul LePage delivered an ultimatum to state lawmakers, promising to provoke a government shutdown should the state's legislature hand him a budget that includes a tax increase, it appears the governor intends to keep his word.
LePage told reporters at the state capital that he won't sign anything Friday, ensuring that a shutdown will begin at midnight, because the current budget proposalwhich was endorsed late Thursday by a special panel of lawmakers but has not yet been approved by the state legislature, includes a 1.5% lodging tax increase.
Deception Inside Deception: The Alleged Sarin Gas Attack
Paul Craig Roberts
Seymour Hersh, America’s most famous investigative reporter, has become persona non grata in the American Propaganda Ministry that poses as a news media but only serves to protect the US government’s war lies. Among his many triumphs Hersh exposed the American My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the Abu Ghraib torture prison run by the Americans in Iraq. Today his investigative reports have to be published in the London Review of Books or in the German Media.
Connecticut isn’t the only state in New England that’s facing a budget showdown today. As Reuters reports, Maine is bracing for a possible partial government shutdown on Friday – what would be the first in the state since 1991 - as Republican Governor Paul LePage has warned he will reject any budget deal that does not cut income taxes.