what an embarrassment

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The amount of tax revenue collected by the state in the coming budget year will be less than current state spending, according to new projections from the state’s nonpartisan fiscal estimating panel.



The roughly $200 million shortfall, driven largely by less state income tax revenue as a result of recent tax cuts, means when state lawmakers craft the next state budget they will need to either reduce some current state spending or dip into the more than $6 billion in state reserves.


The three-member Revenue Estimating Conference published the projections during its meeting Thursday at the Iowa Capitol.




Iowa is projected to collect $8.7 billion in the 2026 state budget year, which begins July 1, according to the panel’s estimates. In the current state budget year, Iowa is spending $8.9 billion.


If the panel’s projection is accurate, state lawmakers when they craft the next state budget during the 2025 legislative session will need to reduce state general fund spending by roughly $200 million or use unspent money in the state general fund or one of the state’s reserve accounts.


As of May, there was $2.4 billion unspent in the state’s general fund for the current budget year, according to a report from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. The state also has another $3.7 billion in its Taxpayer Relief Fund, which was created to cover any potential shortfalls as the result of state tax reductions.


The projected decrease in 2026 budget year revenue is driven largely by reduced tax collections resulting from tax cuts that created a 3.8 percent state income tax rate for most working Iowans starting in 2025.





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The state will see a drop of $687 million in personal income tax collections in the 2026 budget year, a 12.3 percent drop from the current budget year, according to the panel’s projections.


The tax cuts, enacted over multiple bills and starting in 2019, have gradually reduced the number of state income tax brackets and lowered rates. In 2023 there were four brackets ranging from 4.4 percent to 6 percent, and in 2024 there were three brackets ranging from 4.4 percent to 5.7 percent.


In 2025, most working Iowans will pay a 3.8 percent state income tax rate.

What Iowa leaders are saying​

While statehouse Democrats sounded alarms over the projections, Iowa Department of Management Director Kraig Paulsen, an REC member appointed by Gov. Kim Reynolds and a former Republican Speaker of the Iowa House, said between the state’s reserve accounts and what he described as a fiscally responsible state government, he believes Iowa tax revenues will grow to support state spending before those reserve accounts are exhausted.


“The trick on that is trying to get where you get that projection correct, so that as you draw that (budget surplus) down, you never get on the bottom side of that,” Paulsen told reporters after Thursday’s meeting. “And I think so far they’ve been making — and by that, I mean the General Assembly (and) governor — been making prudent decisions that will draw that down at a rate that is sustainable, and the state will grow right out of it.”


Gov. Kim Reynolds, in a statement, said the state income tax cuts are “working as designed.” Reynolds has in the past advocated for a complete elimination of the state income tax.


“As I’ve said, the government has been taking in too much taxpayer money. We fixed that by cutting taxes and taking in less. That means Iowans get to keep more of what they earn, and that’s how it should be,” Reynolds’ statement said. “Our state’s fiscal health remains strong, and Iowa’s economy continues to grow.”


Statehouse Democrats criticized the budget priorities of statehouse Republicans, who by virtue of their majorities have complete control of the state lawmaking and budgeting process.


“Today’s negative revenue projections confirm what most Iowans feel: the Reynolds economy is not working for everyday people,” Iowa Rep. Timi Brown-Powers, a Democrat from Waterloo on the House’s budget committee, said in a statement. “Tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy combined with vouchers have created an unsustainable budget while costs keep rising for Iowa families.”


Iowa Sen. Janet Petersen, a Democrat from Des Moines on the Senate’s budget committee, in a statement expressed concern for state public school funding and other Democratic priorities because of shrinking overall state tax revenue and increasing costs to the state’s new private school financial assistance program.


“Republican lawmakers’ and Gov. Reynolds’ priorities put private school vouchers and corporate tax giveaways ahead of our kids in public schools, seniors in nursing homes, and tax relief for working families,” Petersen’s statement said.

disgusting!

BURLINGTON, Iowa (KWQC) -A parent is charged after police say he assaulted a middle school referee.
According to a Facebook post, Burlington police said officers responded to a report of a parent assaulting a referee after a basketball game at 6:25 p.m. Friday at Edward Stone Middle School.

Urban Morris, 42, is charged with assault, a serious misdemeanor; assault, a simple misdemeanor; disorderly conduct, a simple misdemeanor; two counts of first-degree harassment, an aggravated misdemeanor.
According to arrest affidavits, police learned on the way to the school the parent had left the school. When they arrived a witness identified Morris.

A referee from the game told police, at the end of the game a call was made that Morris disagreed with. Morris approached the referee and a second referee upset about the call. The referee said Morris threatened them both.

A second referee told police, that he had his phone on him and was threatened to not call the police.
When the first referee went into the locker room to get his phone, he turned and was punched by Morris multiple times, according to the affidavit. Parents are not allowed in the locker room. Police say a witness followed Morris into the locker room and saw him hit the referee.
Morris is being held on a $17,000 bond, court records show. A preliminary hearing is set for Dec. 27 at the Des Moines County Courthouse.

That could be $26,666 each year for each of the 15 scholarship players.

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Iowa MBB got another official visit lined up for this coming weekend.

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I’m gonna be on KXNO at 12:10 — don’t miss it.
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full text of tweet:

Quinn Ewers reportedly “has a deal on the table” from a team in the Big 10 for $4 million to transfer next season and forgo the NFL Draft.

Ewers is reportedly debating on transferring and staying in college for another season or entering the draft.

Several NFL scouts reportedly have Ewers ranked “outside” of their Top-4 QB’s in this year’s draft.

The Longhorns QB is going to get the BAG with either decision he makes.

Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon, USC, and many other possibilities could possibly be on the table for the Longhorns QB


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I've been debating on what to make, I don't want a ham or turkey. Might try a brisket or prime rib this year.

put up a 40-spot on Mich St tonight.

Another game-winning 3 pt buzzer beater w/ 0:00 on the clock when it went thru...

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Sounds like Pribula will be visiting. He's already visited Mizzou and sounds like he'll also be visiting Indiana and UCF. Not sure we have the ability to get him or not.....Indiana's got a pretty good NIL war chest via Mark Cuban and Mizzou is a pretty good player in the NIL space as well. But getting him on campus is huge and at least gives us a shot.

Looks like Iowa stopped in to see a 2025 target yesterday.

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Now we've got squirrels hunting and eating meat. Won't be long and they're gonna getting into squirrel squads and coming after us and our pets!

Squirrels spotted hunting and eating animals for first time​

Sarah Knapton
Wed, December 18, 2024 at 11:34 AM CST
3 min read



California ground squirrels of all ages and genders were observed actively hunting the small rodents
Flesh-eating squirrels which hunt down and devour voles have been spotted for the first time in the wild.
Until now, squirrels were thought to be primarily vegetarian, cramming their cheeks full of seeds and nuts, which they often bury in underground stores to get through the colder months.
But biologists were amazed to see Californian ground squirrels chasing and killing voles in predatory behaviour never before recorded in the animals.



Experts say it fundamentally changes their understanding of squirrels, which clearly have a more omnivorous and flexible diet than had been assumed.
“This was shocking,” said squirrel expert Dr Jennifer Smith, of the University of Wisconsin.
“We had never seen this behaviour before. Squirrels are one of the most familiar animals to people. We see them right outside our windows; we interact with them regularly.
“Yet here’s this never-before-encountered-in-science behaviour that sheds light on the fact that there’s so much more to learn about the natural history of the world around us.”
Researchers have been following squirrel populations at Briones Regional Park in Contra Costa County since 2010, but this is the first time they have observed the carnivorous behaviour.

The squirrels’ carnivorous behaviour peaked during an explosion in vole numbers
Out of 74 observed interactions with voles between June and July, 42 per cent involved active hunting of these small rodents by ground squirrels.

Dr Sonja Wild, who helped set up the California Ground Squirrels Project with Dr Smith, said she was astonished when undergraduate students first came to her saying they had filmed the strange new behaviour.
“I could barely believe my eyes,” said Dr Wild, of the University of California. “From then, we saw that behaviour almost every day. Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.”
Ground squirrels generally live on the ground or in burrows, in contrast with British tree squirrels, such as the red and grey, which make their homes in trees.
Tree squirrels have large bushy tails, unlike ground squirrels, and measure between 12 and 20 inches long, compared with ground squirrels, which average about eight to 12 inches in length.

California squirrels are eating another rodent for the first time, new study finds​

Hubble trouble or Superbubble? Astronomers need to escape the 'supervoid' to solve cosmology crisis​

Ground squirrels are known to eat insects, bird eggs and nestlings, but can ‘respond to changes in food availability’, say scientists


Ground squirrels are known for their burrowing behaviour, creating intricate tunnel systems which they use as escape routes from predators.
As well as nuts and seeds, the animals are also known to occasionally eat insects, bird eggs and nestlings.
In new research, published in the Journal of Ethology, the authors documented California ground squirrels of all ages and genders hunting, eating and competing over vole prey.
The squirrels’ carnivorous summer behaviour peaked during the first two weeks of July, coinciding with an explosion of vole numbers at the park.
This suggests the squirrels’ hunting behaviour emerged alongside a temporary increase in the availability of prey, the study said. The scientists did not observe the squirrels hunting other mammals.

‘Incredible opportunists’​

“The fact that California ground squirrels are behaviourally flexible and can respond to changes in food availability might help them persist in environments rapidly changing due to the presence of humans,” Dr Wild added.
Dr Smith added that many species, including the California ground squirrel, are “incredible opportunists”.
But they said many questions remain unanswered, including how widespread hunting behaviour is among squirrels, whether and how it is passed down from parent to pup, and how it affects the environment.
The authors are planning to return to the same spot next summer to see what impact, if any, this year’s vole hunting may have on squirrel reproduction compared with the past decade.

Spoke with one of Iowa's newest offerees, Tristan Beckford yesterday afternoon.

Details on his super recent recruitment with Iowa, his thoughts on what the Hawkeyes have to offer, what he's looking for in his recruitment, and we drop an evaluation.

STORY:

Federal Reserve officials made their third and final rate cut of 2024 at their meeting on Wednesday. They also forecast two fewer rate cuts in 2025 than they had previously expected, as inflation lingers and the economy remains robust.

The Fed has come a long way from just a few years ago: In 2022, inflation was more than twice its current rate and many economists thought that the central bank’s decisions might cause economic pain — and even a recession — as it rapidly lifted interest rates to slow demand and wrestle price increases back under control.

That didn’t happen. The job market slowed without falling apart, and inflation cooled so substantially that the Fed was able to begin cutting interest rates in September. Policymakers are now trying to bring inflation the rest of the way down without tanking the economy in the process.
Yet the Fed is entering a new phase in its journey toward an economic soft landing. Officials thought that it was clear that rates needed to come down notably from their 5.3 percent peak, and they have steadily lowered them to about 4.4 percent by making three back-to-back reductions. But policymakers do not want to cut rates so much that they reignite the economy — and they are now approaching the point where it is uncertain how much further rates should fall.
Fed officials predicted that they will cut rates to 3.9 percent in 2025 in fresh economic estimates released Wednesday. They then saw rates coming down to 3.4 percent in 2026, and over the longer term, they thought they would level off at 3 percent — slightly higher than what they had previously expected.
“The economic outlook is uncertain,” officials reiterated in their statement.
Fed policymakers are balancing two risks. They do not want to keep rates so high for so long that they squeeze the economy and inflict serious damage. But they also want to make sure to fully stamp out rapid inflation, so they do not want to lower rates too much and too rapidly, heating up the economy.
Their economic projections suggest that they will pause rate cuts at some point next year, making just two quarter-point cuts over the course of their eight meetings. When they last released economic projections in September, they had expected to make four rate cuts next year. They expect to make two rate cuts in 2026, and one in 2027.
But even if rate reductions are poised to slow, the question is exactly when the pause will come. Investors may get a hint of that when Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, holds a news conference with reporters at 2:30 p.m.
The Fed’s revisions come after a surprising period in the economy.
Earlier this year, the unemployment rate was climbing, hiring was slowing, and inflation had been falling steadily. But since September, the job market has shown signs of stabilizing, consumer spending has remained solid, and inflation has been more stubborn than many economists had expected. Officials lowered their expected unemployment rate for 2024 and 2025 in Wednesday’s projections, but they nudged up their inflation forecasts notably. Policymakers predicted that inflation would end 2025 at 2.5 percent, up from 2.1 percent previously and well above the central bank’s 2 percent inflation target.
That combination — of resilient growth and sticky inflation — explains the Fed’s more cautious approach.
In fact, some officials thought that the Fed should not cut interest rates this month. Beth Hammack, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, voted against the rate cut, preferring to leave borrowing costs unchanged. And while only five of the Fed’s 12 regional presidents vote on policy at any given time, three of the non-voting officials appear to have favored leaving interest rates unchanged at this meeting, based on their economic projections.

Then why in the world did they vote for him?:

A majority of Americans oppose Donald Trump’s plans to use the U.S. military to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, to instruct the U.S. Justice Department to investigate his political rivals and to pardon rioters charged with breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a nationwide Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.


Get the latest election news and results

Even larger majorities of Americans oppose Trump’s plans to jail reporters for writing stories he doesn’t like and having police use force against anti-Trump protests.
The survey of 1,251 Americans was conducted weeks after Trump’s victory and sought to examine public sentiment about positions espoused by the president-elect that challenge democratic principles and strain constitutional norms, as well as views on the legitimacy of American elections after Trump’s win. Trump has claimed a broad mandate for his proposals and has selected cabinet secretaries and other executive branch officials who have expressed eagerness to carry them out. But the poll results indicate that Americans reject many of the proposals that experts say could erode the guardrails that help keep presidential power in check.



Trump does seem to have the blessing of a majority of registered Republicans for some of his most divisive ideas, including 77 percent who back his pledge to use the armed forces to carry out mass deportations compared with 42 percent of Americans overall. Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans say they support the Justice Department investigating Trump’s enemies, whereas fewer than 4 in 10 Americans overall agree. And 60 percent of Republicans back Trump pardoning Jan. 6 convicts, almost double the 32 percent of Americans in general who feel the same.

“I find it mostly disheartening that there is so much division. There is a fundamental disagreement about basic norms and basic facts,” said Mike Hanmer, a government and politics professor at the University of Maryland. “We’re not on the same page in terms of how we deal with power and how we hold power accountable.”
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Americans are also split over how Trump will behave as president this time. The poll finds 40 percent think he will try to rule as a dictator, 41 percent say he won’t and another 19 percent aren’t sure. Yet Americans widely have faith in democratic institutions, with 71 percent saying constitutional guardrails like the checks and balances of Congress and the Supreme Court would block Trump from securing total power over the country, while 25 percent think Trump would succeed if he tried.


An overwhelming majority of Americans across the political spectrum do not think Trump should jail reporters who write stories he doesn’t like. Still, 1 in 10 Americans support it, including 15 percent of Republicans and 5 percent of Democrats. Hanmer said that’s still a “dangerously high” number of people who would be okay with prosecuting journalists. During a news conference this week, Trump said he wanted to “straighten out the press” and suggested the Justice Department target the “very dishonest” media.
Separately, a 72 percent majority of Americans oppose police using force to stop anti-Trump protests; including 54 percent of Republicans. Seven in 10 Republicans support Trump firing FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, while just over half of the public overall opposes prematurely ending his 10-year term. The poll was completed before Wray announced his intention to resign last week, though Trump had sent a clear message that he intended to replace Wray when he endorsed Kash Patel as the next FBI director.
The poll also asked how people felt about President Joe Biden pardoning his son, Hunter, who had been convicted in June on tax and gun charges. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans oppose the decision, including 47 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of Republicans. Far fewer Republicans support Biden pardoning his son, who was not convicted of a violent crime, than they do Trump pardoning a group of people who engaged in a violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol.


Drew, a 31-year-old police detective in New Jersey who declined to give his last name for fear of online harassment, said he hadn’t supported Trump pardoning the Jan. 6 convicts until Biden did so for his son. Drew, who voted for Trump, said in an interview that as someone who works in law enforcement, he didn’t support what the rioters did that day. But he also said he thinks they were trying to “practice their civic duty” because the 2020 election results “didn’t seem accurate.”
The mob of Trump supporters who sought to block Congress’s certification of Biden’s victory in 2021 did so after Trump convinced them that there had been widespread voting fraud that cost him the election — despite there being no evidence of significant malfeasance. In the months leading up to the 2024 election, Trump and many of his allies baselessly warned of voting irregularities and corruption to steal the election for the Democrats. Since he won, Trump has not publicly questioned whether the election was administered fairly and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, quickly conceded defeat.
The Post-UMD poll finds 79 percent of Americans say Trump won legitimately this year while 63 percent say Biden’s victory in 2020 was fair. Acceptance of Trump’s win is bipartisan, with 96 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of independents and 70 percent of Democrats saying he won legitimately. There is also a slight uptick in Republicans accepting Biden’s 2020 win compared to a Post-UMD poll conducted in 2023. Last year, 31 percent of Republicans said Biden fairly won in 2020 and this year 41 percent do. A 58 percent majority of Republicans continue to reject Biden’s 2020 victory.




Democratic acceptance of Trump’s win this year is more than twice as high as in 2017, when a Post-UMD survey that year found 32 percent believed he legitimately won the 2016 vote. Those views were fueled by investigations of that year’s election, which found that Russia had spread disinformation to interfere on Trump’s behalf.
The poll also asked whether there was voter fraud in the 2024 election. About 1 in 6 Americans (16 percent) say there is solid evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2024 election, down from the 1 in 3 Americans (33 percent) who said this about the 2020 election in a Post-UMD poll last year. Perceptions of evidence of fraud in elections have plummeted among Republicans. Last year, 62 percent of Republicans said there was proven fraud in the 2020 election compared to 21 percent today who say there was in this year’s election. (There is no evidence of widespread fraud in either election.)

“The Republican base will believe what Trump says about this,” Hanmer said.



Thomas Sweeney, a 74-year-old from Texas, said he voted reluctantly for Trump. He blames the president-elect for the Jan. 6 attack and, as a West Point graduate, said he strongly opposes using the military for any domestic matters, including deportations. He also believes Trump will try to rule as a dictator, but is hopeful Congress will stand up to him.

“We need to have Congress be able to flex their muscles and not roll over every time he yells about something,” Sweeney said.
Americans are also divided over whether Trump will try to stay in office after his second term ends in 2029, despite the Constitution saying a president can only be elected to president twice. Just under half, 48 percent, say he will try to stay in the White House for a third term, and 50 percent say he will step down. Some Trump allies, like former adviser Stephen K. Bannon, have already floated the idea that Trump could run again because his terms were not consecutive. Constitutional scholars say the theory has no basis.



Overall, Americans are at odds over what Trump’s election means for the country. About 3 in 10 say his election is “a crisis for the country,” while a similar share say it is “great for the country.” About 2 in 10 say his win is a setback, but not a crisis, and roughly the same share say it is good, but not great.

Between the QBs we know who will be in the spring and all the talk around Beau Pribula, curious what everyone thinks.

The NFL will have a NEW champion!
Those High Ankle sprains are a bad thing…….

Cleveland says, “You’re welcome!”

MLB is going to modify the PitchCom system and give pitchers the option of calling their own signals. The experiment will start on February 24 and the league will evaluate the results during spring training to decide whether or not to use it during the regular season.

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