I’m betting that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t really get the debt ceiling.
Then I read Mirror reporter Ana Radelat’s timely profile of Rep. Jim Himes, Connecticut’s 4th District congressman. A former Goldman Sachs vice president, Himes does understand the debt ceiling, and because of that, is far more nervous than I’d been about the possibility that the country will default on its loans.
“Financial Armageddon,” Himes said, summing up the fallout if the radical right House members stick to their guns (an apt metaphor, or what?) and don’t allow a lifting of the debt ceiling before Thursday. Joe Courtney, our 2nd District representative, said of Himes, “Jim’s grasp of how markets behave make him the ‘demystifier-in-chief.’”
The Mirror’s Keith Phaneuf, as he so often is with money matters, was my own demystifier-in-chief. I found his primer on what the debt ceiling is and why Connecticut could be especially hurt totally illuminating and, as a result, I’m now as alarmed as Himes.
Mirror medical reporter Arielle Levin Becker also offered a clarification this week, about how Medicaid is affected by the Affordable Care Act. This is just her latest story to look at an aspect of Obamacare as it starts to roll out. Check our site for other stories and graphics, as we try to simplify how the ACA will affect thousands of people in Connecticut, and throughout the country.
Fallout thanks to the government shutdown …
- Bridgeport’s Head Start program closed. Then a Texas billionaire said he was going to pay to reopen it (as well as programs in five other states). Then our governor “rode to the rescue,” as Mark Pazniokas wrote, with expedited state funds.
- The CBIA’s chief economist Pete Gioia said businesses that depend on SBA loans are already being hurt.
- Federal courts in Connecticut say they’re going to run out of money Thursday.
- And the moving of women inmates from the federal prison in Danbury to prisons throughout the country has been delayed.
Fallout from global climate change … (or, pay per view)
Environmental reporter Jan Ellen Spiegel writes: “As the U.S. coastline — including Connecticut’s – is increasingly threatened, if not battered, by the effects of climate change, shoreline inhabitants are being asked to shoulder more of the financial responsibility for the risk of living so near the water.”
And Don’t Miss the profile of Peter Wolfgang, head of the Family Institute of Connecticut, who, Pazniokas writes, is in “prayerful search … of the Great Right Hope.” …..
Or the fascinating story of Bonnie Jean Foreshaw, who was convicted of murder when Ronald Reagan was president, was given the longest sentence a woman had ever received at the time and was granted clemency last week after 27 years in prison. She served her sentence at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic.
.