Anti-Arbitration Bills Moving Forward – Shopfloor.org The House Judiciary Committee yesterday reported out H.R. 6126, the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act, which would vitiate pre-dispute arbitration provisions in nursing home contracts… Frank Bill Mandates Credit Rating Agencies to Repeat Subprime Mistakes – OpenMarket.org Due to their failures in the subprime mess, it has long been expected that Congress would take up regulation of the credit rating agencies to attempt to make the ratings stronger… House Democrats Pull Out All The Stops to Win – A Five-Week Vacation! – The …
It is no secret that public diplomacy, a vital component of America’s strategic victory in the Cold War, has received inadequate attention in recent years. But, of course, we are still engaged in a war of ideas. Thus, the need for a public diplomacy which explains and defends our principles to the world is as needed today as it was on July 4, 1776, when the founders submitted the facts contained in the Declaration “to a candid world” out of “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” Newly confirmed …
The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that a new Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that, for the first time in 30 years, a majority (51%) of Californians support drilling off the coast of California. Responding to the fact that a majority if her constituents disagree with her on the issue, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told the Chronicle: “The appropriate question is if you knew you could get more energy from efficiency and clean technologies such as solar, wind and geothermal, would you rather do that or drill along …
Earlier this year the Los Angels Times reported on a nationwide effort by environmental groups like the National Resources Defense Council to shut down all construction of all coal power plants everywhere in the United States. The group claimed they had stopped 65 plants from coming online. But coal is not their only target. Today the Los Angeles Times reports that the NRDC just succeeded in stopping 13 natural gas power plants in southern California. California already imports more energy than any state in the country and as a result …
Today’s New York Times carries a story titled “Strong Economy Propels Brazil to World Stage” and reports: It has greatly diversified its industrial base, has huge potential to expand a booming agricultural sector into virgin fields and holds a tremendous pool of untapped natural resources. New oil discoveries will thrust Brazil into the ranks of the global oil powers within the next decade. … Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, shocked the oil world in November when it announced that its Tupi deepwater field offshore of Rio de Janeiro could hold …
This week’s collapse of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks was a historic defeat for free trade and will unfortunately probably have negative effects around the world for years to come. The Wall Street Journal reports today: The failure of the talks isn’t likely to have big effects immediately on the flow of world trade or on economic growth. Outside of agriculture and textiles, trade barriers generally are low globally because of decades of tariff cutting. But the consequences of the failure were still significant because of the …
The ‘dean’ of Washington punditry, The Washington Post’s David Broder, has an absolute beaut today on the creation of the National Housing Trust Fund. In an op-ed titled “When Congress Works” Broder writes: If you were to ask Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd — the principal architects of the massive housing bill signed yesterday by President Bush — which of its many features pleases them most, the answer would surprise you. … it is the section creating the National Housing Trust Fund, a creative way of meeting the chronic …
Liberals and their pro-amnesty allies in the White House always try and frame the debate over illegal immigration as a binary choice: either we grant illegal immigrants already here citizenship or we spend massive resources forcibly deporting them. A study released yesterday by the Center for Immigration Studies provides more evidence that this is a false choice. Using data from monthly Census surveys as recent as May of this year, and then extrapolating from previous research, the report concluded that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States dropped …
In the clip below The American Prospect’s Mark Schmitt claims that “earmarks have nothing to do with anything” and “you could eliminate all the earmarks and not save a dollar because all they are are streams of existing funding.” If congressional earmarks occurred in a legislative vacuum, Schmitt would be technically correct. But nothing on Capitol Hill occurs in a vacuum. Earmarking invites corruption by changing how federal money is warded from a competitive grant-seeking application process, to a state and local government lobbyist free for all. Worse, there is …
Accounting Reform – The Next Right As the crush of entitlement obligations worsens, this would be a very valuable message for the Right to begin trumpeting…. (tags: Entitlements) Treating Angelenos as Children – Cato-at-Liberty law that would prevent fast-food restaurants from opening in South Los Angeles neighborhoods was unanimously approved by the LA City Council on Tuesday… (tags: Government) First He Came for the Wealth Creators… – Adam Smith Institute Barak Obama’s social security (pensions) plan looks a mess. Last month, he called for a new social security payroll tax …
