The Washington Post ran a terrific editorial this morning, urging Congressional leaders to reverse the effort to terminate the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program that’s helping 1,700 low-income students attend private schools in the nation’s capital: We would like Mr. Obey and his colleagues to talk about possible “disruption” with Deborah Parker, mother of two children who attend Sidwell Friends School because of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. “The mere thought of returning to public school frightens me,” Ms. Parker told us as she related the opportunities — such as a …
How much government meddling will our nation’s banks put up with before they start rejecting the federal government’s TARP funds? Looks like we’re starting to find out. Last week ProPublica reported that IberiaBank of Lafayette, Louisiana became the first bank to return TARP cash to the Treasury. From the bank’s press release: “We believe recent actions, interpretations, and commentary regarding various aspects of the program places our Company at an unacceptable competitive disadvantage.” Now Crain’s is reporting that Northern Trust Corp will soon join IberiaBank: In a letter Friday to …
At National Journal’s National Security Expert Blog, Heritage Senior Research Fellow James Carafano reacts to the new director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair’s recent claims that the worldwide economic crisis is the single greatest threat to the national security of the United States. Carafano writes: Sure the economic troubles have “implications” for national security. After all, the world gets less not more safe in troubled times. Right before World War I, tariffs were sky-high and open trade was under assault on every front. The economic woes of the …
7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judge Richard Posner and Nobel Laureate Gary Becker weigh in on President Barack Obama’s mortgage bailout plan on their Becker-Posner blog. First up, Posner: The four measures, taken as a whole, are likely to be administratively complicated, costly, and slow, and so have very limited effect in arresting (let alone reversing) the decline of housing prices by reducing the glut of houses for sale as a result of widespread foreclosures. [Cram down in bankruptcy] fails on both grounds; bankruptcy is a complicated proceeding and …
ABC News has a great story on how upper-income taxpayers are already planning to cut back work to avoid President Barack Obama’s inevitable tax hike: A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law. “We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00,” she said. “We have to …
President Obama vows to “address the crushing cost of health care” by, among other things, “invest[ing] in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives.” Sounds great. Let’s take a quick trip across the Atlantic to see how that’s worked out for the British. In two words, not well. In 2002, Tony Blair ordered Britain’s National Health Service to participate in the National Programme for IT, and thus launched an ambitious attempt to computerize the entire Service. The initial projected …
Yesterday, just days after President Barack Obama signed his economic stimulus measure, the White House released a statement claiming credit for the reopening of a window and door factory in Chicago. Vice President Joe Biden said, “The reopening of this factory and the rehiring of these workers provide an excellent example of how the money in the Recovery Act is targeted to spur job creation quickly.” If the Obama Administration is going to claim credit for every job created since Obama and Biden were elected, then if they are honest, …
Following the president’s speech on the drawdown, at the White House Friday, a senior government official sketched out the details behind the plan. Here is my takeaway. While the words “change of mission” and “ending the war” sound different—there is a lot more continuity than change between the goals and the plans of the last administration and the new one. There are only three key dates in the plan. (1) Combat troops out of the city by June of this year. (2) Combat troops out of the country by August …
If there was an award for bonehead defense reporting it should go to The New York Times for “Military Contractors Await Details of Obama’s Budget.” The opening paragraph includes this howler…”The good news for big military from President Obama’s budget this week was his proposal to increase the basic budget by 4 percent to $534.” If the reporter had bothered to talk to any credible military analyst, he would have learned Obama’s plan will likely be anything but a “real” increase in the budget. Here’s why: The Pentagon budget looks …
