I finish my trip to the border with the Pima County Sherriff Department by asking the tough questions. Are you making a difference? “We are just putting a dent in the cartels,” one deputy tells me. “These guys will send a 10,000 pound load of marijuana across the border as a decoy so they can divert your attention and move an even bigger score some place else.” What do you need? More of what we have, I am told. If they had a lot more resources they could do a …
Out of the blue today, President Barack Obama followed in President George W. Bush’s footsteps and announced the formation of his own tax reform panel. President Obama should be applauded for taking on the important work of reforming the tax code because it badly needs an overhaul. Hopefully, the Obama tax reform panel can build on the excellent foundation laid by the Bush panel, and that President Obama can then bring the effort home in signed legislation.
Landing just north of the border we meet up with a ground unit to drive some of the busiest smuggling routes. I ride with a deputy in one car and another deputy trails us in a second vehicle. “It is always smarter never to travel alone,” I’m told. While there is a flood of drugs coming north, the Border Crime Unit often focuses its interdiction efforts on what is heading south—hard cash and truckloads of weapons. It is a two way trade, a $25 billion dollar a year business and …
The Environmental Protection Agency’s recent endangerment finding that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, “are pollutants that endanger the public’s health and welfare” would come with monumental costs. The cumulative GDP losses for 2010 to 2029 approach $7 trillion. Single-year losses exceed $600 billion in 2029, more than $5,000 per household. Job losses are expected to exceed 800,000 in some years, and exceed at least 500,000 from 2015 through 2026. It is important to note that these are net job losses, after any jobs created by compliance with the regulations–so-called green …
The AP’s Calvin Woodward has an item out today challenging some of the assertions President Barack Obama made in his press conference last night: OBAMA: “In this budget, we have made the tough choices necessary to cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term even under the most pessimistic estimates.” THE FACTS: Not all credible estimates foresee a deficit halved in that time. Obama’s budget forecast a deficit of $530 billion by the end of 2013. That would cut by half the deficit he inherited at …
Commenting on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s latest bank bailout plan, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told Reuters: Quite frankly, this amounts to robbery of the American people. I don’t think it’s going to work because I think there’ll be a lot of anger about putting the losses so much on the shoulder of the American taxpayer. We think “robbery” is a little strong of a word, but Geithner’s “Public-Private Investment Program” (PPIP) is definitely flawed. Heritage analyst James Gattuso details why: Risk of uncertainty transferred, not eliminated. The main goal …
The financial crisis has exposed a trend that has been in the works for some time. Since the fall of communism, some of the more socialist countries have learned lessons from the Soviet collapse: free markets work, and government planning does not. Meanwhile, the capitalist countries have slept through these lessons, and have been slowly becoming more socialist. The financial crisis has made this crystal clear. For example, US car companies, and now auto parts dealers, have received bailout money. Sweden, every liberal’s favorite social-democratic country, has let their signature …
Via the National Center for Policy Analysis, Hoover Institution senior fellow Scott Atlas identifies 10 things you probably did not know about health care: Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent …
Jay Leno’s been on fire lately. Check out this hit he took on President Barack Obama’s borrow and spending plans: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTI6ttK4Z20[/youtube] Check out Jay’s entire monolouge which also took a shot at Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT).
Last night President Barack Obama said: “Bankers and executives on Wall Street need to realize that enriching themselves on the taxpayers’ dime is inexcusable, that the days of outsized rewards and reckless speculation that puts us all at risk have to be over.” But who does he think is going be manipulating and profiteering from his carbon cap and trade plan? CNN reports: A cap-and-trade law would create a market – including for derivatives of emission allowances – for carbon emissions and would multiply trading opportunities for emitters, traders, brokers …
