We noted last week that that poll after poll shows Americans just aren’t buying his all gain, no pain, health care claims. The New York Times’s Kevin Sack puts some voices to those poll numbers: The Browns are Jamaican immigrants who met in college in Florida. Mr. Brown gained citizenship in 1999; his wife expects to do so next year. The family is insured through his job at a family-owned trophy shop, where he earns about $38,000 a year. … “The bottom line is there are so many unknowns,” said …
On Thursday, Senator Daniel Akaka [D-HI] convened an education sub-committee hearing on the state of reform in the D.C. public school system. D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee testified, and was met with both support and opposition. Over the past two years, she has brought sweeping reforms to the DCPS and has worked to reduce waste in the system. Despite her successes in a steep uphill battle, opponents of her reform efforts held signs reading “Oppose Rhee-form” outside of the committee hearing. While Rhee’s star-power garnered considerable attention during the …
Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Treasury Geithner co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed today on the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) with China. The op-ed suits the Dialogue perfectly: it seems to be an important piece of work but there’s actually little to it. The two Secretaries tell us how important China is, how important Sino-American relations are, and how many problems cannot be solved unless the U.S. and PRC work together. This would have been worth noting 10 years ago; not so much now.
For the second time in less than two weeks, the independent and non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has dealt a crushing blow to President Barack Obama’s health care plans. First, on July 17th, CBO director Doug Elmendorf sent a letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), explaining that, in direct contradiction to President Obama’s promise that his health plan would not add “even one dime to our deficit over the next decade,” the House health plan would actually increase the budget deficit by $239 billion over ten …
Do you drive a truck or a farm tractor? If not, do you use any products grown on a farm or shipped by truck? Well, here’s some news: The Waxman-Markey energy tax bill will make all those products more expensive. By artificially restricting use of fossil fuels (which provide 85 percent of America’s energy), the Waxman-Markey bill will drive up energy costs of all sorts. One example is the price of diesel fuel. By 2012, the first year of the Waxman-Markey caps, diesel fuel prices are expected to have risen …
For any carbon reduction scheme to succeed in reducing global carbon emissions, the plan itself must be global in nature. The problem is, the world’s two biggest emerging powers and carbon emitters, China and India, have no interest in joining any such pact. That was made all the more evident today, when Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh informed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in the country for diplomatic talks, that India would oppose any push for legally binding carbon emissions caps. Earlier this week, he said: There is simply no …
Deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is sitting in a white jeep yards away from the Honduran border, according to the Washington Post just minutes ago. “It was unclear if Zelaya would try to cross into Honduras where the de facto government says it will arrest him,” the Post reports. Heritage’s Ray Walser recently wrote: Zelaya vows to return to Honduras in the next few days, increasing the chances of bloodshed and political instability. Zelaya’s return will breed the politics of polarization, Marxian class struggle, and the radical brew of leftist/revolutionary …
As Britain embarks on its first defense review since 1998, both press and official comments continue to hint that spending cuts are in the offing. The argument, to the extent there is one, is that since the U.S. does it all, and can pay for it all, Britain does not need to over-insure in expensive capabilities, especially those relevant to land war. This is a curious argument to make at precisely the moment when the U.S., under President Obama, is embarking on a procurement holiday. Equally wrong-headed is the increasingly …
In response to Sarah Palin’s July 14th Washington Post op-ed, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), in their own WaPo op-ed, write they want to “put facts ahead of fiction and real debate ahead of rhetorical bomb-throwing.” Senators Kerry and Boxer will likely be the co-sponsors for the Senate bill to accompany the Waxman-Markey bill passed in the House June 26th. Kerry and Boxer first refute Palin’s claim that job losses are all but certain. Boxer and Kerry assert that investing billions of dollars in clean energy will …
Today, another burden is being placed on America’s small businesses. Effective on this date is the third installment of the increase of the minimum wage that was passed in 2007. Once again, our federal government has provided not a help, but a hindrance to our economic recovery. When the three-phase minimum wage increase was initially signed into law in May 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.5%, and when the first phase went into place, the unemployment rate was 4.6%. Today it stands at 9.5%. At a time of record deficits, …
