I don’t know what it tells you, but it tells me that maybe we should study a bit more before we spend billions to “solve” a problem we don’t understand so well.” In case you missed it, that’s Jonah Goldberg’s concluding sentence of a thoughtful piece in the LA Times in which he discusses new studies on climate change and the sun’s effect on the climate: Assuming there are no sunspots today, a 96-year record will have been broken: 53 days without any solar blemishes, giant magnetic disruptions on the …
Earlier this year, the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis studied the Waxman-Markey cap and trade/energy tax legislation and found that it would cost Americans $9.4 trillion in aggregate GDP losses over the 2012-2035 time frame. This analysis included an assumption that Waxman-Markey would be rebating part of the energy tax back to consumers. But then earlier this week we documented how climate negotiators in Europe, in conjunction with the Obama administration, were plotting to send those very same energy tax dollars overseas to developing countries like China and India. …
Politicians are touting cash for clunkers as a successful program that has killed two birds with one stone. By handing out taxpayer money to subsidize a portion of the cost of a more fuel efficient vehicle, the program is saving the economy and saving the environment. Although the program increased consumer spending and increased fuel efficiency, the question should be: At what cost? It has been a bureaucratic nightmare laden with unintended consequences. And despite all its ‘success’, GM and Chrysler’s sales in August from a year earlier fell 20 …
The Corner‘s Marc Thiessen notes that on The Today Show this morning, while trying to defend Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to re-investigate allegations of detainee abuse by the CIA, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said: “I’m a former United States attorney. I’m a former [state] attorney general, a prosecutor. . . . I would never second-guess a prosecutor.” Watch: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmYvbItysPY[/youtube] The key fact that Napolitano is leaving out here is that second guessing a prosecutor is exactly what Holder is doing. Former-President Bill Clinton chief of staff …
Last Friday I had a post about the Justice Department’s dismissal of a public corruption case against New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. The AP reported that sources within Justice said the investigation had been killed in Washington. More evidence of that possibility comes from a letter sent by the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, Gregory Fouratt, who is not an Obama political appointee, but a career lawyer appointed by the federal judges in his circuit to fill the vacancy in the U.S. Attorney’s office. The purpose of the letter was …
MOSCOW – Both Presidents arrived at their meeting armed with lists of unfulfilled promises. but the latest meeting between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko yielded no tangible results. Economic factors prevail in Minsk’s complaints – Belarus has yet to receive the promised 2nd tranche of Russia’s $1 billion loan. Lukashenko is rejecting Moscow’s demand to honor his country’s debt for natural gas supplies. He claims Medvedev’s had promised to retain low-priced gas deliveries.
The University of California at Los Angeles reports: Pro-labor policies pushed by President Herbert Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation’s gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what might otherwise have been a bad recession to slip into the Great Depression, a UCLA economist concludes in a new study. “These findings suggest that the recession was three times worse — at a minimum — than it would otherwise have been, because of Hoover,” said …
Car insurance doesn’t pay to fill up your gas tank, why does health insurance pay for your flu shot? ABC’s John Stossel explores how third-party payments are driving up are nation’s health care costs: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnS96NVlMI[/youtube] Obamacare would only make the status quo worse. Heritage scholars Bob Moffit and Nina Owcharenko explained how when Obama first unveiled his plan last year: The current structure of third-party payments—which Senator Obama wants to preserve—creates serious problems in the delivery of care. In this system, insurers and medical professionals have little direct accountability to …
MOSCOW – The Kremlin campaign against what they describe as falsifying history is in full force with the 70th anniversaries of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the start of World War II this month. The Kremlin’s chief objective is to justify the signing of the 1939 Soviet-German nonaggression pact and to absolve Stalin’s role in Hitler’s decision to unleash WWII. This campaign is nothing more than a brazen attempt to rewrite history. All the documents have been made public and specific facts are common knowledge.
August has been a brutal month for advocates of government-run health care. According to a new CNN poll, for the first time in his presidency, a majority of independents (53%) now disapprove of how President Barack Obama is handling his job. And a majority of all Americans (53%) also disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling health care. Responding to these new facts on the ground, senior Obama officials are now telling Politico that when Obama does finally detail the specifics of what he wants to see in a …
