Like much of the rest of the world, President Obama this morning declared himself “surprised” that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, for which he had been nominated on February 1, after just a few weeks in office. The Nobel Peace Prize has tempted and eluded many other American presidents, including President Clinton, whose final year in office was frantically focused on a Nobel wining bid for Middle East peace. And yet, President Obama was chosen out of nearly three hundred other nominees on the basis of expectations, hope, …
Yesterday morning in Kabul, a sports utility vehicle traveling on a busy commercial street detonated explosives hidden in the car as it approached the Indian Embassy. The suicide bomber killed 17 people and three Indian paramilitary guards were wounded by shrapnel. Hours later, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and specified that the Indians were the target. The Taliban’s suicide attack on India, who was also attacked by the Pakistan-based, al Qaeda-sympathizing Lashkar-e-Tayyiba in Mumbai this past November, comes at the same time that President Barack Obama is trying …
Earlier this week the Federal Trade Commission yet again proved their uselessness, this time by issuing guidelines requiring bloggers to disclose any payments they receive from the subjects of their reviews or face a $11,000 fine. Because who knows what death and destruction would occur if Timmy failed to let his readers know that Activision gave him a new controller before he wrote a review about how awesome Guitar Hero 5 is. Now House Democrats in Congress want to pass a bill forcing the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the …
The Congressional Budget Office issued a report today giving the Baucus health care bill the stamp of deficit-reduction approval, but this was earned only through steep increases in indirect taxes, such as the coverage mandate. The coverage mandate included in Senator Baucus’ health care plan has significant and disturbing implications for middle-class Americans. Individuals earning up to $45,520 and families earning up to $92,640 would need to cut corners to make ends meet, all in response to the indirect tax implicit in a health care mandate. For individuals making $34,140 …
As fellow Americans we always take pride in the achievements and awards of our compatriots. Although we congratulate President Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize today, he should accept the award on behalf of the American people for all our many sacrifices to make the world a better place. Everyone recognizes, however, that the Nobel Committee awarded the prize to President Obama on the basis of hope for the future rather than achievements of the past. The politicization of this award saddens us when dissident leaders in China, Zimbabwe, …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahd-hJYF5ls[/youtube] “We have to decide to win [in Afghanistan],” said Ambassador Volker last week at the Heritage Foundation. He was quoting former Spanish President José Maria Aznar in the meeting they just had with Heritage officials, but the U.S.’s 19th Permanent Representative to NATO and Senior Fellow and Managing Director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University agrees. The will to win, combined with a counter-insurgency strategy that provides domestic security to Afghans is the first step, he says. From that point I think you have to listen to …
Under the Baucus plan, just about everyone who is not covered by a government health program will be required to purchase insurance by 2013. To help pay for the mandated minimum coverage, individuals and families with incomes below four times the poverty line will receive a subsidy calculated on a sliding scale worth a percentage of their income, while those with incomes up to three times the poverty line will also qualify for a cost-sharing subsidy. However, even with help from the government subsidies, families will be required to pay …
Looking beyond the media hype, taxpayers should remember a few crucial facts about the recent CBO/JCT analysis of the Finance Committee’s provisions for the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. As former CBO Director Donald Marron has pointed out, there is more to CBO’s analysis than short term budget estimates. The analysis is preliminary. As the letter points out, the analysis is still not based on legislative language. Moreover, Senate Leaders have to merge the bill with the HELP Committee bill before the bill comes to the floor. Therefore, it …
The government is spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars attempting to stimulate the economy, but it’s clear these spending programs are not achieving the results we need. Instead, the economy continues to shed jobs. Unemployment figures released last week show U.S. unemployment reaching a 26-year high of 9.8 percent. Instead of putting Americans back to work, Congress is simply putting heavier burdens on taxpayers, while driving the country deeper into debt. In short, the current approach is not working. There is another approach to stimulating the economy – a …
The Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday that the U.S. government ended its 2009 fiscal year with a deficit of $1.4 trillion, the biggest since 1945. Washington will spend $33,932 per household in 2009–$8,000 per household more than last year. Following President Barack Obama’s budget, Washington will be spending $33,000 per household (adjusted for inflation) by 2019, and that does not include the costs of Obamacare. This spending is not inevitable. In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would …
