Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) attempted to force a vote this Wednesday on an amendment that if adopted will ban the practice of trading earmarks for votes in the Senate. As even President Obama-friendly MSNBC has documented, Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) Cornhusker Kickback was not the only backroom deal that enabled the Senate’s passage of Obamacare. Watch: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Other details documented by MSNBC’s Lisa Myers:
Since the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Change Conference ended in complete failure, some on the eco-left are engaging in a bit of gallows humor including Head of Research for Oxfam Duncan Green who writes on his blog: The BBC’s ‘Ethical Man’ (probably another cat lover) has done the numbers. Keeping a medium-sized dog has the same ecological impact as driving a 4.6 litre Land Cruiser (I assume that’s some kind of car) 10,000km a year. Using a unit known as a ‘global hectare’ – a measure of the land area …
As US legislators continue to advance the largest expansion of government control over health care in the US, many Americans may need some comic relief. Although such massive consolidation of federal control over health care is by no means a laughing matter, the following 2-minute clip from a popular BBC Documentary Series “Yes, Minister” illustrates the ridiculousness of the efforts.
This morning just after 7 AM EST, the United States Senate passed, again on a straight party-line vote, President Barack Obama’s health insurance bill. Originally scheduled for a 9 PM vote tonight, the bill’s Senate passage is a welcome Christmas gift for a beleaguered White House. However, as the First Family jets off for Hawaii, the American people, liberals, moderates, and conservatives are all saying this bill is closer to a lump of coal in their stocking than real health care reform. The American Public Does Not Want This Bill: …
The Senate health care bill no longer contains an explicit “public option,” but it does include heavy regulation of private health plans, including minimum amount they must spend on medical claims, and taxes that will not count toward those limits, limits on deductibles and co-payments, and authority for federal regulators to define what services plans must cover. It’s entirely possible – in fact, even likely – that a combination of three particular regulations could combine to make it impossible for private health plans to legally operate, by making it impossible …
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has pointed observers to a problematic section of the health care legislation now before the Senate that proposes (in Section 3403) to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Board. He rightly observes that the bill language makes it virtually impossible to repeal that part of the legislation, thereby attempting to bind future Congresses. DeMint is right about all this, but—having read through the legislation—by my read it is actually much worse than has been suggested, and much more destructive of the rule of law and democratic governance.
For the past week or so, President Obama has been trying to jawbone banks into lending more in order to jump start the economy. He continued the push yesterday, meeting with a group of small community bankers to urge them to open up the spigots. Interestingly, he acknowledged that federal regulation is itself a barrier to increased lending. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, he said the White House is working on ways to decrease that red tape, but warned that: “We don’t have direct influence over …
Writing on Townhall.com, Dr. Walter Williams asks an important question: “What’s to be done about this tragic state of black education?” Williams highlights the shockingly low test scores of students in predominantly African American cities like Detroit, where only 3 percent of 4th grade students scored proficient on the NAEP exam. He also examines a number of problems that contribute to the failing condition of black education in America, including: too much trust in the education establishment’s favored—but unsuccessful—policy solutions (including more school funding and teacher pay), a lack of …
Far from maintaining the Hyde Amendment limitations on federal abortion funding, the Harry Reid (D-NV) “manager’s amendment” on which cloture has now been invoked in the Senate would begin to tear down the firewall that individual taxpayers now enjoy in various federal programs not to participate in abortion funding; establish a line-item process so that employees in many states will see a special “abortion debit” on their pay check stubs; create new health insurance plans offered through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), one of which will almost certainly offer …
Some supporters of the health care “reform” bill being shoved through the Senate are dismissing concerns over the individual insurance mandate and the tax penalty imposed on those who don’t meet that requirement. They claim that because § 5000A of the bill waives criminal prosecution of taxpayers and says that no liens or levies can be filed on the taxpayer’s property, this is supposedly a “voluntary mandate” and the IRS can’t do anything against you if you refuse to pay the penalty. That claim is wrong for a number of …
