Now that health-care bills have passed in both the House and the Senate, Democrats just can’t seem to stop themselves from rhetorical excess. Just before Christmas, as the bill sponsored by Majority Leader Harry Reid was clearing its final hurdles in the Senate, Democrats took to the chamber floor and cable television shows to trumpet the “historic” nature of the legislation they were about to vote on — legislation that would, at long last, move toward their long-sought goals of “universality” and a government-guaranteed right to health care. But is …
In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), dated December 30, 2009, the Attorneys General of 13 States have objected to the so-called Nebraska Compromise that reportedly won the crucial support of Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) for the Senate health care takeover bill. The deal is said to involve an agreement that the Federal Government’s taxpayers will assume indefinitely the full share of the costs that Nebraska will incur as the result of the expansion of Medicaid that is one of the …
Speaking at a town hall meeting on August 21, 2008, in Chester, Virginia, then-candidate Barack Obama promised the American people: “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies … what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents … And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.” …
The danger of higher taxes in the future is thwarting economic recovery today. Businesses make investment and hiring decisions based on their expectations of future profitability. If they expect to be more profitable in the future they will hire. If they do not they hold back on expansion. They base their expectations of future returns on estimates of their sales and costs years down the line. Uncertainty in either makes predictions difficult and causes them to put off decisions until they have a better idea what their bottom line will …
John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, really made a name for himself when his op-ed, “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare“, ran in the Wall Street Journal last summer. In the latest issue of the New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten profiles Mackey and his ideas of “conscious capitalism.” When asked what Mackey was reading, One of the books on the list was “Heaven and Earth: Global Warming—the Missing Science,” a skeptical take on climate change. Mackey told me that he agrees with the book’s assertion that, as he …
When Secretary Janet Napolitano used the word “man-made disaster” to describe the current terrorist threat facing Americans, you would have thought that she understood that terrorists aren’t machines and are in fact human. It comes as a surprise then that the Obama Administration is rumored to have set its laser on killing the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s human factors research budget. What is “human factors research”, you ask? It is a fancy term for studying the way humans behave and interact—humans like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—the man now dubbed as …
How does Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) plan to move Obamacare past the House, despite some highly-controversial, lingering issues? Clues are beginning to appear in the progressive blogosphere: Firedoglake is reporting that Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is returning to Washington this week to begin closed-door negotiations with Senate Democrats and the White House. From FDL: “Discussions are beginning early on the health care bill, although the House is not returning to session until January 12, and the Senate not until a week later. This will not be a traditional conference committee, …
Interest. Or to be more precise, interest payments. That, Heritage Senior Fellow J.D. Foster explains, is the biggest reason why Americans should be very concerned with the trillions of dollars in debt our federal government is piling up in Washington. Watch: And the situation is only going to get worse under President Barack Obama’s budget. Heritage Foundation fellow Brian Riedl reports:
We touched on this issue this morning, but former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and current National Review Institute senior fellow Andrew McCarthy has in depth article at National Review Online on the Constitutional crisis President Barack Obama is creating by failing to press comprehensive war on terror detainee legislation through Congress. McCarthy writes: The Constitution gives the political branches plenary responsibility for the conduct of war. The conduct of war includes the detention, trial, or release of enemy combatants. The federal courts have …
Bloomberg reports: The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little. And Mayo’s decision to cut Medicare patients comes before President Barack Obama’s health reform plan would cut $493 billion from the program. As the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services warned: It is important to note that the estimated savings shown in this memorandum for one category …
