Twenty seven years ago President Ronald Reagan delivered one of the most important speeches in modern history. For almost five decades, Americans had lived under the threat of nuclear war. The arms race had become a stand-off between the superpowers called mutually-assured-destruction, where any nuclear exchange would likely evolve into a full-scale atomic war annihilating the East and the West. President Reagan believed that this was an immoral way to maintain an uneasy peace if there was a more responsible and proportional alternative. On March 23, 1983 he announced that …
Another day, two new polls showing the American people are strongly against the health care plan President Barack Obama will sign into law today. According to CNN, 59% of Americans oppose President Obama’s plan. And according to CBS News, 48% of Americans oppose the plan (with 33% in strong opposition) compared to only 37% who support it (with only 13% in strong support). Digging deeper into the CBS poll, we find that 76% of Americans disapprove of how Congress is handling its job on health care, 46% think Congress has …
Amid the partisan bickering and procedural conundrums of the health care bill last week, a small group of senators from both sides of the aisle found common ground in advocating for school choice in the District of Columbia. An amendment to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for the next five years was brought to the floor Tuesday evening by Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and a bipartisan coalition of cosponsors including Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Robert Byrd (D-WV), and George Voinovich (R-OH). Although the Senate voted 42-55 …
America’s current predicament is that it borrows money from countries or individuals to finance many of its expensive obligations, including financing the $862 billion stimulus bill as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what would happen if America had to pay higher interest rates on all future borrowing? This is the question that some people in the federal government have to ponder, as influential rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s have both recently voiced their view that America’s AAA rating is not guaranteed or …
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez rose to power by tapping into populist and nationalist sentiment. Blaming the problems facing his country on western superpowers, Chavez portrayed himself as a man of the people who would bring the wealth of Venezuela to the people. The pie-in-the-sky rhetoric does not jive with cold, grounded reality, however. As Hugo Chavez has nationalized foreign owned grocery stores in a protectionist wave encapsulated best by the state slogan “Food Sovereignty! All power to the people!,” supplies of food have only become lower. During Chavez’s ten year …
A new CNN Opinion Research poll, conducted over the weekend as the House debated Obamacare, finds that 59 percent of Americans now stand opposed to the health care legislation in Congress. Just 39 percent of the poll’s 1,030 respondents said they favored the bill. These numbers shouldn’t come as a surprise — even to the White House. In fact, The Washington Post reported this morning that “President Obama is set to begin an immediate public relations blitz aimed at turning around Americans’ opinion of the health-care bill.” The White House …
Obamacare is still just one signature away from becoming law, but the battle over its repeal has already begun. Key to this debate will be which elements of Obamacare phase in when. Back in December after Obamacare first passed the Senate, Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Book produced the following chart (pdf) detailing how the policy is scheduled to be implemented between 2010 and 2017. Highlights from each year include: 2010: Physician Medicare payments decrease 21% effective March 1, 2010 2011: “Annual Fee” tax on health insurance, allocated according to share …
In 1774, in response to the first Tea Party, the British Parliament issued a series of acts designed to control the colonists, stop their protests and restrict their liberty. The American colonists called them “The Intolerable Acts.” What we have all just witnessed in the debate over health care reform, in substance and in process violates our first principles, takes away our independence and undermines the very rule of law. If left standing, this law places us evermore firmly on the course of becoming a heavily centralized European-style nation, stifled …
As liberal groups begin plotting to spend millions of dollars to “sell” Obamacare to Americans in swing House districts, at least 12 state attorneys general are mounting an effort to stop Obamacare in its tracks on constitutional grounds. At issue is the provision in Obamacare that forces Americans to buy health insurance or face an annual $750 fine. Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli plans to sue the federal government on grounds that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution: “At no time in …
After the health care vote last night, Reverend Al Sharpton told Fox News: “I think that this began the transforming of the country where the President had promised. This is what he ran on.” When the interviewer interjected that many view the vote as a step towards socialism, Sharpton didn’t skip a beat, responding: the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama.
