Yesterday the White House unveiled its national security strategy. It came in basically three parts. Part One is the “anything but Bush” part. Where the goal is to put as much distance between Obama and Bush – even where there is not a lot space. Renaming the War on Terrorism, the war on al Qaeda is a case in point. Did the Bush administration not know it was fighting al Qaeda? Did Obama stop doing Predator strikes? Part Two is an overwhelming desire to substitute soft power for hard power. …
A fudgelike goo coating Louisiana’s marshes. A thick oil slick stretching across the Gulf of Mexico. A plume of oil miles below the ocean surface. A tragic loss of life. Reverberating economic consequences. Throw in a poll that shows that 53 percent of Americans rate President Barack Obama “poor” or “very poor” in his handling of the Gulf oil spill, and it’s no wonder the President yesterday broke his 308-day self-imposed press conference moratorium in hopes of conveying some semblance of leadership amid an environmental, economic and human catastrophe that …
At the press conference accompanying the political hara-kiri by his director of the Minerals and Management Service, President Obama changed topics and said, “Now let me make one broader point, though, about energy. The fact that oil companies now have to go a mile underwater and then drill another three miles below that in order to hit oil tells us something about the direction of the oil industry. Extraction is more expensive, and it is going to be inherently more risky. … The easily accessible oil has already been sucked …
Washington’s runaway gusher of spending makes the Deepwater Horizon disaster look small and simple to stop. Congress is debating another irresponsible round of extra spending (although they refuse to call it “son of stimulus”) before they take a Memorial Day break. The measure would add an estimated $84-billion (or perhaps $100-billion) to the deficit. That’s actually good news, because earlier this week they planned to spend $50-billion more, until some Democrats joined Republicans in balking. The bad news is that Congress refuses to adopt a budget that would describe how …
In passing Obamacare, Congress has put the states in quite a pickle. To sharply expand health coverage, Obamacare flung wide the gates of Medicaid eligibility. It envisions a massive expansion of the federal-state health program that, historically, delivers low-quality care to low-income Americans. Not a smart move. States were already struggling to meet their share of Medicaid program costs—even though Medicaid payments to providers often don’t even cover the cost of care. And, due to the inadequate reimbursement rates, more and more doctors were already refusing to accept new Medicaid …
Congressional leaders have responded to the backlash against the original $174 billion cost of the “tax extenders” bill by reducing its cost by $47 billion. Even with the reduction, the bill will still add $84 billion to the deficit over the next decade. They have reduced the amount of spending in the most cynical fashion possible – by cutting the number of years over which the spending would occur. Of course, they have every intention of extending the spending again when the current extensions expire. The irresponsible overspending in the …
On May 25, the Fiscal Analysis Initiative of Pew’s Economic Policy Group published an overview of what might happen to the federal government’s annual deficits should the tax relief of 2001 and 2003 be allowed to expire, be extended through 2012, or be made permanent. As readers may know, all of the tax relief currently in force will disappear by law at the end of this year. Unfortunately, Pew’s report does little to inform policy makers on the awesome economic decisions they are about to make. Had it focused as …
The Obama administration’s drive to win Senate approval of the New START arms treaty with Russia has hit a speed bump. Several senators are asking to see the secret negotiating record from the administration’s official talks with Russia. Why? Because U.S. and Russian officials publicly disagree about what the treaty says. Senators have a right to know – before they consent to ratification of a treaty that affects national security – how those terms now at issue were handled during the negotiations. The differences regarding missile defense are stark. Russian …
Bloomberg news has an article on Wall Street pay revealing that the CEOs of many large banks have taken big pay cuts in the past year or two (CEO pay at the 50 largest financial firms has fallen 37% in the past two years). Buried in the story was a revealing comment from Obama Administration “Special Master for Compensation” (Pay Czar) Kenneth Feinberg who declared that pay cuts for the CEOs of big banks “demonstrates better than anything the political impact of what I’m doing.” Feinberg goes on to suggest …
Remember Hotel Rwanda? That movie depicts the true story of a man fighting impossible odds to save everyone he could during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Hotel Rwanda was a symbol of desperate hope for survival. Almost two decades later, by contrast, Rwanda has many symbols of hope for a brighter future. As a matter of fact, those hopes for the future have already been transformed into the reality of greater prosperity and opportunity for many Rwandans. Indeed, recent years’ economic reforms have made Rwanda one of the notable economies …
