In February of this year, after Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-MA) victory put Obamacare on life support, health insurer Anthem Blue Cross announced a 39% rate hike for its individual market subscribers in California. Despite the fact that the President’s health care plan will only drive health insurance rates higher, the White House seized on this story to revive the government takeover of the health insurance industry. Two months later when the President’s financial regulation plan was stalled in the Senate, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs with fraud …
It seems every day there are more calls for government intervention to relieve us from the infliction and anguish caused by our current economic woes. Those who call for more government centralization and planning reason that doing so can dispel hardship and decline. Yet rarely do they consider that central planning doesn’t work precisely because it counters the variable paramount to guide societal and economic complexities: freedom. In his indispensable 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek imparts his sage insight: Economic control is not merely control of …
In February, we reported that in 2010, Social Security would start running deficits in 2010. Well, Social Security deficits have officially arrived, as analyst Michael Barone lays out in the Washington Examiner: Social Security tax receipts for the first half of 2010: $346.9 billion; Social Security benefits payments for the same period: $347.3 billion. Before this year, projections have always been that Social Security wouldn’t cross that line into negative cash flow for five years or so. Now it’s a reality. Congress has been spending Social Security’s positive cash flow …
As violent unrest and ethnic clashes in Kyrgyzstan worsen, there is one notable absentee from the crisis: the European Union. At least 120 people have been killed, and the specter of a refugees crisis now seems more likely than not. EU Foreign Minister, Catherine Ashton, is currently preoccupied with the creation of the EU’s newly authorized foreign service—the 6,000-strong diplomatic corps that will be known as the European External Action Service (EEAS). The Lisbon Treaty also endowed the EU with other foreign policy responsibilities, stating that it would use civilian …
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold two hearings this week regarding the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, also known as the “New START Treaty.” These hearings may be the best chance Senators will have to publicly inquire what effect the New START will have on the U.S. missile defense program. In the first hearing, on Tuesday, June 15, the Committee will hear testimony from two key U.S. negotiators for the New …
Last week thousands of women (and more than a few men, too) attended the Women Deliver 2010 conference on reproductive and maternal health in Washington, D.C. The Women Deliver conference organizers were supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), UNAIDS, UNICEF, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the conference was partially funded by U.S. taxpayers. The conference advisory group included private organizations such as Amnesty International, Family Care International (FCI), and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), whose leaders featured prominently in the discussions and …
Two of the most important results from last Tuesday’s primary have been drowned out by the coverage of other races. Voters in Chula Vista, CA passed measure G by a 56 to 44 percent margin while voters in Oceanside, CA passed measure K by a 54 to 46 percent margin. These measures prohibit discriminatory “project labor agreements” (PLAs) on city-funded construction projects. A project labor agreement forces contractors to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement before starting work. In practice this means that work on PLA-covered projects goes to union members …
Today is Flag Day. On this day in 1777, amidst a desperate war for American independence, the delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the “Stars and Stripes” as the official flag of the newly emerging American nation. According to the adopted resolution: “White signifies Purity and Innocence; Red, Hardiness and Valor; and Blue, Vigilance, Perseverance and Justice.” These colors would be organized into 13 alternating red and white stripes and 13 white stars in a field of blue, symbolizing the unity of the thirteen colonies and the …
After the American Revolution, ships that were deemed too costly to maintain were sold as merchant ships. Swords had been beaten into plowshares, cannons had been beaten into anchors. By the late 1780s, however, American merchant ships had become easy prey to pirates. Lightly armed, if at all, ship after ship fell victim to the risks of the high seas, particularly in the Mediterranean. Families and communities were forced to pay ransoms for the return of their missing sailors; the government was reduced to paying tribute to the Barbary States …
Last Thursday, the White House trumpeted Obamacare’s first step in closing the Medicare “donut hole.” Checks in the amount of $250 were sent to 80,000 seniors in the “hole”—a gap in Medicare’s coverage of prescription drug benefits for seniors. Ultimately, Washington will cut 4 million of these checks, totaling $1 billion, to help paper over the coverage gap. The gap was no accident, mind you. Congress crafted it deliberately in 2003. It enabled them to claim, with the Congressional Budget Office’s blessing, that the new entitlement to drug coverage under …
