Serious doubts surround President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which has been tasked to make recommendations to Congress to reduce the federal deficit. Many fear that the commission will recommend the creation of a value-added tax (VAT) or similar tax increases to pay for Washington’s reckless spending. Then there is the possibility that the commission will produce nothing, succeeding only at prolonging any real action to put the nation’s fiscal house back in order. But as The Weekly Standard’s executive editor Fred Barnes points out in the …
Remember President Barack Obama’s promise to the American people not to raise taxes? Forget about it. While the President has already raised taxes on cigarettes and tanning beds, none of that compares to what could happen in January. If you earn income, your taxes are about to go up. If Congress does not act to preserve current law, even the lowest 10 percent bracket will rise to 15 percent. Throw in tax hikes on capital gains, dividends and other tax code fixes, and the American economy is staring straight down …
Only days before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will conduct hearings on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (NEW START) verification, the Obama Administration has decided to abruptly terminate the scandal caused by the Russian illegal spy ring arrested in the United States. Instead of viewing espionage on its merits—an activity undermining Obama’s Russian “reset” policy and an obstacle to the proclaimed new relationship with Russia—the Administration went into an overdrive to get rid of the embarrassing headlines. The reason: ratification of the NEW START treaty, which is Administration’s top priority. …
After the BP oil spill, the Obama Administration offered little excuse for instituting a moratorium on deepwater drilling regardless of the fact that it brought one of the Gulf Coast’s main industries to a sudden halt. Despite federal judge Martin Feldman’s ruling on the moratorium and despite a federal appeals court upholding that decision, the U.S. Department of Interior issued a new moratorium on deepwater drilling this afternoon. The new ban will not apply to a specific depth but instead “apply to any deep-water floating facility with drilling activities.” But …
In a terrible final note to the first African World Cup games, two coordinated suicide bombings in the Ugandan capital of Kampala killed more than 70 Ugandans and foreigners on July 11 as they were watching the championship game of the World Cup at a restaurant and a rugby club. The senseless destruction of human life remains a central tenet of Islamist extremists, including al-Qaeda’s Somalia-based terror arm Al-Shabab. A spokesman for the terror group, Ali Mohamud Rage, said “Al-Shabab was behind the two bomb blasts in Uganda.” On learning …
Last week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported that the federal government was blocking media access to coastal areas around the Gulf, preventing them from taking photos and reporting on the environmental damage of the oil spill. You can watch the video and see Cooper is livid that the Obama administration is treating him and his colleagues this way. Cooper of course compares this to Katrina when media were blocked from…well we’re unsure what the media was blocked from in Katrina, since the photos and video from the Superdome, the Convention Center, …
Some households just can’t afford to save energy. When the upfront costs of new light bulbs exceed the savings from using less electricity, people will stick with the old ones. That also appears to be the case for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In spite of supporting regulations that will force all Americans to switch out old light bulbs for more expensive new ones (the good old incandescent bulb will be illegal in 2012), it seems that the DOE itself finds that it’s too much trouble and too expensive …
For anyone who has ever taken a timed shower or gone to a laundromat to cut down on their household utilities bills, it should not come as a surprise that an efficient showerhead is an easy way to cut costs. Likewise, luxury shower and bath lovers might consider the extra energy cost of multiple showerheads to be a worthy sacrifice for the daily spa experience. Either way, the choice is a personal one made based on preference or financial constraints. Or is it? Of the many microscopic issues in which …
What would you do if the government forced you to turn off your air conditioning? Could you still live where you live or work where you work? Probably not. But that’s not just a bug in the enviro-left’s high energy cost future, its a feature! Stan Cox makes the case in yesterday’s Washington Post: In a country that’s among the world’s highest greenhouse-gas emitters, air conditioning is one of the worst power-guzzlers. … A.C.’s obvious public-health benefits during severe heat waves do not justify its lavish use in everyday life …
Google just announced that its Internet licensed was renewed by the Chinese government. Google originally automatically redirected google.cn users to their Hong Kong site, google.com.hk. Now, China is forcing users to click on the link for Google Hong Kong (or almost anywhere on the page) on the google.cn page. Google did enough technical maneuvering to get what it wanted: a renewed license. Google gets to tell the good news story that it is still in China and that it doesn’t censor. The bad news is that mainland Chinese people will …
