Michael Kinsley once observed that “a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.” By that measure Michael Gittings, the treasurer of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 711, committed an enormous gaffe when he appeared in a recent Daily Show segment. Gittings’s Las Vegas–based union is protesting Wal-Mart for paying low wages and hiring non-union workers. As he put it, such behavior “comes down to greed.” Perhaps that is why his local outsources its protests of Wal-Mart to non-union workers and pays them the minimum wage. As Gittings …
The inability of some Americans to obtain health insurance for pre-existing medical conditions continues to be used by Obamacare supporters as justification for the mammoth legislation. The truth, however, is that the problem was nowhere near as big as portrayed, and the solution doesn’t require 2700 pages of legislation or $1 trillion in new government spending. Over 90 percent of Americans with private health insurance are covered by employer group plans where existing rules governing the application of pre-existing condition exclusions are not an issue. Before passage of Obamacare, the …
Today’s front-page Washington Post story on Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, scheduled for release next week, provides disturbing revelations about President Obama’s views on terrorism and his lack of commitment to securing Afghanistan. The book apparently details how Obama is desperately seeking to get out of the war in Afghanistan, regardless of the consequences for U.S. national security, and is quoted as telling Woodward, “We can absorb a terrorist attack.” The article reveals that during the drawn-out Afghanistan strategy review last fall, Obama was more interested in mapping out an …
On December 1, 2009, when President Barack Obama announced his new Afghanistan policy after months of delay, Denise Young of Kokomo, Ind., who has a 22-year-old son serving in the war, told The Wall Street Journal what she wanted to hear from the commander in chief: “That he is going to let the generals make the decisions. They have asked for more troops. They should get them. There is safety in numbers.” Today, we learned from a sneak preview of Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s War, that President Barack Obama …
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that several health insurers “plan to raise premiums for some Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul.” Starting this year, Obamacare prohibits plans from placing lifetime limits on coverage, severely limits rescissions, and requires all plans to cover children up to age 26. Plans also have to fully cover preventive services and are prohibited from denying children due to pre-existing conditions. The list goes on. Since extra benefits cost more, it makes sense that insurance premiums would climb as a result …
In anticipation of President Obama’s second address to the United Nations this week, the White House has published a lengthy press release titled “Advancing U.S. Interests at the United Nations” that lists the achievements of the administration at the United Nations. The motivation behind the press release is that those achievements are not being given their due in the eyes of the White House. This is, however, entirely fitting because the achievements are themselves not really notable. In brief, the administration’s list of claimed U.N. accomplishments includes: U.N. Security Council …
Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 produced the current Islamic republic, university students in the country have been on the frontlines of speaking out against the repressive measures of the Ayatollahs’ government. This week an exhibit at Georgetown University’s Law Center is showcasing portraits of Iranian students who have taken action and suffered for the cause of justice and human rights. The last 30 years of Iranian history are marked with injustices, especially against the liberties of speech and education, including, for example, the Cultural Revolution of 1980–82 that shut …
A Washington Post article today reports that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would nearly close the fiscal gap. This static logic misses two key dynamic aspects of the economy: (1) the political incentives that higher taxes bring about, and (2) the economic incentives of such policy. 1. Political Incentives. With higher revenues initially coming in from higher taxes, there would be a stronger political incentive to increase spending. That is, taxpayers have no guarantee that their higher tax payments would actually go to deficit reduction. If history is any …
Last week, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that the U.S. just saw the largest annual increase in poverty recorded in our nation’s history: In 2009, 3.7 million more Americans joined the ranks of the poor. The recession bears part of the blame, but media outlets have failed to inform the public about the long-term root cause of poverty in this country: unwed childbearing. Buried in the Census report are startling figures revealing that the collapse of marriage is creating this crisis of poverty. Single-mother families are almost …
“Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23,” the Washington Post reports. The Post quotes one Ethan Rome, executive director of the liberal advocacy group Health Care for America Now: “We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of …
