Ruth Marcus tried her best yesterday to undercut the argument that tax cuts hurt the economy’s main job creators — small businesses. But once you straighten out the curves of her case, you find a highway leading directly to the opposite conclusion. It turns out she actually reinforces the point that higher tax rates tend to hurt those small businesses most likely to hire. Marcus cites a handful of interesting papers to support her argument. The traditional lore about small-business job creation comes from David Birch’s 1979 book The Job …
The Obama administration recently issued an inter-agency report on the employment effects of its deep-water drilling moratorium. The Administration finds employment effects that are roughly half of those from a variety of other estimates. However: If the Administration were consistent in its logic, its job-loss estimates would double or quadruple to 20,000–40,000; The authors forget to mention that the lost oil production will require spending billions of dollars more per year on imported oil; and The report ignores the impacts of the de facto moratorium on shallow-water drilling The anonymous …
The recent release of the Census report on an upsurge of the number of Americans in poverty will almost surely be used to justify a spike in funding for federal anti-poverty programs. Yet after decades of increased spending on failed government anti-poverty programs, why should we expect a different result with the next funding increase? Since 2008, food stamp rolls have risen by nearly 50 percent to more than 40 million, and the number of welfare recipients rose to 4.4 million, an 18 percent increase. In fact, government expenditure for …
Soon after taking office in 2007, Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty took over the D.C. Public School System. In short order, he appointed Michelle Rhee as Chancellor of the underperforming, unsafe, and neglected school district. Rhee was viewed from the beginning as a force capable of improving a school system which had for decades been among the worst academic performers in the country. As predicted, the new chancellor immediately got to work implementing her aggressive reform agenda, which included firing ineffectual teachers and administrators, closing poor-performing schools, and reworking contracts …
On Tuesday, students at Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia kicked-off the new school year with a speech from President Obama. Students at the nationally ranked 2010 Blue Ribbon magnet school were told by the President that they are in charge of their destiny and that nothing in life is beyond their reach. For the second year in a row, the President has addressed students as they head back to school. But this year’s address differed in one significant way. Prior to last year’s speech, the federal …
For over a hundred years, Progressives have been trying to persuade Americans that times have changed, and therefore our founding documents (especially the Declaration of Independence and Constitution) must evolve to meet the needs of a developing society. This notion of a “living constitution” is certainly predominant in intellectual circles, but has also seeped into our everyday discussion and way of thinking about the Constitution. If times have changed so much, then we must ask (especially on Constitution Day) why is the Constitution worth celebrating—or even preserving?
On Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to report New START, which is a strategic nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, out of committee and to the full Senate for consideration. Talk is that the Administration will press for a vote in lame duck after the election, but some suggest Senate leadership might even try to sneak the treaty through before that. The committee did not make the Senate’s job any easier sending New START to the floor with lots of unanswered questions, an insufficient resolution of ratification, and …
I have always been thankful that so many of our country’s greatest leaders and statesmen were able to be on this earth at the same time and place to draft the Constitution. As a lifelong student of history and government, we were blessed as a nation to have individuals that put self-interest and sectionalism aside to debate, argue, draft and sign the Constitution. Our Constitution has been that beacon upon the hill, that guiding star at night, and that shining city that millions of persons around the word have longed …
President Barack Obama has repeatedly said, “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” But is that true? Most likely not, if your plan is a Medicare Advantage (MA) plan. MA is the “private option” within Medicare in which private health insurers are paid a fixed monthly fee to provide health benefits to their enrollees. They must provide at least the same minimum benefits as traditional fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare, but most MA plans provide more benefits, often with lower co-pays and deductibles, and some provide a rebate of …
On September 17, we celebrate the creation of our Constitution, one of the greatest governing documents ever conceived by the hand of man. This is the day we commemorate the birth of the United States as a nation, based on the rule of law and dedicated to the preservation of personal liberty, political freedom, economic opportunity, and the natural rights with which we are all endowed by our Creator. But 223 years after the formal signing of the Constitution, our country stands at a dangerous crossroads, the likes of which …
