As the upcoming mid-term elections loom, President Barak Obama is trying to convince the Senate to ratify the New START agreement. His Administration alleges that New START is not only critical in itself, but that it is a stepping stone for a global nuclear disarmament regime known as “getting to zero.” The expected Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in November has the Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Russian Duma worried about the future of New START. High-ranking U.S. foreign policy officials have suggested that this …
The obvious reason to prevent a tax hike by extending current tax rates is that doing so will prevent further economic harm to an already flat economy. How do we know that tax increases will cause economic harm? Three examples: 1932, 1937 and 1993. After the 1929 stock market crash, the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 raised import prices and more importantly threw a bucket of cold water on global trade flows, helping send the economy into deep depression. The economy had very little chance to recover. Along with gross and …
The New York Times asked yesterday: What if a president cut Americans’ income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed? the author Michael Cooper goes on to report: In a troubling sign for Democrats as they head into the midterm elections, their signature tax cut of the past two years, which decreased income taxes by up to $400 a year for individuals and $800 for married couples, has gone largely unnoticed. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama …
Borscht Belt is a colloquial name for the Catskills Mountains in New York where famous comedians of the 1940s to 1960s would work their trade. Named after borscht, a beetroot soup popular in Central and Eastern Europe, the area was known for hotels and clubs that catered mainly to New York’s Jewish families and featured stand-up routines by the likes of Milton Berle, Phyllis Diller, and Jackie Mason. It was a golden age of comedy. Recent evidence suggests that this may be where the distinguished parliamentarians of the European Union …
All signs point to an effort by the Obama administration to ram their New Start agreement with Russia through the Senate in a lame duck session after the November elections. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has placed a floor vote on the treaty atop his list of lame duck priorities, and the continuing resolution passed in September included $624 million in funding for the National Nuclear Security Administrations. Analysts believe that money could secure the support of some previously skeptical Republicans. But nuclear modernization is just one of many problems with …
Monday night in Rockville, Md., President Barack Obama told Democratic Senate candidate donors: “As wonderful as the land is here in the United States, as much as we have been blessed by the bounty of this magnificent continent that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, what makes this place special is not something physical. It has to do with this idea that was started by 13 colonies that decided to throw off the yoke of an empire, and said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men …
Yuval Levin has made the important point that, when HHS granted waivers exempting some employer health plans from Obamacare’s prohibition on annual benefit limits, it was the “kind of government by whim, and not by law” that is “the essence of the regulatory state.” It is indeed a very troubling effect, and one that will be a byproduct of numerous other Obamacare provisions as well. That said, it is worth noting that the “McDonald’s issue” also highlights the ignorance and incompetence behind the crafting of this health-care legislation. As to …
Playing politics with national security is reprehensible. But it’s nothing new. In 1794, Congress passed a law authorizing construction of ships that would form the backbone of the first United States Navy. The politics started almost immediately. Saving “a few thousand dollars in expenses will be no object compared with the satisfaction a just distribution would afford,” proclaimed Secretary of War Henry Knox as he ordered the six frigates be built in six different shipyards in six different ports. “It was an early example of pork barrel politics, before the …
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is one of the largest and most complicated overhauls ever enacted. Policy experts continue to debate the impact it will have. Among the issues that has raised concerns is its cost. Supporters point to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that the law will reduce the nation’s budget deficit by about $140 billion over the next 10 years. But according to an analysis by The Heritage Foundation, the health overhaul could end up costing American taxpayers millions of dollars in higher health …
Maybe international treaties do send perfectly good jobs overseas after all; it’s just that these treaties do so by regulating commerce at home rather than facilitating it abroad. The Kyoto Protocol is evidence of this fact. Less than a week ago, as the European Environment Agency was celebrating reducing carbon production by close to 17%, the Guardian reported that, based on consumption of carbon rather than production of it, European greenhouse emissions actually increased significantly over the past decade: The original 15 EU member states who signed Kyoto have dropped …
