Hope is not a strategy. Last month’s elections made that clear. Through the year, polls consistently revealed the unpopularity of Obamacare, deep concern about excessive spending, and misgivings about how the things are going in Iran and Afghanistan. Yet all the way up to the elections, progressives hoped that Americans would somehow like Obamacare, think the stimulus was working, and feel we were winning against our worldwide adversaries. Nov. 2 dashed those hopes. But progressives have a new hope now, bigger than ever and just as divorced from reality as …
Centrally planned job creation and scientific research pose many of the same problems: extraordinary expense, a pattern of politically shaped insider transactions, and less than promising results. This occurs for substantially the same reason: government attempts to pick winners and losers in developing fields ignore the discipline of the marketplace and the wisdom of personal investment. Consider the story of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). California voters approved Proposition 71 in 2004, which authorized the creation of the institute and permitted it to raise up to $3 billion …
Communism, it is often said, will work under the proper conditions. Though it might fail in a big country with millions of disconnected individuals, it should work in a small community of relatively close-knit comrades, who would thrive under a system of shared burden and harvest. If you think that successful communism is small communism, the experience of America’s first settlers should dispel any romantic notions you may harbor on the subject. Plymouth Colony, a small community of settlers struggling to survive in a new land, learned about the benefits …
The Associated Press reported yesterday that “cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and an exclusive group of senior U.S. officials are exempt from toughened new airport screening procedures when they fly commercially with government-approved federal security details.” The article goes on to report that while the rest of the public is still subject to either a body scanner or “an intimate personal pat-down,” as of Friday the Transportation Security Administration had exempted pilots from the procedure, and then on Tuesday they added flight attendants to the exemption list. Americans have every …
Legislation to vastly expand the regulatory powers of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to advance in the Senate last week as proponents had expected. A vote may be rescheduled when Congress reconvenes after the Thanksgiving recess. But if lawmakers are truly vested in optimizing food safety, they will look beyond bureaucratic tinkering and instead eliminate obstacles to innovations in food science as well as market competition. Americans are certainly hungry for more rational policy. Spanning some150 pages, the Food Safety Modernization Act would authorize the FDA to dictate …
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar traveled to Louisiana on Monday to meet with oil and gas executives whose industry has been suffering from a “de facto” drilling ban since the government’s moratorium was lifted. Both of the state’s senators said Salazar failed to adequately address the core issues causing the logjam. Salazar’s trip to Houma to meet with industry leaders was made in exchange for Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) lifting of her hold on Jack Lew, President Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. The state’s other senator, …
Stories of corruption in India have filled the news in recent days. First there’s the corrupt Communications and Information Technology Minister, whose scam to pocket money from telecommunications firms may have topped $37 billion. Then there were accusations that politicians, officials, and contractors had pocketed more than 70% of $2.5 billion meant for flood relief in the state of Assam. There are the officials arrested for corruption in the planning for the Commonwealth Games and there reports that businesses over the last six decades have made billions through tax evasion …
Speaking to the media this weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that at NATO’s Lisbon Summit this weekend, many European states including Germany, Poland and the Baltic states had pressed the Administration on the ratification of New START. During one of the summit’s many news conferences, President Obama also stated, “Unprompted, I have received overwhelming support from our allies here that Start — the New Start treaty — is a critical component to U.S. and European security.” However, Czech defense minister, Alexandr Vondra revealed that it …
You’d think that an unemployment rate hovering near 10% would focus the White House’s mind on job creation, not destruction, but the Obama administration stayed true to form yesterday when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar visited the Gulf and told offshore drillers that the permits they need to put Americans back to work are not coming anytime soon. Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition head James Noe told the AP: “If the regulators want to sit around and figure out what rules and regulations to come up with, if they wait much …
10. An Unreliable Nuclear Arsenal Is No Deterrent. New START offers no assurance that the U.S. nuclear force will be an effective deterrent in the future. President Obama has already declared he won’t replace and modernize the nuclear arsenal. Yes, he said he would spend billions on the supporting infrastructure and called that “modernization.” But that’s like saying you’ll take your car to Jiffy-Lube and calling it a transportation system “modernization” initiative. Furthermore, Obama’s budget still underfunds our nuclear support structure — and delays most of the funding to out-years …
