On January 21, 2009, Barack Obama stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and, in his inaugural address, pledged to America that he would “wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” What he did wield, of course, was a 2,000-page bill known as Obamacare. More than a year on, we now know that health care costs are soaring, and the President’s signature legislation is to blame. Most Americans know that medicine is getting more expensive, but a new survey puts a shocking sticker price …
Google is growing up. That was the message company representatives shared at Heritage this week on the Silicon Valley behemoth’s 13th birthday. (Click here to watch video of the event.) Google is making the case for the free market — and taking its message to conservatives. The Heritage Foundation hosted representatives from Google at Tuesday’s Bloggers Briefing. The meeting came just a few days after a Senate hearing in which Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt was grilled by lawmakers over the company’s search engine ranking practices. The search engine giant recently added …
In our work on public sector compensation, Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute and I have routinely counted enhanced job security as a benefit for public workers, and we have tried to quantify just how valuable it can be. Some critics have argued that public workers actually have no extra job security, but this is demonstrably untrue. A more interesting criticism comes from a recent letter to the editor in the Columbus Dispatch: While job security usually is considered a benefit for public-sector employees, it should be included in …
On Monday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev forced Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin to resign. Medvedev’s harsh treatment of Kudrin was a response to the statement Kudrin made over the weekend. Following the announcement of Vladimir Putin running for president in the upcoming presidential elections and Medvedev’s future job as the prime minister, Kudrin said, “I do not see myself in the new government. I think that those differences of opinion that I have [with Medvedev] will not allow me to join the government.” Rumor has it, however, that there was more …
There is more good news today in the fight against illegal immigration at the state level (and bad news for the Obama Administration’s policy against enforcement of immigration laws). This afternoon, federal district court Judge Sharon Blackburn in Alabama issued an opinion refusing the Obama Administration’s request that the court enjoin (that is, prevent from going into force) large portions of the comprehensive and controversial Alabama immigration law (H.B. 56). Recall that the Obama Justice Department (DOJ) had filed a complaint against the State of Alabama in federal court seeking …
Yesterday, Representative Paul Ryan (R–WI) shared his outlook for repealing and replacing Obamacare. Ryan pointed out that rising health care costs not only make insurance unaffordable for many Americans; they are also a main driver of growing federal deficits. As medical inflation pushes the cost of insurance and medical goods and services sky high, the cost to taxpayers of Medicare, Medicaid, and the new open-ended entitlements created in Obamacare goes up as well. Adequately addressing rising costs will require pinpointing the root causes of medical inflation. Ryan defined these as …
The Environmental Protection Agency called a Daily Caller report “comically wrong” this morning. That is an interesting analysis given that the EPA’s hideously bad global warming regulations are more of a joke than actual regulatory structure. Either way, the fun and games will soon end when Americans are paying higher energy prices and businesses are shedding jobs as a result of these “comically wrong” regulations. Earlier this week, The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle wrote that “The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” …
This week, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust released a major survey on employer-sponsored health benefits in the United States. Among the many important findings in the report, one fact stood out: Americans are paying more and more for their health insurance every year, a concerning trend that is only getting worse under Obamacare. The report explains that: The cost of insurance is increasingly unaffordable to American families. The cost of health insurance in the United States has grown significantly over the last decade. The …
What was designed as a “man-on-the-street” style commercial for Ford Motor Co. turned into a potent political statement when F-150 owner Chris McDaniel, asked about the importance of buying American, explained why Ford was the company for him: “I wasn’t going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government,” McDaniel explained. “I was going to buy from a manufacturer that’s standing on their own, win, lose or draw.” The TV spot made a splash, but the YouTube video went viral. The Detroit News reported that Ford …
Catching you up on clips, commentary and news of the day. Sign up for the daily email update from Scribe. Sorting out the Postal Service’s future – Rep. Darrell Issa, The Washington Times Minimum Wage – Another Example of Good Intentions Gone Wrong – James Sherk, FoxNews.com Pakistan must pay – Peter Brookes, The New York Post Japan Muddies Water in South China Sea Debate – Simon Roughneen, The Irrawaddy Declaring Haqqanis Terror Organization May Backfire on U.S. – John Walcott and Viola Gienger, Bloomberg Businessweek Not all Google employees …
