Cap and trade legislation is dead. The left abandoned the policy this summer when it became clear it was a liability. Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told Politico: “You can’t use cap and trade anymore because it is like manure on the trough. It’s defined, and people are opposed to it.” But that doesn’t mean the left has abandoned plans to hike up our nation’s energy costs in a vain attempt to save the world. All they did was pick a new a set of government mandates and repackage it as …
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 …
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 …
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein has used a new Gallup poll showing that 77% of Americans believe “the cost of the government’s major entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, will create major economic problems for the U.S. in the next 25 years” to produce the following headline: Americans prefer tax increases to benefit cuts. Problem is, that just is not the choice respondents were given. Here are the actual top line questions produced by Gallup:
‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback reads the headline from this past Sunday’s New York Times. Patricia Cohen goes on to report: “[I]n the overwhelmingly liberal ranks of academic sociology and anthropology the word ‘culture’ became a live grenade, and the idea that attitudes and behavior patterns kept people poor was shunned. Now, after decades of silence, these scholars are speaking openly about you-know-what, conceding that culture and persistent poverty are enmeshed.” At first, this may seem like the left is finally ready to make a major concession to reality …
Speaking to younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party about Germany’s 16 million foreign worker population, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this past Saturday: We kidded ourselves a while, we said: ‘They won’t stay, sometime they will be gone’, but this isn’t reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other… has failed, utterly failed. This analysis, while spot on, is unfortunately years late. Three years ago The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst for European Affairs …
Indications are that the Progressive Movement is headed for a crushing defeat two weeks from now. Political analysts Stu Rothenberg and Charlie Cook both peg the number of competitive House races at around 100. Separately, both analysts are also predicting Democrats will lose between 45 and 60 seats (39 are needed to switch control of the House). Striking back against the electorate’s small government fervor, AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman penned a strategy memo last week claiming “Union Voters are the firewall for candidates that support working families.” And sure …
On October 23, 2009, a reporter asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” Speaker Pelosi shook her head dismissing the question: “Are you serious? Are you serious?” Pressed for a more substantive response later, Pelosi’s press spokesman admonished the reporter: “You can put this on the record. That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.” Yesterday, Roger Vinson, senior federal judge of the United States District Court for the Northern …
Today, The Heritage Foundation released its 2010 Index of Dependence on Government. This annual report tracks the growth of dependence-creating federal programs, programs that crowd-out what was once America’s great civil society. At one time, social obligations and services were carried out by community groups, family networks and even local governments. Now, an ever growing and ever more unaccountable federal bureaucracy undermines our spirit of self-reliance and self-improvement by making more and more Americans dependent on Big Government. In 2010, we witnessed a record-breaking surge in American dependence on the …
