[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esQTK-oSZXw[/youtube] In 2004 Governor Barbour passed comprehensive tort reform legislation in Mississippi. The state’s notorious reputation for “jackpot justice” has never recovered. In a recent op-ed Barbour wrote: The number of medical liability lawsuits against Mississippi doctors fell almost ninety percent one year after tort reform went into effect. Doctors have quit leaving the state and limiting their practices to avoid lawsuit abuse. Those dramatic results should be replicated on the national level, said Governor Barbour at the Heritage Foundation last week:
Heritage Trustee, and former candidate for Governor of California, William E. Simon Jr. addresses Heritage trustees on the danger of predatory government encroachment into the realm of philanthropy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZwjTGDkN7w[/youtube]
UK Shadow Defense Secretary Liam Fox was speaking at Heritage today, assessing the huge challenges faced by Britain, the United States and the NATO alliance in Afghanistan, and underscoring why victory against the Taliban is vital to the security of the West. Afterwards he made time for the Foundry and reacted to the morning news that the White House was abandoning missile defense structures in the Czech Republic and Poland, two close allies in a strategic region of the world. Be sure to visit 33minutes.com to learn more about the threat of long range …
Conservatives massed in the many tens of thousands this weekend, flooding the capital from towns and cities all over America. The Beltway pundits and blogospheres left, right and center have bickered ever since about the size of the actual protest, missing the forest for the trees. Many tens of thousands, from near and far and representing millions more, came to D.C. to protest the sexy issue of…government spending. It is the first major protest of this issue. Ever. From today’s Augusta Chronicle editorial page: We implore our liberal friends to …
John Bolton, former UN ambassador under George W. Bush, wants to deliver results at the United Nations by making member country’s funding a voluntary contribution, not a mandatory payment. Bolton believes such a reform would enable the US to have influence commensurate with their level of UN funding, currently 22% of the overall UN budget. “The result of [mandatory funding] is that our contribution becomes like an entitlement,” he said. “There’s no incentive for effective performance, or responsiveness or transparency.” “If the main UN couldn’t count on its budget being funded by the United …
Or, worse, they know what it is, but just don’t want it. From HotAir.com: Why go through the expense and bureaucracy of creating a government-run insurance plan when all that needs to be done for Alabama and North Dakota is to allow insurance companies from other states to compete? Because, as Axelrod fumbles through explaining, the administration isn’t interested in competition at all, but in dictating terms to insurers, providers, and consumers. Allowing insurance companies to compete on a national level would help eliminate the insurance monopolies that dominate …
Politico-Heritage chat: Stuart Butler on healthcare
Writing yesterday for the National Review’s blog, The Corner, Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky wrote on the 2010 Census and coming immigration battles: The Boston Globe reports that advocates for illegal aliens are urging their followers to boycott the 2010 census. They want illegal aliens to “protest the government’s inaction on immigration legislation.” Translated from liberal Boston Globe-speak, they mean legislation that would provide amnesty for the 15 million who are here illegally and would end the federal government’s half-hearted efforts to enforce our immigration laws.
America’s health care system is one-sixth of the entire economy—larger than Britain’s. Restructuring something that large and complex in one massive bill rammed through Congress is a fool’s errand. There are bound to be major problems. Instead, we must incrementally reform health care in stages, by letting the 50 states act as laboratories for solutions. Let’s find out what works and doesn’t. Two major reforms already have broad support and can move us forward. 1: Give states more freedom from federal rules to experiment with reform measures, like medical malpractice …
