In 1953, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote of the Soviet suppression of a spring uprising in Berlin, Would it not be easier, In that case for the government, To dissolve the people And elect another? Why quote a communist bootlicker and Stalin hagiographer best known for socialist realism, whatever that means? Because in that single moment of apparent weakness, he seems to have captured how government apparatchiks must think when caught in the headlights of popular discontent. And yes, of course, the image of White House Press Secretary Robert …
In the news this morning: • rank-and-file Democrats resist President Obama’s attempt to take over health care, • Congress drops “card check” provisions–an Obama-backed power grab by unions, • Congressional Budget Office calls White House health care dreams prohibitively expensive. That’s from the front pages of Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Taken together, they show a picture of a Democratic congressional majority running away from a President trying to push this country way, way left. Not according to NPR.
President Obama’s health care takeover will not just force most Americans into a government-run insurance plan, it will also give us European-style tax rates. Actually, we will be taxed at higher rates than most Europeans. Yes, that’s right. No need to do a double take. In order to pay for the White House’s dreams, Americans will be taxed at a higher top marginal rate than most Europeans, including the French, the Germans, and the Spanish. The White House and the President’s supporters in Congress will soon swing into gear with …
Ever hear of Alan Carlin? Probably not, and that is the way the Obama Administration wants to keep it. Dr. Carlin is an Environmental Protection Agency veteran who recently wrote a damaging report, warning that the science behind climate change was questionable at best, and that we shouldn’t pass laws that will hurt American families and hobble the nation’s economy based on incomplete information. Despite its promise to put science above politics, the Administration has suppressed Carlin’s report, banned him from writing or speaking about climate change, told him to …
President Obama has yet again shifted his position on the key question of whether Americans will be able to keep their private health care package if his proposals become law. The latest twist is this: many of you were going to lose private health care anyway, because it’s too expensive, but it will be your employer who drops the private choice. This can be called progress, if we understand life to be a long process in the revelation of truth, and if by progress we mean that now one more …
Less than 24 hours after Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner questioned the veracity of President Obama’s persistent claim that, under his health care proposals, “if you like your insurance package you can keep it”, the White House has begun to walk the President’s claim back. Turns out he didn’t really mean it. According to the Associated Press, “White House officials suggest the president’s rhetoric shouldn’t be taken literally: What Obama really means is that government isn’t about to barge in and force people to change insurance.” How’s that for change …
Below in its entirety is a commentary on accused spy Walter Kendall Myers written by Heritage’s Vice President for Communications Mike Gonzalez. It appeared in today’s Washington Times. Walter Kendall Myers, the State Department analyst accused of spying for Havana for 30 years, made me lose my innocence soon after I started working at the department in late 2006. I learned because of him that, while many Foreign Service Officers are patriots who put their private political beliefs aside while in government service, there is a substratum of officials whose …
