4Obama says health care changes must come this year
In my experience, "now or never" usually means someone's trying to put something over on you.
4Furor grows over partisan car dealer closings
More postpartisanship: "Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Republicans."
4White House to Sonia Sotomayor critics: Be 'careful'
... because we've already learned that opposing a minority about anything is racism.
4A plea from John Mark Reynolds to California pols: Call our bluff! "...it may be true that voters want two contradictory things: bigger government and less spending. Sadly, we have only been able to try bigger government. The elite believe they know which we really prefer so they keep trying different tricks to get us to embrace taxes. Why not try something new? ...Make the cuts and call our bluff if you dare."
Since it's been announced that Sonia Sotomayor is the nominee for the coming Supreme Court opening, we should look at what we may be getting.
Visit Verum Serum for more.
4Fun Tax Fact of the Day
"If the government increased the top tax rate from the current rate of 35% to 100% (yes, that’s right 100%), it would only collect an extra $400 billion this year. In other words, confiscating all the income that is currently taxed at 35% would not raise enough revenue to cover any of the annual deficits projected in the next 10 years. There is no way that tax hikes on the rich alone can pay for proposed spending in the current budget."
4Obama Considers Detaining Terror Suspects Indefinitely
Now that he has the big job, he realizes POWs are released at the end of the conflict.
4Obama announces plan to close tax loopholes
Obama complains that existing laws makes it possible to "pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York" -- so let's encourage them to send all jobs to India!
= U.S. threatens to rescind stimulus money over wage cuts
Once again, the Obama administration uses government money to control others: "The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget."
Do we really want them paying for our healthcare?
= CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of 'Enhanced Interrogations' "In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi's office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations."
So she knew they thought it was legal -- the only part the Obama administration wants to prosecute -- and didn't say anything.
= EU calls for shorter work week to create jobs
Didn't France already prove this doesn't work?
Oklahoma looks like it's about to be the next state to remind the federal government about the 10th Amendment. It sounds great, and I'm sure it's very cathartic.
Beyond that it's really quite meaningless.
I think the states should pay attention to Prof. Randy Barnett's recommendation to "petition Congress for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution."
His point is that such conventions, once convened, can do just about anything, so Congress would naturally want to avoid such an event. Thus they might be inclined to behave and maybe even offer the states a constitutional amendment to address their concerns. It's certainly worth a try.
Or maybe we should just repeal the 17th Amendment. Instant return to federalism.
Specter hints Hemp died of GOP agenda "Sen. Arlen Specter ... suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer."
"'If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.'"
Which is a load of crap. As the WSJ pointed out today, "Between 1994 and 2006, when Republicans controlled Congress or the White House or both, NIH biomedical R&D spending more than doubled in real terms, jumping to $25 billion in 2003 from about $10 billion in the early 1990s."
"Most of the advances in biotechnology and pharmacogenomics that are revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of disease are occurring in America. One reason is a research environment that is less centralized, more competitive, tolerant of risk and richer in cash -- public, yes, but especially private."
The truth is, if we had adopted a single-payer healthcare system in the 90s, we would almost certainly have a program like Great Britain's NICE that determines which treatments are sufficiently cost effective. More to the point, they decide if a new drug's promise to give a cancer patient a couple of more years are worth the cost of said drug.
If the Democrats had their way in the 90s, Sen. Kennedy would probably be dead today.
Taxpayers to Get Rude Surprise Millions of Americans enjoying their small windfall from President Barack Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax credit are in for an unpleasant surprise next spring.
The government is going to want some of that money back.
Apparently the stimulus will only be a short-term loan for some people. Leave it to Washington to screw this up.
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