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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Americans Believe Obamacare Will Raise Premiums

Posted by: Kevin Glass at 11:17 AM

An Associated Press poll shows that Americans are, on average, smarter than Obama economists: they know Obamacare will make health insurance and health care more expensive:

Hattip Bryan Caplan, who passed along this comment:

Remember - the question asks people about their own costs. So would pro-Obama economists disagree? Or would they privately accept with these numbers - or even call them optimistic? Non-economists probably interpret this question distributionally, but economists of all political persuasions would hopefully also consider the effect on the overall rate of growth of medical spending.

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Record Low Temperatures In Copenhagen This Week

Posted by: Jillian Bandes at 11:13 AM

The record lows for Copenhagen on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are 24, 19 and 19 degrees, respectively. The predicted temperatures for this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are 21, 17 and 22 degrees.

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Federal Employees Have High Rate Of Tax Non-Compliance

Posted by: Jillian Bandes at 10:39 AM

The same people enjoying taxpayer dollars to fund their government jobs aren't paying their fair share of the taxes. Federal employees failed to pay $3 billion in income taxes 2008. That's astonishingly better than the $3.5 billion they failed to pay in 2007. Here's some specific offices with the amounts they owe:

Executive Office of the President (includes the White House): 50 employees owe $812,917;
U.S. Senate: 231 employees owe $2,469,026;
U.S. House of Representatives: 447 employees owe $5,809,631;
U.S. Tax Court: 3 employees owe $39,752;
Active Duty Military: 27,111 employees $102,474,672.

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Why Are Democrats Still Pushing Health Care When It Hurts Them?

Posted by: Jillian Bandes at 9:38 AM

Byron York's source offers some insights:

In the House, the view of [California Rep. Henry] Waxman and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is that we've waited two generations to get health care passed, and the 20 or 40 members of Congress who are going to lose their seats as a result are transitional players at best...This is something the party has wanted since Franklin Roosevelt.

So they're doing it for the grandeur? I can't believe it. Politicians want to win elections. Plain and simple. They might thing health care is the greatest thing they could ever accomplish, but if it doesn't put them back in Congress next year, they don't want to do it. His source continues:

At the White House, the picture is slightly different...Their view is, 'We're all in on this, totally committed, and we don't have to run for re-election next year. There will never be a better time to do it than now. And in the Senate, they look at the most vulnerable Democrats -- like [Christopher] Dodd and [Majority Leader Harry] Reid -- and say those vulnerabilities will probably not change whether health care reform passes or fails. So in that view, if they pass reform, Democrats will lose the same number of seats they were going to lose before.

I still don't believe it. It'll take more than a historic presidency to cause politicians to jeopardize their own jobs for the sake of a bigger cause. It'll take magic.

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Selective Indignation

Posted by: Carol Platt Liebau at 10:47 PM

President Obama has had this to say about the bankers whom he terms "fat cats":

The way I see it, having recovered with the help of the American government and the American taxpayers, our banks now have a greater obligation to the goal of a wider recovery, a more stable system, and more broadly shared prosperity.

In other words, presumably, bankers should be taking lower salaries and paying higher taxes. But if the criterion for such sacrifice is accepting the "help of the American government and the American taxpayers," how does the President justify the explosion of six-figure salaries in the federal government, where almost 1 in 5 civil servants now make more than $100,000 per year -- before bonuses and overtime?

After all, the "fat cat" bankers are actually contributing more to the economy than federal workers are . . . in terms of spending, employment and taxpaying. And unlike federal employees, they are not essentially guaranteed jobs for life with plenty of vacation days.

One wonders what else President Obama would have to say if it were the "fat cat" bankers -- rather than federal employees -- who owe $3 billion in taxes? Is he going to save some of his indignation for them, or is it directed exclusively at America's productive classes?

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Do the Dems Approve of This?

Posted by: Carol Platt Liebau at 5:54 PM

Fox News is reporting that Obama "Safe Schools Czar" Ken Jennings is again under fire, because -- as Fox delicately puts it -- "the pro-gay group he formerly headed recommends books his critics say are pornographic."

Check out the passages included in the piece. They are pornographic (anything that includes oral sex and first graders in the same sentence is -- or should be -- absolutely out of bounds). And the group recommended them when Ken Jennings was in charge (they are still recommended by the group).

Do the Democrats approve of this?

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Democrat: "There is...a lot of frustration that one person is holding up the will of 59 others."

Posted by: Jillian Bandes at 5:27 PM

That's one anonymous Democratic official talking about Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is holding out on health care reform until the public option is killed. Without him, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid only has 59 votes - one shy of the requisite 60.

This official is apparently unaware of the 40 other Republican Senators who are adamantly opposed to the bill.

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Obama's Great Temptation at Copenhagen

Posted by: Greg Hengler at 5:09 PM

Research director for Newt Gingrich, Vince Haley, wrote this insightful piece about Obama's up-and-coming trip to Copenhagen. Will he choose to live according to the values written in the U.S. Constitution, or will he continue to campaign for Prom King of the World under the banner of Climate Change?

Will The President Really Corrupt Our Constitutional System at the Copenhagen Altar?

By Vince Haley

Put aside all the serious fights over the climate science, the astronomical costs associated with capping carbon emissions, the endless demands for carbon reparations, compliance and verification, etc., the only question that really matters this week at the Copenhagen Conference on climate change is whether President Obama is really going to end up corrupting the American constitutional system in front of the entire world.

Who will President Obama heed? The American people and our constitutional system of checks and balances, or the collection of dictators, tyrants, and mostly undemocratic heads of government convened by the United Nations in Copenhagen this week? They are tempting the American president to do what he wants to do and what they mostly do: ignore the will of their own people and sign a political agreement based on an unconstitutional sham.

Article 2, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution is crystal clear: “He [the President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

In 1997, the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 to tell President Clinton that it was the view of the Senate that the United States should not sign any international agreement on climate change that either did not mandate all countries to limit emissions or which would otherwise result in serious harm to the U.S. economy.

Read More...

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Monday, December 14, 2009

The Omnibus Bill: Bad Government At Its Worst

Posted by: Townhall.com Staff at 3:00 PM

Guest blog post from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah)

During a time that our deficit is growing at an unprecedented rate and our economy is suffering, the House yesterday passed the FY10 Omnibus Appropriations bill, by a vote of 221-202. The bill provides, among other things, massive funding increases for international family planning, domestic family planning, and condom promotion. We are in debt up to our eyeballs, living on a credit card, and hemorrhaging jobs. Subsidizing condoms is hardly our top priority.

This omnibus bill is bad government at its worst. There are so many reasons to be outraged by this betrayal of the American people.

*       This bill spends nearly half the discretionary portion of the federal budget on just six federal departments.

*       It was debated for just one hour (that’s $7.4 billion spent per minute of debate).

*       No one could possibly have read the entire bill before casting their vote.   It was released from the Rules Committee Wednesday and Members and the public had just one day to review this 2,500 page, $446 billion dollar bill before yesterday’s scheduled vote.

*       The bill contains more than 5,000 earmarks.

*       For the six departments included in the bill, it increases their base funding by 12 percent at a time when everyone else is cutting back.

The bill simply does not provide the necessary openness and transparency the usual appropriations process provides. Without proper oversight and evaluation, it’s easy to overlook egregious spending provisions that would never pass on their own merit. This bill is filled with such provisions.

For example, the bill allows the District of Columbia to use public funds for abortion and needle exchanges. It lays the groundwork to terminate the DC school voucher scholarship program. The bill also weakens the ban on funding for registration and benefits to domestic partners and the ban on medical marijuana. Is this what taxpayers sent us here to accomplish?

These provisions would never pass the House on their own merits. They cannot withstand public scrutiny, which is why Democrats have attempted to hide them in this behemoth bill. Democrat Leadership continues to force their agenda on the American people by cramming in multiple anti-family and anti-life provisions in one large omnibus package.

Congressman Chaffetz represents Utah's third congressional district and serves on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Lieberman Gets Red Carpet Treatment

Posted by: Jillian Bandes at 2:54 PM

The White House is pushing Reid to work with Lieberman on health care, meaning that the Medicare expansion provision Reid cooked up last week is probably in jeapordy. Lieberman said he would filibuster health care with the provision, which he (rightly) considers to be simply another version of the public option.

A planned 5:30 meeting today with the Democratic Caucus is expected to focus on dealing with Lieberman's concerns.

The new provision allows Americans aged 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare -- at a steep price for all other Americans.

Tags: lieberman

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Armed UN Guard Stops Filming of Climategate Questioner

Posted by: Meredith Jessup at 2:24 PM

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Krauthammer On The Mounting National Debt

Posted by: Jillian Bandes at 2:07 PM

More excellent commentary:

...as an index of how serious the debt issue is, economist Irwin Stelzer points out that Moody's has been issuing ratings since 1917. The United States has had a Triple A since 1917 — [through] world wars, depressions – unchanged, uninterrupted. In eleven months, Obama has driven Moody's to the point where it has issued a warning that it might have to reduce it to Double A, which is what you get for banana republics or places like Greece.

HT: NRO

Tags: debt

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Monday, December 14, 2009

While Government Goes Broke, Its Workers Get Big Raises

Posted by: Michael Medved at 1:49 PM

An astonishing review of federal pay data by USA Today shows a shocking rise in federal hiring rolls as well as government salaries. Since the beginning of the recession in December, 2007, private employment has gone down 6.3%, but the federal, non-military workforce has expanded by 9.8%. The average salary for federal workers has soared 6.6% in just eighteen months, and now stands at $71,000 – more than $30,000 above the private sector average. Nineteen percent of the federal workforce now consists of six-figure-salary jobs, and 22,000 federal workers draw salaries above $170,000, an increase of 93%. While the public rightly protests big pay packages for government-assisted banks that lost billions, we should be similarly indignant about all the new workers and skyrocketing salaries for the government itself, which is already operating trillions of dollars in the red.

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Monday, December 14, 2009

A Prostitute Who Wants To Pay Taxes

Posted by: Jillian Bandes at 10:57 AM

I have a hard time believing the tale of "Princess," a forty-something former office manager who turned to the streets for some extra dough after she lost her job.

I won't service married men or women, men of the cloth. See even hos got rules of morality...But seriously, I can understand why people who been brought up one way think it's immoral. I don't understand why it's illegal. With our government needing money, I wish I could pay taxes.

Apparently, the right way to deal with a deficit is for the United States to start tacitly endorsing women to sell their bodies.... that sounds like advancement.

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Yes, "Merry Christmas" Matters

Posted by: Carol Platt Liebau at 10:00 AM

My Townhall column is up, discussing the President's decision to eliminate any religious element from the annual White House Christmas card.

Of course, it's not essential that the word "Christmas" appears on the card. But eliminating all traces of any religion from it springs from some politically correct but perhaps misplaced assumptions. What' s more, when America's leader makes a conscious decision to transform the Christmas season into nothing but a great big "happy holidays" opportunity -- thereby swapping religiosity for some undefined civic "faith" -- it's bad for the country. Read the column to find out why.