November 8th, 2009
Here’s a quick roundup of ObamaCare news and views from over the weekend:
- Pelosi’s version of ObamaCare passes the house…barely.
- Jobs? Who needs them? “The promise of health care reform was not what got Democrats elected. Voters tossed Republicans on their fannies for ruining the economy, not because they didn’t enact wildly expensive social programs….Democrats have learned nothing from history. During the Great Depression, each time the economy showed a spark, President Franklin Roosevelt snuffed it out with another tax increase or regulatory burden.”
- Blue Dog Democrats who voted for ObamaCare.
- Analysis of the ObamaCare bill passed by the Hosue: “The King James version of the Bible runs more than 600 pages and is crammed with celestial regulations. Newton’s Principia Mathematica distilled many of the rules of physics in a mere 974 pages. Neither have anything on Nancy Pelosi’s new fiendishly entertaining health-care opus, which tops 1,900 pages…. the word “regulation” appears 181 times. “Tax” is there 214 times. “Fees,” 103 times. As we all know, nothing says “affordability” like higher taxes and fees. The word “shall” – as in “must” or “required to” – appears over 3,000 times.”
- Interesting (and lengthy) essay suggesting that maybe calling every person who protests ObamaCare or bigger government a racist isn’t a smart move on the part of liberals.
- NRO’s Critical Condition: Democrats hope for passage of ObamaCare “largely hinge on successfully hiding two plain facts from the voters: One, the House Republicans and the Congressional Budget Office have now shown that a bill costing $61 billion can lower Americans’ insurance premiums, while bills costing $1.7 trillion cannot (and instead would raise them substantially). Two, the Democrats’ plans would be paid for only if they follow through on plans to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars out of already-barely-solvent Medicare, and to do so just in time for the baby boomers’ retirement. ”
On to the Senate…
Tags: Democrats, health care, ObamaCare
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November 6th, 2009
Another roundup on ObamaCare, with a focus on Pelosi’s hellbound determination to bring it up for a vote on Saturday:
(Hat tips to the indefatigable Instapundit and NRO’s Condition Critical blog on ObamaCare.)
Tags: health care, Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare, Robert Reich
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November 5th, 2009
No one should make light of the horrible tragedy at Ft. Hood today. However, it’s very discouraging to read how the MSM refuses to cover the story’s stubborn, politically incorrect facts:
In this CNN report, there’s still no mention of the fact the shooter is a Muslim some ten hours after the shooting, and eight after Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s identity was first reported. (Of course, CNN has a history of refusing to report “inconvenient” facts.)
Likewise, the LA Times refuses to cover those same details.
Here’s the rub: This is a huge national story with tons of coverage…and it’s obvious that the MSM is lying to us by omission. The chances are extremely strong that they’re lying to us just as much in thousands of stories every year that garner less attention. And they wonder why their circulations/ratings are in freefall and no one trusts them anymore…
Patterico has more on the subject.
(Hat tip: Instapundit)
Tags: Ft. Hood, Islam, Jihad, MSM, Nidal Hasan, shooting
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November 5th, 2009
Well, let’s see what’s been going on in the world of ObamaCare:
- 10,000 rally in DC against ObamaCare.
- Charles Krauthammer: “If you are a conservative Democrat and you see the great swing between ’08 and ’09, you know that this idea that you can ride the coattails of Obama — [that] there was a great realignment last year — is false, and they are now extremely exposed.”
- Dick Morris and Eileen McGann are even blunter: “Are the elections of 2009 precursors of the same kind of massive partisan upheaval in Congress that we experienced in 1994? The historical data says yes, they are….For the House to pass Obama’s healthcare bill five days after so huge a repudiation of the Democratic Party and its program is breathtaking in its arrogance. Voters all over America will get the point: The congressional Democrats don’t give a damn what the voters think.”
- Karl Rove also sees the results as disasterous for Democrats: “Tuesday’s elections should put a scare into red state Democrats—and a few blue state ones, too….Looking ahead, the bad news for Democrats is that the legislation that helped lead to the collapse of support for their party on Tuesday could yet inflict more pain on those foolish enough to support it. The health-care bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to vote on this week could sink an entire fleet of Democratic boats in 2010….Tuesday’s results were the first sign that voters are revolting against runaway spending and government expansion. But Democrat likely ain’t seen nothin’ yet if they try to ram through health-care reform.”
- Displaying her keen, Zapp Brannigan-esque sense of strategy and timing, Nancy Pelosi cries “Onward into the machine gun fire!”
- But she’d rather see it fail than give up taxpayer funding for abortion.
- The Reid and Pelosi bills are going to cost more than projected. A whole lot more.
- The Heritage Foundation takes a gander at Pelosi’s version of ObamaCare and finds it lays out the foundation for a “complete government take over of the health care sector of our economy.”
- The Wall Street Journal calls it “Worst. Bill. Ever.” (Actually, they just say worst since the New Deal; after all, the infamy isn’t quite the same as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. However, as bad as it is, I’m not sure the results of ObamaCare be quite as baleful as the Economic Opportunity Act enacted as part of LBJ’s Great Society programs that helped bring up us intergenerational welfare dependency and the destruction of the black family structure in America.)
- Shockingly, there is a health care reform plan that the Congressional Budget Office says will reduce premiums and cut deficits. So when does that one get a vote? Answer: Never. That’s the Republican plan
(Hat tips to Instapundit, Real Clear Politics, and The Corner, among others…)
Tags: Charles Krauthammer, Dick Morris, Elections, health care, Karl Rove, ObamaCare
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November 5th, 2009
I’m a UT graduate, and I follow football. (I know, “rooting for laundry.”) Here in Texas, the UT Longhorns have a friendly rivalry with the Texas A&M Aggies (“friendly” in the sense of “no recent homicides on record” and “rivalry” in the sense that the Longhorns won a National Championship in 2006, while A&M’s biggest post-season accomplishment this decade was winning the last GallereyFurniture.com Bowl in 2001).
However, today this Longhorn fan would like to offer up three cheers to the stalwart denizens of Aggieland for voting down redlight cameras. Study after study has shown red light cameras actually increase accidents, and merely exist as a way of extracting yet more money from taxpayers, and to line the pockets of the companies that sell and run them. (And, as always when money and politics are combined, one hand washes the other.) Good riddance to a bad idea, and hopefully more Texas municipalities (Round Rock, I’m looking in your direction) will follow suit.
As for Aggie football returning to its glory days, well…A&M is currently 5-3, and should be favored against Baylor and Colorado, so a sweet berth in the Texas Bowl (the successor to the GallereyFurniture.com Bowl) is well within reach…
Tags: Aggies, College Station, Elections, Football, Longhorns, red light, red light cameras, Texas, Texas A&M
Posted in Elections, Texas | 2 Comments »
November 4th, 2009
As usual, all the Texas constitutional amendments passed.
However, the result that sticks out the most to me is the overwhelming Yes vote on Constitutional Amendment 11 (to place limits on government taking of private property for public use):
For 844,444 (81.0%)
Against 197,713 (19.0%)
This amendment is a direct (albeit delayed) reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Kelo vs. City of New London. The popularity of this amendment would suggest that there’s a lot of opposition to Kelo out among the elctorate, even among some liberal democrats.
Tags: Elections, Kelo, Texas
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November 3rd, 2009
Losing the New jersey Governor’s race.“Corzine hugged Obama and made the election about Obama in a state Obama carried by 15 points and where Dems outnumber Republicans by a wide margin. And he lost.”
Losing the Virginia Governor’s Race
A summary of the night from the mighty Instapundit: “It’s easy to see which candidate is the Obama candidate in these races, and they’re all having a tougher time than they should, given Obama’s overwhelming popularity just a few months ago. That these races are even close is a sign that the Obama magic has faded; how they go will tell us just how far.”
All in all, a good night for limited government, and a bad night for Obamamania.
Tags: Democrats, Elections, Republicans
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November 2nd, 2009
Compared to California, that is.
Some takeaways:
- “Besides Mississippi, every one of the 17 states with the lowest state and local tax levels had positive net internal migration from 2000 to 2007. Except for Wyoming, Maine, and Delaware, every one of the 17 highest-tax states had negative net internal migration over the same period. Conservative researchers’ technical explanation for this phenomenon is: ‘Well, duh.’ Or, as Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore wrote in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year: ‘People, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.’”
- “California’s tax and regulatory policies, the report predicts, ‘will continue to sap its economic vitality,’ while Texas’s ‘pro-growth’ policies will help it ‘maintain its superior economic performance well into the future.’ The clear implication is that California should become more like Texas.”
- “‘Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California,’ Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com and a presidential fellow at Chapman University in Southern California, told the Los Angeles Times this past March. ‘Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.'”
Read the whole thing.
Tags: California, Economics, Growth, Taxes, Texas
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November 2nd, 2009
Remember: There’s an off-year election Tuesday, November 3.
Here’s a PDF of the ballot from the League of Women Voter’s
I was going to do a quick and dirty voter guide from a conservative/libertarian perspective on the issues, but a quick search turned up a more detailed breakdown that covered most of the points I would have made anyhow:
Here’s a breakdown from the Hardin County Conservatives
One difference between their views and mine: I would recommend voting AGAINST Proposition 3, “The constitutional amendment providing for uniform standards and procedures for the appraisal of property for ad valorem tax purposes.”, for the following reason: It seems innocuous enough on its face, but it violates the principle of subsidiarity, i.e. that power in a democracy should devolve to the lowest level of government capable of exercise that power. It also provides a small but important check on tiny bureaucratic tyrannies; if Travis County adopts abusive property tax rules, you can always move to a county that doesn’t (say, Williamson County). If those “uniform” rules turn out to be abusive, then you’re screwed.
Tags: Elections, Texas
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