22 October 2009
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22 October 2009
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
The ‘Doc Fix’ Goes Down in Defeat [The Club for Growth]
Wednesday Links [Cato at Liberty]
OCT 21, 2009 06:33P.M.
OCT 21, 2009 05:18P.M.
Wow...this was a great victory. The ‘doc fix’ bill was defeated, 47-53. The majority party couldn’t even muster up a majority. Afterwards, in an attempt to avoid embarrassment (too late), Harry Reid blamed the American Medical Association for the defeat. Apparently, the AMA had promised Reid that they could deliver 27 Republicans. But instead of 27, Reid got precisely zero. And 12 Democrats jumped ship as well. Many saw this vote as the first vote on ObamaCare. I think that’s right. And I think that makes the passage of nationalized health care demonstrably harder for the Democrats. Along with the Club, folks at the Heritage Foundation, on Capitol Hill, and at RedState did a great job at moving
• Senate Judiciary Committee abandons hope of bringing any real change to the Patriot Act. Julian Sanchez in The Nation: “The Obama administration makes vague, reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting civil liberties, but then merrily adopts whatever appalling policy George W. Bush put in place.” • The imminent collapse of Social Security. • Cognitive Dissonance: New poll shows rising support for a socalled public option in health care, even as the public continues to oppose greater government control over the health care system.
mountains to make sure this bill was defeated. Well done!
• It has been tried before: Why increasing the size of government won’t work.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Since Stimulus, 49 of 50 States Have Lost Jobs [The Club for Growth]
• Talking with Tea Partiers. • Podcast: The real problem with American health care: You are not the customer. More here.
OCT 21, 2009 06:23P.M. Here the data, as compiled by the Republicans on the House Ways &
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Means Committee.
Will Obama Again Deny Healthcare Excise Tax is a Tax? [Americans for Tax Reform] OCT 21, 2009 04:27P.M. The Senate health care bill (S. 1796) indeed uses the term “excise tax” to describe the excise tax levied on Americans who do not purchase health insurance. If signed into law, the ta...
1
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
22 October 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Medicare for Everyone? [Cato at Liberty]
Obama’s Fall Offensive [Cato at Liberty]
OCT 21, 2009 04:11P.M.
OCT 21, 2009 02:51P.M.
According to The Hill, House Democrats are considering re-branding their new government-run health insurance program. A “public option” evidently isn’t catchy enough. Now they’re thinking, “Medicare Part E” as in, Medicare for Everyone.
In today’s Politico Arena, the editors ask:
By all means, model a new government program after Medicare, which:
My response:
White House Strategy: Will Obama’s effort to undermine critics undermine Obama instead? Is it overdue or overdone?
• Drags down the quality of care for all patients, both publicly and privately insured
Obama is losing it. His increasing moves to marginalize his critics, richly detailed this morning at Politico, mark him as an amateur. America is not Chicago. Nor are those who oppose his agenda synonymous with the Republican Party. They’re far more numerous than that, and their numbers are growing.
• Literally kills people by fueling the epidemic of deaths due to medical errors (as many as 100,000 annually) • Is responsible for the fragmented delivery system about which the Left complains
Politics is one thing: “It ain’t beanbag,” Mr. Dooley noted. But scorched-earth politics is something else. It’s over the edge, like Nixon’s enemies list. It has no place in America, except in political backwaters like Chicago. (Personal note: In 1972 my wife and I served as Republican election judges in the first Mayor Daley’s Chicago. On election day, when we walked into the Hyde Park polling station at 5:30 a.m., the three Democratic judges looked at us in astonishment: “Are you real Republicans?” How else are you going to control the election?! Hamid Karzai has nothing on Chicago.)
• Has required one tax increase every four years, still has an unfunded liability approaching $90 trillion, and will therefore be the driving force behind income-tax rates essentially doubling by mid-century • Has been expanded well beyond its original mission • Didn’t save a single life in (at least) its first 10 years of operation • Coerces people to choose it over private insurance
As a practical matter, in our two-party system the Republican Party is the organizational antidote to this kind of abuse. But as the Wall Street Journal editorializes this morning, the party’s going to have to get its act together before that happens. It’s claim to be a party of principle has been seriously undermined in recent years by Republican officials at all levels of government. That leaves it to private individuals and organizations to call Congress and the administration on what they’re up to. And that’s why we too are in Obama’s cross-hairs. It won’t work — unless we let it happen. Thank you, Politico, for drawing these sad facts
• Restricts enrollees’ freedom to spend their own money on medical care • Is easily (and persuasively) parodied as a tool of the devil Pleeeeease don’t throw me into that briar patch.
together in one place.
2
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
22 October 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Too Big to Fail Redux [Cato at Liberty]
Which Tax Hikes in Senate Health Bill Violate Obama’s Tax Promise? [Americans for Tax Reform]
OCT 21, 2009 02:19P.M.
OCT 21, 2009 01:56P.M. Over and over again, President Obama has promised not to raise “any form” of taxes on families making less than $250,000 per year. Yet, the U.S. Senate is getting ready to consider a ...
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
How Cap and Tax will Hurt Washington [Americans for Tax Reform]
Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has shocked the staid world of British banking by raising the possibility of breaking up the UKs big banks. Mr. King is no socialist, but a worried banking regulator. He is worried about “the sheer creative imagination of of the financial sector to think up new ways of taking risk.”
OCT 21, 2009 01:27P.M. In our continuing, daily, state by state, look at the financial impact of the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Tax Bill, we will show you the projected losses in Gross State Product, Personal Income, and N...
Around the world, regulators and finance ministers are hoping that banks will grow their way out of their current mess. To do so, however, banks will in fact need to seek new ways of taking on risk. It is called going for broke: the upside goes to stockholders and managers, and the downside to taxpayers. Mr. King knows that it is a “delusion” that regulators can control bank risk-taking.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
John Stossel On The Minimum Wage [Americans for Tax Reform]
Whether one agrees with his solution, at least he recognizes the problem. Would that were true of Treasury and Fed officials in the United States.
OCT 21, 2009 01:14P.M. Watch & pass onto everyone you know. (Via Cafe Hayek)...
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FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
22 October 2009
inevitably surrounds the office by, for example, walking his inaugural parade route (Jefferson) or buttering his own english muffins (Jerry Ford).
Freedom for Vietnam’s Bloggers [Cato at Liberty]
But it seems to me that doing a commercial for George Lopez’s lousy sitcom takes it a bit too far:
OCT 21, 2009 12:57P.M. Today the House of Representatives is debating H. Res. 672, which would call on the government of Vietnam to release imprisoned bloggers and respect Internet freedom.
(When I saw this on TV recently, I was sure it was some kind of Forrest Gump cinemagic. Not so.) More to the point, can the president give us an occasional break from his relentless omnipresence? Apparently not.
Here is an article or two about what is happening with Vietnamese bloggers.
Six months into his presidency, the Politico reported, Obama had already “uttered more than half a million words in public.” In one whirlwind week last month, the president made his third appearance on “60 Minutes,” gave a major speech on the financial crisis the next day, and made a record five talk-show appearances the following Sunday. And on the eighth day, He did Letterman.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Our Inescapable President [Cato at Liberty] OCT 21, 2009 12:35P.M.
My suspicion is that as his popularity continues to drop, Obama is going to discover that there are diminishing returns to presidential media appearances, and that he might do better by letting the country forget
I’m late to the pile-on because I’m a bad American, and I don’t watch enough football, but not quite two weeks ago, President Obama managed to politicize what for many is a hallowed Monday night ritual.
about him for a while. But will he be able to restrain himself?
In the New York Post, the paper of record for those of us who grew up in one of the only red counties on the Jersey Shore, Kyle Smith notes that Obama’s ostensible purpose for inserting himself into Monday Night Football was to proclaim Hispanic Heritage Month, but the president put this in as well:
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
‘Reefer Sanity’ [‘Cato at Liberty] OCT 21, 2009 12:19P.M.
Our nation faces extraordinary challenges right now, and our ability to tackle them will depend on our willingness to recognize that we’re all in this together, that we each have an obligation to give back to our communities, and we all have a stake in the future of this country.
Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post: Arguments for and against decriminalization of some or all drugs are familiar by now. Distilled to the basics, the drug war has empowered criminals while criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens and wasted billions that could have been better spent on education and rehabilitation.
Generic enough, perhaps, unless you’re oblivious to the political backdrop of the president and his party pushing desperately to pass national health care.
By ever-greater numbers, Americans support decriminalizing at least marijuana, which millions admit to having used, including a couple of presidents and a Supreme Court justice. A recent Gallup poll found that 44 percent of Americans favor legalization for any purpose, not just medical, up from 31 percent in 2000.
Smith is rightfully exasperated by the perpetual campaign mode and Obama’s omnipresence in every broadcast medium. But–not that it’s a competition–I’d had more than my fill of this sort of thing eight months ago, a month into Obama’s presidency: When there’s no escape from our national talk-show hostwhen he appears constantly above every gym treadmill-is it any wonder that we typically want his show cancelled just a few seasons in? Is it any wonder we get sick of him?
Read the whole thing. For more Cato work, go here.
You can make too much of the notion of presidential “dignity.” It’s good when the federal chief executive officer fights against the royal aura that
4
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
22 October 2009
raiders would know that they are more free to cut a deadly swath through an innocent population.
Wednesday’s Daily News [The Club for Growth]
It was counterattack by civilians that prevented a fourth plane from being used as a guided bomb on September 11, 2001. Disarming the law-
OCT 21, 2009 12:06P.M.
abiding citizen is contrary to the lesson of that day.
Larry Kudlow says Bernanke is playing with fire. Cato’s Dan Griswold points out that Bernanke criticized the trade deficit, but not trade (it’s all in the wording!).
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Universal Coverage Means ‘Willing to Let You Die Sooner’ [Cato at Liberty‘Willing to Let You Die Sooner’]
House Democrats want Medicare Part E - Medicare for Everyone. The American public is experiencing cognitive dissonance on health care, says Cato’s Michael Tanner. The “doc fix” is a pricey bribery even by Washington standards, says IBD’s editorial board.
OCT 21, 2009 11:24A.M.
A hiring tax credit will prolong the recession says UCLA economist Lee Ohanian.
I cannot disagree with Uwe Reinhardt’s response to my previous post at National Journal’s Health Care Experts blog. But his response bears clarification and emphasis.
Mark Perry points to a fun interactive map that shows job gains and losses.
Improving “population health” generally means “helping people live longer.”
FL-Sen: Rubio is catching up to Crist. To paraphrase, Reinhardt then writes: NY-23: The WSJ had an editorial, “The GOP’s New York Fiasco.” If helping people live longer were our objective in health reform, we could do better than universal coverage. But health reform is not (solely or primarily) about helping people live longer. It is (also or primarily) about other things, like relieving the anxiety of the uninsured.
NY-23: Scozzafava has changed her mind. The reporter never yelled at her.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
I applaud Reinhardt for acknowledging a reality that most advocates of universal coverage avoid: that universal coverage is not solely or primarily about improving health.
Gun Control Masquerading as Counterterrorism [Cato at Liberty]
Will Reinhardt go further and acknowledge that, since universal coverage is largely about some other X-factor(s), that necessarily means that advocates of universal coverage are willing to let some people die sooner in order to serve that X-factor?
OCT 21, 2009 11:38A.M. I was unimpressed with the security arguments made by the chairman and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee in a letter to appropriators the other week. Citing the “commando-style” terrorist raid on a train station in Mumbai last year, the letter objected to language in the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act that would require Amtrak to allow firearms in checked luggage.
(Cross-posted at National Journal’s Health Care Experts blog.)
But the risk of a commando-style raid does not support—in fact it undermines—the authors’ argument that weapons should be banned on passenger trains. With law-abiding citizens fully disarmed, any terrorist
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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
22 October 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
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Special Kudlow Report Tonight [Larry Kudlow’s Money Politic$]
Parsing Pelosi: House Health Takeover Would Cost around $2.25 Trillion [Cato at Liberty]
OCT 21, 2009 10:52A.M.
OCT 21, 2009 10:32A.M. Just like the Senate Finance Committee’s government takeover, the House of Representatives’ government takeover hides more than half of its cost by pushing those costs off the government’s budget and onto the private sector. So when Speaker Pelosi says the House bill would cost under $900 billion, what she actually means is that it would cost around $2.25 trillion.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Nice Insurance Company. Shame If Anything Were to Happen to It. [Cato at Liberty]
SUMMIT TO RESCUE KING DOLLAR Please join us live from Washington this evening as our panel discusses and debates the decline of the dollar.
OCT 21, 2009 10:30A.M.
Our guests include:
Just days after the health-insurance lobby released a report criticizing the Senate Finance Committee’s health care overhaul (for not expanding government enough!), Democrats and President Barack Obama lashed out at health insurers, threatening to revoke what the Government Accountability Office calls the insurers’ “very limited exemption from the federal antitrust laws.”
*Lawrence Lindsay, former director of the National Economic Council; President and Chief Executive Officer of The Lindsey Group *Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) *Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) *Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) *Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Democrats say they’re motivated by the need to increase competition in health insurance markets. Right.
*Henry Cisneros, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary
According to Business Week:
THE KUDLOW REPORT. 7PM ET. CNBC
David Hyman, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Illinois College of Law and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute…considers it unlikely that repeal would fundamentally change the nature of the market. While it might increase competition in some markets, he says, it could actually decrease it in others, such as those where small insurers survive because they have access to larger providers’ data. Changes to the act could therefore hurt smaller companies more than larger ones, he says. Because the act doesn’t outlaw the existence of a dominant provider but simply prohibits collusion, says Hyman, a repeal would fall short of breaking up existing market monopolies
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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
that are blamed for artificially inflating prices. The current move against [the] McCarran-Ferguson [Act], he says, “has more to do with the politics of pushing back against the insurance industry’s opposition to health reform than it does with increasing competition in health-insurance markets.”
22 October 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
What Caused the Crisis? [Cato at Liberty] OCT 21, 2009 09:25A.M.
Combined with what The New York Times described as the Obama administration’s “ham-handed” attempt to censor insurers who communicated with seniors about the effects of the president’s health plan — the Times editorialized: “the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had to stretch facts to the breaking point to make a weak case that the insurers were doing anything improper” — it’s hard to argue that this is anything but Democrats threatening to use the power of the state to punish dissidents.
Last night National Government Radio promoted a documentary on National Government TV about the financial crisis of 2008, which concludes that the problem was . . . not enough government. If the “Frontline” episode mentioned any of the ways that government created the crisis — cheap money from the central bank, tax laws that encourage debt over equity, government regulation that pressured lenders to issue mortgages to borrowers who wouldn’t be able to pay them back — NPR didn’t mention it.
When Republicans were in power, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now that Democrats are in power, obedience is the highest
For information on those causes, take a look at this paper by Lawrence H. White or get the new book Financial Fiasco by Johan Norberg, which Amity Shlaes called “a masterwork in miniature.” Available in hardcover or immediately as an e-book. Or on Kindle!
form of patriotism.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS And for a warning about the dangers lurking in Fannie Mae and Freddie
An Interview with Governor Tim Pawlenty [Larry Kudlow’s Money Politic$]
Mac, see this 2004 paper by Lawrence J. White.
OCT 21, 2009 09:39A.M. Is the dollar’s demise a sign of global declinism for America? Will this decline blow up the bull market economic recovery? Joining me to discuss last night was distinguished Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty. Mr. Pawlenty also happens to be a leading GOP presidential contender for 2012.
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FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
The ‘Doc Fix’ Goes Down in Defeat [The Club for Growth]
Wednesday Links [Cato at Liberty]
OCT 21, 2009 06:33P.M.
OCT 21, 2009 05:18P.M.
Wow...this was a great victory. The ‘doc fix’ bill was defeated, 47-53. The majority party couldn’t even muster up a majority. Afterwards, in an attempt to avoid embarrassment (too late), Harry Reid blamed the American Medical Association for the defeat. Apparently, the AMA had promised Reid that they could deliver 27 Republicans. But instead of 27, Reid got precisely zero. And 12 Democrats jumped ship as well. Many saw this vote as the first vote on ObamaCare. I think that’s right. And I think that makes the passage of nationalized health care demonstrably harder for the Democrats. Along with the Club, folks at the Heritage Foundation, on Capitol Hill, and at RedState did a great job at moving
• Senate Judiciary Committee abandons hope of bringing any real change to the Patriot Act. Julian Sanchez in The Nation: “The Obama administration makes vague, reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting civil liberties, but then merrily adopts whatever appalling policy George W. Bush put in place.” • The imminent collapse of Social Security. • Cognitive Dissonance: New poll shows rising support for a socalled public option in health care, even as the public continues to oppose greater government control over the health care system.
mountains to make sure this bill was defeated. Well done!
• It has been tried before: Why increasing the size of government won’t work.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Since Stimulus, 49 of 50 States Have Lost Jobs [The Club for Growth]
• Talking with Tea Partiers. • Podcast: The real problem with American health care: You are not the customer. More here.
OCT 21, 2009 06:23P.M. Here the data, as compiled by the Republicans on the House Ways &
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Means Committee.
Will Obama Again Deny Healthcare Excise Tax is a Tax? [Americans for Tax Reform] OCT 21, 2009 04:27P.M. The Senate health care bill (S. 1796) indeed uses the term “excise tax” to describe the excise tax levied on Americans who do not purchase health insurance. If signed into law, the ta...
1
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
22 October 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Medicare for Everyone? [Cato at Liberty]
Obama’s Fall Offensive [Cato at Liberty]
OCT 21, 2009 04:11P.M.
OCT 21, 2009 02:51P.M.
According to The Hill, House Democrats are considering re-branding their new government-run health insurance program. A “public option” evidently isn’t catchy enough. Now they’re thinking, “Medicare Part E” as in, Medicare for Everyone.
In today’s Politico Arena, the editors ask:
By all means, model a new government program after Medicare, which:
My response:
White House Strategy: Will Obama’s effort to undermine critics undermine Obama instead? Is it overdue or overdone?
• Drags down the quality of care for all patients, both publicly and privately insured
Obama is losing it. His increasing moves to marginalize his critics, richly detailed this morning at Politico, mark him as an amateur. America is not Chicago. Nor are those who oppose his agenda synonymous with the Republican Party. They’re far more numerous than that, and their numbers are growing.
• Literally kills people by fueling the epidemic of deaths due to medical errors (as many as 100,000 annually) • Is responsible for the fragmented delivery system about which the Left complains
Politics is one thing: “It ain’t beanbag,” Mr. Dooley noted. But scorched-earth politics is something else. It’s over the edge, like Nixon’s enemies list. It has no place in America, except in political backwaters like Chicago. (Personal note: In 1972 my wife and I served as Republican election judges in the first Mayor Daley’s Chicago. On election day, when we walked into the Hyde Park polling station at 5:30 a.m., the three Democratic judges looked at us in astonishment: “Are you real Republicans?” How else are you going to control the election?! Hamid Karzai has nothing on Chicago.)
• Has required one tax increase every four years, still has an unfunded liability approaching $90 trillion, and will therefore be the driving force behind income-tax rates essentially doubling by mid-century • Has been expanded well beyond its original mission • Didn’t save a single life in (at least) its first 10 years of operation • Coerces people to choose it over private insurance
As a practical matter, in our two-party system the Republican Party is the organizational antidote to this kind of abuse. But as the Wall Street Journal editorializes this morning, the party’s going to have to get its act together before that happens. It’s claim to be a party of principle has been seriously undermined in recent years by Republican officials at all levels of government. That leaves it to private individuals and organizations to call Congress and the administration on what they’re up to. And that’s why we too are in Obama’s cross-hairs. It won’t work — unless we let it happen. Thank you, Politico, for drawing these sad facts
• Restricts enrollees’ freedom to spend their own money on medical care • Is easily (and persuasively) parodied as a tool of the devil Pleeeeease don’t throw me into that briar patch.
together in one place.
2
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
22 October 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Too Big to Fail Redux [Cato at Liberty]
Which Tax Hikes in Senate Health Bill Violate Obama’s Tax Promise? [Americans for Tax Reform]
OCT 21, 2009 02:19P.M.
OCT 21, 2009 01:56P.M. Over and over again, President Obama has promised not to raise “any form” of taxes on families making less than $250,000 per year. Yet, the U.S. Senate is getting ready to consider a ...
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
How Cap and Tax will Hurt Washington [Americans for Tax Reform]
Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has shocked the staid world of British banking by raising the possibility of breaking up the UKs big banks. Mr. King is no socialist, but a worried banking regulator. He is worried about “the sheer creative imagination of of the financial sector to think up new ways of taking risk.”
OCT 21, 2009 01:27P.M. In our continuing, daily, state by state, look at the financial impact of the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Tax Bill, we will show you the projected losses in Gross State Product, Personal Income, and N...
Around the world, regulators and finance ministers are hoping that banks will grow their way out of their current mess. To do so, however, banks will in fact need to seek new ways of taking on risk. It is called going for broke: the upside goes to stockholders and managers, and the downside to taxpayers. Mr. King knows that it is a “delusion” that regulators can control bank risk-taking.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
John Stossel On The Minimum Wage [Americans for Tax Reform]
Whether one agrees with his solution, at least he recognizes the problem. Would that were true of Treasury and Fed officials in the United States.
OCT 21, 2009 01:14P.M. Watch & pass onto everyone you know. (Via Cafe Hayek)...
3
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
22 October 2009
inevitably surrounds the office by, for example, walking his inaugural parade route (Jefferson) or buttering his own english muffins (Jerry Ford).
Freedom for Vietnam’s Bloggers [Cato at Liberty]
But it seems to me that doing a commercial for George Lopez’s lousy sitcom takes it a bit too far:
OCT 21, 2009 12:57P.M. Today the House of Representatives is debating H. Res. 672, which would call on the government of Vietnam to release imprisoned bloggers and respect Internet freedom.
(When I saw this on TV recently, I was sure it was some kind of Forrest Gump cinemagic. Not so.) More to the point, can the president give us an occasional break from his relentless omnipresence? Apparently not.
Here is an article or two about what is happening with Vietnamese bloggers.
Six months into his presidency, the Politico reported, Obama had already “uttered more than half a million words in public.” In one whirlwind week last month, the president made his third appearance on “60 Minutes,” gave a major speech on the financial crisis the next day, and made a record five talk-show appearances the following Sunday. And on the eighth day, He did Letterman.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Our Inescapable President [Cato at Liberty] OCT 21, 2009 12:35P.M.
My suspicion is that as his popularity continues to drop, Obama is going to discover that there are diminishing returns to presidential media appearances, and that he might do better by letting the country forget
I’m late to the pile-on because I’m a bad American, and I don’t watch enough football, but not quite two weeks ago, President Obama managed to politicize what for many is a hallowed Monday night ritual.
about him for a while. But will he be able to restrain himself?
In the New York Post, the paper of record for those of us who grew up in one of the only red counties on the Jersey Shore, Kyle Smith notes that Obama’s ostensible purpose for inserting himself into Monday Night Football was to proclaim Hispanic Heritage Month, but the president put this in as well:
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
‘Reefer Sanity’ [‘Cato at Liberty] OCT 21, 2009 12:19P.M.
Our nation faces extraordinary challenges right now, and our ability to tackle them will depend on our willingness to recognize that we’re all in this together, that we each have an obligation to give back to our communities, and we all have a stake in the future of this country.
Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post: Arguments for and against decriminalization of some or all drugs are familiar by now. Distilled to the basics, the drug war has empowered criminals while criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens and wasted billions that could have been better spent on education and rehabilitation.
Generic enough, perhaps, unless you’re oblivious to the political backdrop of the president and his party pushing desperately to pass national health care.
By ever-greater numbers, Americans support decriminalizing at least marijuana, which millions admit to having used, including a couple of presidents and a Supreme Court justice. A recent Gallup poll found that 44 percent of Americans favor legalization for any purpose, not just medical, up from 31 percent in 2000.
Smith is rightfully exasperated by the perpetual campaign mode and Obama’s omnipresence in every broadcast medium. But–not that it’s a competition–I’d had more than my fill of this sort of thing eight months ago, a month into Obama’s presidency: When there’s no escape from our national talk-show hostwhen he appears constantly above every gym treadmill-is it any wonder that we typically want his show cancelled just a few seasons in? Is it any wonder we get sick of him?
Read the whole thing. For more Cato work, go here.
You can make too much of the notion of presidential “dignity.” It’s good when the federal chief executive officer fights against the royal aura that
4
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
22 October 2009
raiders would know that they are more free to cut a deadly swath through an innocent population.
Wednesday’s Daily News [The Club for Growth]
It was counterattack by civilians that prevented a fourth plane from being used as a guided bomb on September 11, 2001. Disarming the law-
OCT 21, 2009 12:06P.M.
abiding citizen is contrary to the lesson of that day.
Larry Kudlow says Bernanke is playing with fire. Cato’s Dan Griswold points out that Bernanke criticized the trade deficit, but not trade (it’s all in the wording!).
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Universal Coverage Means ‘Willing to Let You Die Sooner’ [Cato at Liberty‘Willing to Let You Die Sooner’]
House Democrats want Medicare Part E - Medicare for Everyone. The American public is experiencing cognitive dissonance on health care, says Cato’s Michael Tanner. The “doc fix” is a pricey bribery even by Washington standards, says IBD’s editorial board.
OCT 21, 2009 11:24A.M.
A hiring tax credit will prolong the recession says UCLA economist Lee Ohanian.
I cannot disagree with Uwe Reinhardt’s response to my previous post at National Journal’s Health Care Experts blog. But his response bears clarification and emphasis.
Mark Perry points to a fun interactive map that shows job gains and losses.
Improving “population health” generally means “helping people live longer.”
FL-Sen: Rubio is catching up to Crist. To paraphrase, Reinhardt then writes: NY-23: The WSJ had an editorial, “The GOP’s New York Fiasco.” If helping people live longer were our objective in health reform, we could do better than universal coverage. But health reform is not (solely or primarily) about helping people live longer. It is (also or primarily) about other things, like relieving the anxiety of the uninsured.
NY-23: Scozzafava has changed her mind. The reporter never yelled at her.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
I applaud Reinhardt for acknowledging a reality that most advocates of universal coverage avoid: that universal coverage is not solely or primarily about improving health.
Gun Control Masquerading as Counterterrorism [Cato at Liberty]
Will Reinhardt go further and acknowledge that, since universal coverage is largely about some other X-factor(s), that necessarily means that advocates of universal coverage are willing to let some people die sooner in order to serve that X-factor?
OCT 21, 2009 11:38A.M. I was unimpressed with the security arguments made by the chairman and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee in a letter to appropriators the other week. Citing the “commando-style” terrorist raid on a train station in Mumbai last year, the letter objected to language in the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act that would require Amtrak to allow firearms in checked luggage.
(Cross-posted at National Journal’s Health Care Experts blog.)
But the risk of a commando-style raid does not support—in fact it undermines—the authors’ argument that weapons should be banned on passenger trains. With law-abiding citizens fully disarmed, any terrorist
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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
22 October 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
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Special Kudlow Report Tonight [Larry Kudlow’s Money Politic$]
Parsing Pelosi: House Health Takeover Would Cost around $2.25 Trillion [Cato at Liberty]
OCT 21, 2009 10:52A.M.
OCT 21, 2009 10:32A.M. Just like the Senate Finance Committee’s government takeover, the House of Representatives’ government takeover hides more than half of its cost by pushing those costs off the government’s budget and onto the private sector. So when Speaker Pelosi says the House bill would cost under $900 billion, what she actually means is that it would cost around $2.25 trillion.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Nice Insurance Company. Shame If Anything Were to Happen to It. [Cato at Liberty]
SUMMIT TO RESCUE KING DOLLAR Please join us live from Washington this evening as our panel discusses and debates the decline of the dollar.
OCT 21, 2009 10:30A.M.
Our guests include:
Just days after the health-insurance lobby released a report criticizing the Senate Finance Committee’s health care overhaul (for not expanding government enough!), Democrats and President Barack Obama lashed out at health insurers, threatening to revoke what the Government Accountability Office calls the insurers’ “very limited exemption from the federal antitrust laws.”
*Lawrence Lindsay, former director of the National Economic Council; President and Chief Executive Officer of The Lindsey Group *Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) *Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) *Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) *Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Democrats say they’re motivated by the need to increase competition in health insurance markets. Right.
*Henry Cisneros, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary
According to Business Week:
THE KUDLOW REPORT. 7PM ET. CNBC
David Hyman, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Illinois College of Law and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute…considers it unlikely that repeal would fundamentally change the nature of the market. While it might increase competition in some markets, he says, it could actually decrease it in others, such as those where small insurers survive because they have access to larger providers’ data. Changes to the act could therefore hurt smaller companies more than larger ones, he says. Because the act doesn’t outlaw the existence of a dominant provider but simply prohibits collusion, says Hyman, a repeal would fall short of breaking up existing market monopolies
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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]
that are blamed for artificially inflating prices. The current move against [the] McCarran-Ferguson [Act], he says, “has more to do with the politics of pushing back against the insurance industry’s opposition to health reform than it does with increasing competition in health-insurance markets.”
22 October 2009
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
What Caused the Crisis? [Cato at Liberty] OCT 21, 2009 09:25A.M.
Combined with what The New York Times described as the Obama administration’s “ham-handed” attempt to censor insurers who communicated with seniors about the effects of the president’s health plan — the Times editorialized: “the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had to stretch facts to the breaking point to make a weak case that the insurers were doing anything improper” — it’s hard to argue that this is anything but Democrats threatening to use the power of the state to punish dissidents.
Last night National Government Radio promoted a documentary on National Government TV about the financial crisis of 2008, which concludes that the problem was . . . not enough government. If the “Frontline” episode mentioned any of the ways that government created the crisis — cheap money from the central bank, tax laws that encourage debt over equity, government regulation that pressured lenders to issue mortgages to borrowers who wouldn’t be able to pay them back — NPR didn’t mention it.
When Republicans were in power, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now that Democrats are in power, obedience is the highest
For information on those causes, take a look at this paper by Lawrence H. White or get the new book Financial Fiasco by Johan Norberg, which Amity Shlaes called “a masterwork in miniature.” Available in hardcover or immediately as an e-book. Or on Kindle!
form of patriotism.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS And for a warning about the dangers lurking in Fannie Mae and Freddie
An Interview with Governor Tim Pawlenty [Larry Kudlow’s Money Politic$]
Mac, see this 2004 paper by Lawrence J. White.
OCT 21, 2009 09:39A.M. Is the dollar’s demise a sign of global declinism for America? Will this decline blow up the bull market economic recovery? Joining me to discuss last night was distinguished Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty. Mr. Pawlenty also happens to be a leading GOP presidential contender for 2012.
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