I learned the truth of Voltaire’s dictum, that the “necessity of saying something, the perplexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of being witty, are three circumstances which alone are capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous.”
Obamacare has never been popular and as time passes it has become even less so. The best course now is a moratorium: Implementation of Obamacare should be delayed.
With Obamacare’s main provisions only a few months from full implementation, the law is now moving through the economy like a statutory disruptor beam. It’s hard to see how this thing will ever be workable, or affordable.
The National Committee for Pay Equity, citing a Census Bureau number, says earnings for women are “statistically unchanged,” with women receiving only 77 percent of men’s earnings. What many people don’t know is that this is a cherry-picked number and the idea that it’s an accurate measure of discrimination is grossly misleading.
The media may be biased — as press critic Howard Kurtz noted at CNN, “there is little question that they have a social and cultural outlook that leans to the left” — but reporters love a winner and detest a loser.
At any given moment, there are millions of people and businesses “on the margin,” as economists say. In plain terms, they’re barely getting by. Here’s how the president’s address last week might have been viewed by one of them.
The Kansas Constitution says the state must make “suitable provision for finance” of public schools. Whatever committee came up with that may have seen the word as unthreatening. But what does it mean? What’s suitable for one person may be unsuitable for another.
Republican support for immigration reform won’t guarantee more Hispanic votes, but outright resistance would harden attitudes among such voters for years. But Republicans shouldn’t back reform solely for political reasons. They should support it because it’s solidly in the national interest.
President Obama’s inaugural speech struck the notes expected on such occasions. He evoked our founding documents. He used words like “timeless” and “enduring,” and as with most Obama speeches, it was a fine performance. Yet after four years you know this president doesn’t always mean what he says.
If the temperature isn’t rising globally then “climate change” is pretty much anything bad that happens. The Earth may well start warming again and human activity may be the cause, but there are signs that many people have lost patience with the greens’ insistent predictions of doom.
President Barack Obama fights every attempt to cut non-defense spending and on entitlement reform. He’s offered nothing substantial. If this doesn’t change, we’ll look back on the Obama years as a time not only of economic stagnation but a period when our worst problems were simply allowed to fester.
One of the major points of contentions in the aftermath of the housing debacle was whether the Community Reinvestment Act — an anti-redlining law — contributed to the disaster. Defenders of the law insisted it did not, but it’s harder for backers to support that conclusion now, after the release of a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Part of any solution to tragedies such as the one in Newtown, Conn., involves politics and policy, especially a reassessment of how we care for the mentally ill. But more broadly, it also has to do with social capital, and I don’t know how you fix that solely with politics.
If we’re fretting about something we can see and debate, such as the looming “fiscal cliff,” that could be a good sign. So maybe it’s time to attempt an optimistic column. The immediate future may look awful, but when you look past that you find reminders of America’s enduring strengths.
Republicans are talking about caving on higher rates and fighting for serious entitlement reform, or caving now and fighting over spending in the next debt-ceiling crisis, due early next year. It’s worth considering that the fiscal picture might be a lot healthier today had Barack Obama recognized his moment — his historic opportunity — when he saw it.
If Barack Obama gets his way and carves the loopholes out of the tax code and raise the rates, we could face four more years of economic anemia — which means we may someday look back on the Obama years as the Japanese look back on their “lost decade.”
Let’s recognize that there aren’t any environmentally cost-free ways to produce energy. And while the shale revolution entails risk, the risks must be balanced against its considerable benefits. If the trend holds, a lot more Americans will have jobs, the nation will become an energy superpower and the Middle East will drop several notches on Washington’s priority list.
Last week, I kept thinking of those images you see after tornadoes hit towns — homes reduced to kindling, survivors picking through wreckage. That’s pretty much how it felt Wednesday morning. I believed the predictions that Mitt Romney would win big. The autopsies will go on for some time, but what looms large for me is the issue of trust.
The nation’s problems are so deep that even with the best of luck, a Mitt Romney administration isn’t likely to offer profound change and transformation. But that’s not what’s needed. What’s needed is to turn the ship, so that the problems we face stop festering or getting worse and start improving.
The striking thing about this campaign is that the guy who looks and behaves like the challenger is the incumbent — President Barack Obama.
Could I accept the re-election of President Barack Obama? When this idea was suggested, what popped into my head was a scene from “Doctor Zhivago” — the one with the protagonist slogging through a snowstorm toward a bleak horizon.
The tougher-than-thou poses on China have become routine in presidential campaigns, but these threats, if carried out, could hit American consumers with higher prices and spark damaging tit-for-tat responses from Beijing.
Soon after the Supreme Court upheld the bulk of Obamacare, the Congressional Budget Office came out with a new estimate for its cost. No surprise: As before, CBO said it would reduce, not raise, the federal deficit. Too bad it’s a fairy tale. With the election only weeks away, the point must be emphasized: This law is a fiscal calamity.
The credibility boost that Mitt Romney gave himself in the first presidential debate will help him sell his Medicare plan, a critical part of his platform. But he has a long way to go. Romney has to convince voters that he’s proposing a reasonable modernization of a program that otherwise will crash of its own weight.
When first lady Michelle Obama began her anti-obesity campaign, I thought, Yeah, seems like a good idea. Get the kids outside and by all means, limit their intake of sugar water, er, soda. But worrisome signs were there from the beginning.
