For the last few weeks all we’ve heard from the President is that if we don’t pass his two gargantuan spending bills, our economy could decline to a point from which it would never recover. Now,
The president boldly declared that the national crisis is “not as bad as we think”
Uh, which is it? He pushed through a trillion dollars of largely wasteful and unnecessary spending because disaster was impending. If things aren’t really that bad, then what, exactly, was the motive for these massive bills? (Hint: many of us believe it begins with “S” and ends with “ocialism” which begins with your huge—no, massive—expansion of government.)
At Dobson High School in Mesa (just a few miles from my home) Obama told the crowd about his plan to help borrowers in mortgage crises:
The housing market collapse helped trigger the broader economic decline, the president argued, and so acting “boldly and swiftly” to arrest a wave of foreclosures would have positive effects across the economy and benefit every American.
At this point, over 90% of homeowners are demonstrating personal responsibility, making their payments regardless of whether their mortgages are upside-down. Many, like myself, chose not to upgrade to a newer, bigger home when the market was booming. How, exactly, does it help us to take our money and send it to people who made irresponsible decisions? The only thing it does, in fact, is encourage more bad decisions as people begin to expect the government to bail them out when they screw up. Oh, and punish those of us who are fiscally responsible.
Folks in rural Alaska are going through some seriously hard times. Due to global warming, their heating bills are approaching $1500/month, leaving little left over for basics…like food. Tip for these folks: move south where it’s warmer and we have food. Seriously. I know you love your native traditions and lifestyle, but you really abandoned those years ago when you adopted the snowmobile. We have plenty to share down here and would welcome you.
Am I really the only one who sees a pattern emerging here? The Dems keep running campaigns against “tax cuts for the rich” but fail to pay their taxes themselves. Guess what, America? You deserve what you voted for. Count me out.
I have to admit it’s a bit hard to feel much sympathy for the United Auto Workers union. They’ve bullied the Big Three for decades, forcing wages, benefits, and pensions up, up, up. Now it’s payback time.
When the UAW exposed the Big Three to insurmountable competitive disadvantages, it cut its own throat.
Yep. Now the UAW is going to have to accept a package that’s comparable to that received by the non-union workers at foreign auto makers’ plants here in the U.S. Domestic makes have already achieved parity in price, and are often cheaper than imports. To remain profitable, they’re going to have to cut costs, which necessarily means less pay for workers.
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It’s not really news that the state of California is flat broke. It’s also not surprising—that’s what happens when you spend more money than you take in. California has some of the most generous social programs in the nation, programs it is increasingly finding it can’t afford. Now reduced-cost and free school lunches are on the block.
“Without quick action by the governor and the Legislature, districts will be forced to make a series of unacceptable choices to dip further into their own bare-bones budgets, serve less nutritious foods and not comply with California’s nationally renowned nutrition standards, or reduce cafeteria staffing,” Supt. Jack O’Connell said in a statement.
I know this will come as a shock to many truly compassionate people, but it’s not the government’s job to feed people, even children. That responsibility falls on parents. According to the Census Bureau (Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005, Current Population Report, P60-231, August 2006, hat tip to The Heritage Foundation) almost two-thirds of America’s poor have cable or satellite TV, a third have cell phones in addition to traditional land lines, and so on. The list of monthly expenditures on what are, in fact luxuries, by the “poor” is quite long. Good grief! My wife and I have never been poor, but we couldn’t justify the cost of a cell phone in our budget until just a couple years ago. But we fed our kids, and so should all parents.
The entitlement mentality is bankrupting California and is pushing the rest of the nation down the same path. It was a renowned Democratic president that once exhorted the American people to ask what we can do for the nation rather than the other way around. It’s a shame we value his popular image more than his words.
This time it’s a chemical tanker. There were, apparently, three security guards onboard, but that was far too small a force to repel the pirates. A NATO helicopter in the area arrived within 15 minutes but was too late to stop the attack.
Someone has the right idea, but it won’t likely be adopted until the cost of paying ransom becomes significantly higher:
The U.S. navy says it is impossible to patrol all 2.5 million miles of dangerous waters. It has called on ship owners to hire private security contractors to protect vulnerable vessels
…after collecting a ransom. Continuing a craven policy that only encourages more piracy.
The California State University system is in a pinch. Due to budget constraints they’re going to cut freshman enrollment by 10% this year. The state simply can’t afford to lay out more money for the system. There is an alternative, though: raise tuition. Currently the state pays about $2.97 billion versus $1.5 billion paid by students. If the average cost of attending a CSU school is $3,800 would raising it by even 50% deny anyone an education? The real problem is that CA residents have come to expect such low rates and rely on the government to provide the bulk of funding. Note to CA residents: your state is broke. It’s time to move away from that nanny state mentality.
A recent survey indicates that almost half of America’s primary care physicians would leave medicine if they had the opportunity. The main reason given was “red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.” Per the same article another survey shows less than 2% of medical students are going into primary care. Insurance payments are going down and Medicare/Medicaid just don’t pay. The solution to this problem is obviously not to increase the involvement of insurance and government—the plan proposed by our next president—but to reduce it.
One step in the right direction would be to have patients pay more (or all) of the fees for primary care and to reduce (or eliminate) the share paid by insurance. A number of benefits would immediately accrue. First, physicians would receive more immediate payment (increased cash flow) and be encouraged to stay in primary care. This is crucial to avoiding a critical crisis in our health care system. They’d have less paperwork to deal with and be far less dependent on prompt payment by insurance or Medicare/Medicaid. Second, with patients responsible for a higher share of the payments they’d become more cost conscious, generating competition and driving down costs. Additionally, insurance premiums would come down as the industry moves toward plans that cover mainly, if not exclusively, major medical (e.g., surgery, chemotherapy) rather than primary care.
The current system doesn’t work. The fix is not to add more of the same (by making insurance available to everyone) but to make a fundamental change toward individual responsibility.