Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Rewarding States for ACA Exchange Failures?
If you are tired of reading columns about Affordable Care Act failures, don't read any further. If you're not, please meet yet another example of how the shockingly incompetent government has wasted so much of our money in developing and administering services that are taken for granted in the private market — namely, the ACA exchanges. The federal government spent an eye-popping $2.1 billion on 60 different contractors to build the HealthCare.gov boondoggle, and President Barack Obama's proposed budget calls for another $535 million to operate the exchange in fiscal 2017.
How to Reform Institutions
In the film "Girl, Interrupted," the character played by Winona Ryder is watching TV in a psychiatric hospital. There is a news report about a demonstration and the narrator says: "We live in troubled times. The institutions we once trusted no longer seem reliable." As I begin the laborious process of doing my income taxes, I am again reminded — thanks to withholding and other payments I must make to the government — that I am paying for so many things that aren't working. The D.C. that follows Washington could easily stand for "dysfunctional city."
Log Cabin Candidates
Which presidential candidate was born the poorest? Whose log cabin birthplace was the most ramshackle? Hillary and Bill Clinton are worth well over $100 million, largely due to years of leveraging their government service to pull in astronomical speaking and consulting fees from Wall Street, foreign investors and big banks. Yet Hillary Clinton, a graduate of elite Wellesley College and Yale Law School, often adopts a poor man's drawl and Southern slang before particular audiences. She has claimed that "all my grandparents" were immigrants. Not true. Only one grandfather immigrated to the United States, from Britain. Hillary herself grew up in an affluent suburb of Chicago, in a conservative upper-class household.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
What Is the Fair Share of Taxes?
Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, along with President Obama, say they want high-income earners, otherwise known as the rich, to pay their fair share of income taxes. None of these people, as well as the uninformed in the media and our campus intellectual elites, will say precisely what is the "fair share" of taxes. That is because they would look ignorant and silly, so they stick with simply saying that the rich should pay more. Let's you and I take a peek at who pays what in federal income taxes.
For Trump Supporters, a Reckoning Is at Hand
Is Joe Scarborough having his Colonel Nicholson moment? That's what I wondered Monday morning as I watched the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" insist that Donald Trump's inability and unwillingness to simply and plainly denounce the Ku Klux Klan in a Sunday CNN interview was "disqualifying." For those who might not have seen "The Bridge on the River Kwai," it's partly the story of British Lt. Col. Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness. Nicholson, a prisoner of war held by the Japanese, convinces himself that he and his men should help his captors build a strategically invaluable bridge over the Kwai River. Nicholson thinks that if he shows the Japanese what good British discipline is all about, he will win some kind of moral victory. Of course, if they finish the railway bridge, the Japanese military will win an actual victory.
When Conservatives Love Overregulation
Conservatives usually are not fans of arbitrary, heavy-handed, anti-competitive, counterproductive regulations. But as a case the Supreme Court will hear Wednesday shows, they make an exception for abortion. That's because these regulations, ostensibly aimed at making abortion safer, are actually aimed at making abortion rare. While suppressing economic activity is an unwanted side effect of the regulations conservatives tend to criticize, it is the whole point of the Texas law they are defending.
Regulating the Future
Government pretends it's the cause of progress. Then it strangles innovation. We know government understands that new technologies are important. The military invests in robots and traffic cops use radar guns. But when the rest of us use robots or fly drones, government gets eager to put rules in place before things get "out of control." When it's hard to innovate in the U.S., innovation happens elsewhere. The Japanese already offer largely automated hotels. At the Henn-na (or "Weird") Hotel, the front desk clerk is a robot dinosaur — popular with the kids. Another robot stores your luggage, and another takes you to your room.
Trump Not a Good Bet for American Greatness
Hillary Clinton is now setting a campaign theme that should provide a golden opportunity for Republicans, if Republicans play their cards right. "We don't need to make America great. America has never stopped being great," says Clinton. But this doesn't reflect how most Americans now feel. The percentage saying they are satisfied with how things are going in the country has averaged less than 30 percent since 2007, according to Gallup.
A Fourth Party?
If you thought this election season could not get any crazier, think again. There are persistent rumors in Washington about a potential third and even a fourth party candidacy. Let me explain. Should Clinton and Trump win their nominations, Michael Bloomberg is expected to jump into the race as an independent candidate. But lately, there have been credible reports that a more traditional conservative may also mount an independent general election campaign in order to appeal to center-right voters turned off by Donald Trump.
The 2016 GOP Debate Debacle
When the dust settles on this wild and wacky GOP primary season, there will be at least one clear Biggest Loser: the Republican National Committee. After 2012, when liberal journalists routinely hijacked the party's 20 televised debates while cashing in on ratings and advertising revenue, the RNC resolved to change narrative-surrendering business as usual. There would be no more cable TV anchors belligerently taking President Obama's side while arguing with the GOP nominee (as Candy Crowley infamously did with Mitt Romney over Benghazi).
The Media Hypocrisy About Trump
For many years now, the liberal media have lamented that our democracy is badly compromised by a rapacious band of billionaires manipulating government policy and elections and frustrating the will of the people. Just four years ago, the networks became a megaphone for the Occupy Wall Street argument that the "99 percent" were tired of being dominated by the "1 percent." So when Donald Trump, America's best-known brand name for rapacious billionaire, decided to run for president, one might have expected these Occupier sympathizers would clearly wonder if his entire campaign was a grand conspiracy by the so-called "ruling class." What we've seen is entirely the opposite.
Erring on the Genocide
When voters headed to the polls Tuesday, they weren't just deciding Americans' fate — but the fate of hundreds of thousands of Christians around the world. As hostile as this administration has been to believers in the U.S., its overseas legacy is worse. Abandoned, displaced, and penniless, the Christians lucky enough to survive ISIS's rampage have fled to other countries, living in refugee camps where there is just as much uncertainty. Even there, jihadists disguised as refugees are "killing inside the camps, and they're buying and selling ladies and even girls," aid workers are reporting.
Will Obama and Kerry Declare ISIL Not Guilty of Anti-Christian Genocide?
Will President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry falsely declare that the Islamic State is not guilty of genocide against Christians and other religious minorities in the areas it controls? If so, they will show contempt for the truth.
The Leftist Fascists Take Over College Campuses
Last Thursday, all hell broke loose at California State University Los Angeles. Hundreds of students gathered to chant slogans, block entrances and exits to the student union auditorium, rough up those who wished to enter, pull the fire alarm, and trap other students inside that auditorium under threat of violence. Police officers stood aside and allowed that mob to violate basic safety protocols, reportedly at the behest of the school administration. Why? Because I was coming to speak.
Why This Reagan Conservative Voted for Bernie
In a super-blue state like Massachusetts, Super Tuesday was the Election Day that mattered. The outcome in November is a foregone conclusion: The Democratic presidential nominee will win the state by a landslide. So Tuesday's primary election was the only chance Bay State voters had to cast a ballot that might have an impact. I cast mine for Bernie Sanders.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Vote for the Crook, It's Important
Like many Americans, I learned my first real civics lesson watching my mother vote. Unlike many, my first lesson was fairly depressing. I grew up in southern Louisiana, and in the 1991 gubernatorial election David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, was running against Edwin Edwards, a three-time former governor who had been charged with bribery and was later convicted of 17 counts relating to extortion and racketeering. Edwards was heavily disliked because of his alleged crimes and because he raised taxes sharply as state revenue fell when the oil industry collapsed. Despite this, many in Louisiana were terrified of what might happen if Duke won the election, and signs and bumper stickers sprang up all over the state with one simple message: "Vote for the Crook. It's Important." On Election Day I watched as my mother dutifully went to the polls, voted for every other office, and then tried to vote for governor. She could not. She couldn't vote for Duke of course. But she also could not overcome her distaste of Edwards.
Bible Removed From POW/MIA Display Inside VA Clinic
A Bible and Bible verse were removed from a POW/MIA display inside an Ohio Veterans Affairs clinic after the notorious Military Religious Freedom Foundation complained. The religious artifacts were part of a "Missing Man Table" recently erected by volunteers at an outpatient clinic in Akron. MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein alleged the inclusion of the Bible was a violation of the U.S. Constitution. He said he intervened at the request of nearly a dozen, mostly Christian, military veterans who utilize the clinic.
Welcome to Europe
Donald Trump will never be mistaken for a cosmopolitan, but he will bring a distinctively European flavor to the 2016 presidential election, should he win the Republican nomination. As in continental Europe, the two parties in a Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton race would accept the basic parameters of the welfare state, and the debate about the size of government — so central to American politics for decades — would fade to the background.
Sewer Politics
I was going to write about how the Republican presidential campaign has become gutter politics, but given Donald Trump's horrid statements, the gutter would be a step up, because things have descended into the sewer. Never in modern times has there been a presidential candidate who has hurled more personal insults and hurtful accusations at his fellow candidates and others who disagree with him. It should embarrass a normal person, but Trump appears beyond embarrassment.