Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Why State Medicaid Expansion Hurts Everyone
We've heard a lot about how Obamacare's Medicaid expansion will be costly to states in the long run. Yet this hasn't stopped some governors, who know that taking more money from the federal government makes their budgets look good (in the short term), while making themselves appear compassionate. But we haven't heard enough about how expanding Medicaid will cause permanent damage to America, our health care system and our citizens. For decades, government plans such as Medicare and Medicaid have typically paid doctors and hospitals less than private plans, and even less than the actual costs of the services in some cases. Health care providers covered their losses by raising prices to patients with private insurance.
Netanyahoo! Israeli PM Storms Back in Landslide
President Obama wasn't running against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- but it certainly felt like it at times. And while it may have been Isaac Herzog who went down in defeat, it is President Obama who was left looking like the loser. In a stunning eleventh-hour push, the four-time Prime Minister rocketed to a victory that seemed improbable just a week before. Few could have predicted (and based on the polling, few did) the surge of Israel's long-time leader, who, when all was said and done, picked up a five-seat advantage in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) for his Likud party. With the weight of the world literally on his shoulders, Netanyahu is still the person the Israeli people trust to lead in a crisis with Iran and ISIS. Americans got a glimpse of that leadership earlier this month when the Prime Minister came to the United States and showed the resolve we have yet to see from our own President.
Listening to Rand Paul
A couple of months back in our nation's capital Senator Rand Paul spoke at The American Spectator's annual Robert L. Bartley dinner and wowed the crowd. However, at the end of his rousing speech, he assumed a more somber tone as he spoke about the plight of America's poor, particularly the poor who commit petty crime. He expanded his remarks to include those who commit petty crime in general and find themselves committed to the unwelcoming doors of the American prison system from which they emerge often only infrequently. Our American prison system turns out to be a place with little to offer, save for an advanced degree in criminality. If one were intent on entering a life of crime, one might begin in an American prison. Senator Paul's point was that something should be done about criminalizing petty crime and handing down onerous sentences when other forms of punishment are available. Stealing a loaf of bread or selling a small quantity of marijuana or some other controlled substance ought not to land a young person in jail, putting him on the road to more serious and more violent crimes. It ought not to condemn the young person to a life spent in and out of the criminal justice system when other options are available.
Sanctimony and Grandstanding Are More Fun Than Free Speech
After police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown last summer in Ferguson, Missouri, the media erupted in terror at the prospect of young black men being gunned down by over-excitable white cops. The New York Times' Charles Blow wrote that the "central issue" of Ferguson was that an "officer shot an unarmed teenager who witnesses claim had raised his hands in surrender when at least some of the shots were fired, which the family and its attorneys called 'a brutal assassination of his person in broad daylight.'" Over at Salon, Brittney Cooper said the Brown shooting proved that black people "are prey" -- a charge so moronic even a Starbucks barista wouldn't discuss it with you.
How Pizza Became a Growth Stock
Here's a question that has been puzzling Patrick Doyle, the CEO of Domino's, for months, as he puts it: "How do we list the calorie content of our pizzas on a menu when we have 34 million different variations of pizza?" The new menu labeling law, a creation of the Affordable Care Act, could require his company to do just that. It's a textbook case of a mindless and arcane regulation, of Washington bureaucrats imposing on businesses costs that will have no effect on public health. "We've been voluntarily doing menu labeling for over a decade," Mr. Doyle says. "We even have an online calorie calculator we call the 'Calo-Meter' for every possible pizza order, and it tells customers what happens if they substitute, say, sausage for mushrooms, because we strive to be very nutrition-conscious."
Back to Firing Squads? Thank Death-Penalty Foes
For a nation that almost never puts murderers to death -- there were 14,196 homicides in 2013, but only 39 executions -- Americans spend an awful lot of time debating whether and how to do it. The Utah legislature last week passed a bill reinstating the firing squad to execute death row inmates, as a back-up in case lethal-injection drugs aren't available. It was in Utah five years ago that the last death by firing squad in the United States took place, when Ronnie Lee Gardner paid with his life for the courthouse murder of attorney Michael Burdell in 1985. Utah's governor hasn't said yet if he will sign the bill into law -- but his isn't the only state grappling with the question of how capital punishment should be carried out.
Think of the Children!
"What about the children?" Politicians of both parties often stoop to using our children as props whenever they're fighting for a new law or pet government program. They argue we need to cut the $18 trillion debt, regulate the Internet or pay teachers more "for our children." "Think of the children" is almost always an emotional and irrational appeal made in desperation by those who don't have a reasonable or legitimate argument. Invoking "the children" is pure BS. It's obvious political BS. But it's BS that's been used for a long time by Democrats and Republicans.
Keystone Kops Government
What has gone wrong with the U.S. government in the past month? Just about everything, from the fundamental to the ridiculous. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United States to warn Congress about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. He spoke without the invitation of an irritated President Obama, who claimed that he did not even watch the address on television. Obama declined to even meet with the Israeli prime minister, announcing that it would have been improper for him to have such a meeting so close to Netanyahu's re-election bid.
Gen. Powell, Who are the GOP's 'Dark Veins'?
The Republican Party, says former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, suffers from a "dark vein of intolerance." We salute Powell's service. He is a heavily decorated vet who served two tours of duty in Vietnam when things were hot and heavy over there. But General, care to name names? Who are these "intolerant" Republicans? Why engage in accusation by innuendo? By all means, name them, shame them -- make them famous. In the meantime, while Powell composes his list, we compile some questions to some possible left-leaning "dark veins of intolerance": What color was Rep. Maxine Waters', D-Calif., "vein" when she said, "The tea party can go straight to hell"?
Kasich Waits in the Wings
Ideas fly from Gov. John Kasich like sparks from a flint. While explaining his prison reforms, he interrupts himself midsentence -- his sentences, like some E. E. Cummings poems, are unpunctuated -- to praise a Delaware church that buys prom dresses for low-income high school girls. His spirit would add spice and his policies would add substance to the Republican presidential contest. But only if Jeb Bush fails to gain momentum commensurate with his fundraising. In 1999, then-Rep. Kasich, chairman of the Budget Committee, tried to become the first person since Ohioan James Garfield to go directly from the House to the White House. Kasich's five-month campaign for the Republican presidential nomination encountered the steamroller of the Bush family's fundraising, an experience he is reluctant to repeat against George W. Bush's brother.
Sunshine Week Should Turn Up the Heat
This week is "Sunshine Week," a nonprofit, nonpartisan national initiative launched by the American Society of News Editors to "promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information." What better time to focus on a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that allows the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to designate companies it deems "too big to fail" as "systematically important financial institutions" (SIFIs) subject to enhanced supervision and regulation by the Federal Reserve. It has done so with MetLife, the largest life insurance company in the U.S. MetLife rejects the SIFI designation, maintaining that it is a pillar of stability that, in the words of a source familiar with the controversy, "remained strong even during the 2008-09 financial meltdown -- during which time it neither requested nor received any bailout money."
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Netanyahu Emerges Victorious
The Likud party overcomes the leftist opposition, the media -- and the Obama administration.
GOP: Our Budget 'Increases Spending at a More Manageable Rate'
Just in case you were worried about it, the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee reassured Americans in its budget plan released this week that congressional Republicans are committed to increasing federal spending. They will do so, their plan says, in a more responsible manner than envisioned by President Obama. But it is their intention to prudently perfect welfare-state programs, which, in this budget, they discuss with kind and careful rhetoric. Yes, they will repeal Obamacare. But Medicaid and food stamps they will "reform."
The Big, Fat 'American Worker Recruitment First' Lie of H-1B
You've heard it from Big Government lobbyists. You've heard it from Big Business lackeys in both political parties. And you've heard it from journalists, pundits and think-tankers ad nauseam: The H-1B foreign guest worker program, they claim, requires American employers to first show that they searched for and tried to recruit American workers before tapping an ever-growing government-rigged pipeline of cheap foreign workers. The foot soldiers of the open-borders brigade are lying, deluded, ignorant or bought-off.
Are Networks Going to Bury Emailgate?
On March 10, eight days after The New York Times began the scandal over her private email server, Hillary Clinton assembled the press at the United Nations in New York to offer a typically legalistic and crabby press conference lasting only 21 minutes. The first-blush reaction from the pundits? That wasn't good enough. She can't expect the story to go away just from that mess. But within 48 hours, that's exactly what began to happen, with the networks suddenly finding other shiny news objects to explore. So here's the question that needs to be asked: With the networks dumping investigators Lisa Myers, Michael Isikoff and Sharyl Attkisson, is there anyone on broadcast television interested in an investigation of Hillary's decidedly opaque email practices?
The Charmless Hillary Juggernaut
Hillary Clinton is not a pleasant human being, by all available evidence. She does not convince; she browbeats. She does not discuss; she lectures. Her laugh issues mechanically from her mouth, resonating with a close-but-not-quite verisimilitude that occupies the space known as the uncanny valley. If anyone were to kidnap Hillary Clinton and replace her with a robot of Hillary Clinton, it would take a short circuit for America to realize it. Her campaign slogan should be: "Remarkably Lifelike!" All of which makes her undeclared candidacy so much more awkward than that of others. Nobody quite knows why Hillary is running, other than that she feels she is owed the presidency based on her rough life growing up rich in Chicago, attending Wellesley and Yale Law before settling down as first lady of Arkansas and then first lady of the United States and then senator and secretary of state. Even Hillary doesn't seem to know. The runup to her campaign has been a prolonged shrug. Which is why she is now trotting out the children.
Chicago Fray
Rahm Emanuel, current mayor of my old hometown, Chicago, is not a gentle soul. But he's smarter than his big-spending predecessor, Richard M. Daley, and the union pawn, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who becomes the new mayor if he beats Emanuel in a run-off election April 7. Emanuel was the tough Obama chief of staff who reportedly stabbed a table with a steak knife as he listed political enemies. He relishes conflict and famously said that in politics, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste." That comment scared libertarians and conservatives, who know that government usually uses crises as excuses to increase its power. But here's the surprise: Emanuel has been in crisis mode for four years now, and sometimes he made the right decisions as a result.
The Squeal of the War Hogs
Why Do Lindsey Graham and John McCain Think Half a Trillion Dollars Is Not Enough to Defend the Country?
The Evils of Neutrality
Recently, the FCC passed what is basically a nullification of the 1st Amendment. What's more, they passed it along party lines, three Democrats out-voting two Republicans. Also, they did it secretly, which is pretty much the way that everything is done under Obama. Naturally, they misnamed it Net Neutrality just as they did with the Affordable Care Act. Neutrality is the go-to word for villains because it sounds fair and objective. But keep in mind that during WWII, it was Switzerland that claimed neutrality. That enabled it to avoid invasion while, at the same time, profit from the confiscation of money and art treasures by the Nazis. If I'd known nothing else about the ruling, I would have known which side I favored once I received an email from the Writers Guild of America cheering the decision. My Guild claims that writers will profit from having the feds overseeing the internet, but, then, the WGA, which is to the left of Juan Williams, champions everything that Obama says and does. What confounds me is that those idiots who view an all-powerful federal government as a force for good never seem to consider the possible consequences of a Republican president calling the shots.