Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Obamacare: An Alarming Checkup
OK, Obamacare. Up on the table. It's time for your annual physical. Three years old, eh? Well, with any luck, you'll leave here with a clean bill of uh-oh. I can see one problem already. Have you seen these tax hikes? Let's see -- five, 10, 15, 18 tax hikes in all. That hardly seems wise, considering the fragile health of the economy, but there they are. There's the tax on individuals who don't purchase health insurance. That will cost $55 billion over the next decade. I also see a 40 percent excise tax on "Cadillac" health plans costing more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. It'll be $111 billion for that between 2018 and 2022. Several smaller ones, such as limiting the amount people can set aside in their flexible spending accounts: $4.5 billion there from 2011 to 2022.
Florida Atlantic University: Another Left-Wing Seminary
Question: What is the difference between Christian seminaries and American universities? Answer: Christian seminaries announce that their purpose is to produce committed Christians. American universities do not admit that their primary purpose is to produce committed leftists. They claim that their purpose is to open students' minds. This month Florida Atlantic University provided yet another example of how universities have become left-wing seminaries. An FAU professor told his students to write "JESUS" (in bold caps) on a piece of paper and then step on it.
The Court and Catastrophe
Sometime in June, the U. S. Supreme Court will define marriage for us: a prospect that helps to define the moral mess we're in as a people. May gays marry gays, or do we, should we, will we stick with the ancient prescription -- one man, one woman? Judges are the ones to tell us? The larger question, maybe, is how in the world did we get to this point? We got sucked into it, I want to suggest. We climbed, culturally speaking, aboard a train that steadily gathered speed. Every turn of the wheel advanced the radical notion that when we want something badly enough and feel deprived for the lack of it, government is under the sacred obligation to provide it.
Unhappy Anniversary
Last week, politicians who helped craft the Affordable Care Act (ACA) celebrated in self-congratulatory style the third anniversary of that monstrosity which will soon extinguish health care as we've known it. The president's promises about the ACA saving money and allowing you to keep your existing health plan are proving false, as many predicted. The Department of Health and Human Services maintains the law will make health care more affordable and accessible. The Wall Street Journal, reminding readers of that claim, reported last week that health insurers are privately warning brokers: "premiums for many individuals and small businesses could increase sharply next year." The 2013 Deloitte Survey of U.S. Physicians, a survey of more than 600 physicians from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, found that "Six in 10 physicians (62 percent) said it is likely many of their colleagues will retire earlier than planned in the next one to three years."
Festival of Denial?
This week, together with about 13 million Jews worldwide (yes, that's all there are), our family will celebrate the Feast of Passover -- perhaps the oldest continuously celebrated religious holiday in the world. Passover is primarily a holiday of the home, not the synagogue. The preparations take days. We sit down to a table adorned with familiar objects: a silver cup for the Prophet Elijah, candle sticks, a lamp shank representing the sacrifice in Temple days, bitter herbs, matzah, parsley, eggs and salt water. We do the traditional "seder" -- its choreographed rituals burnished by centuries of practice. Everything is repeated on the second night, except in Israel, where only one night is observed. The traditional explanation for this repetition (other Jewish holidays are also repeated) is that after the dispersion of the Jews following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 of the Common Era, Jews in the diaspora could not be certain exactly when the holiday dawned in Israel. So they performed the rituals twice, just to be safe.
The Left's Thought Tyranny and the Right's Cowardice
A couple of recent news items illustrate the close-mindedness, aggressiveness and oppressiveness of modern liberalism's thought police. MSNBC's Toure issued a scathing commentary against the GOP for considering outreach efforts toward African-Americans. Toure said: "Such is the dysfunctional, abusive relationship the GOP insists on with black folks. They say they want a new relationship while continuing to try to screw us over." Toure went on to lambaste Dr. Ben Carson, a black person, for daring to stray from leftist ideas and endorsing conservative ones, such as a flat tax. Carson has "intellectual tumors in his mind, like a flat tax, which is regressive and ignorant in the face of American wealth inequality." Toure continued: "I doubt the GOP would entertain a white non-politician with unserious ideas." But blacks such as Carson "get raced to the front of the line because then people get to put a bumper sticker on their cars saying, 'How can I be racist? I would have voted for Carson."
Can It Happen Here?
The decision of the government in Cyprus to simply take money out of people's bank accounts there sent shock waves around the world. People far removed from that small island nation had to wonder: "Can this happen here?" The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic. Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored. They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to. Multi-billion dollar corporations, whose economies of scale can bring down the prices of goods and services -- thereby raising our standard of living -- are seldom financed by a few billionaires.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Waiting on Line
I am in Manhattan because tonight is the first night of Passover and I will be at my aunt and uncle's house for the first night's Seder. They live in Suffolk County which is on the eastern end of Long Island. From Old Town Alexandria to Suffolk County on a week night, with normal rush hour traffic is about a six hour trip. With all the children who grew up on Long Island and now live in Manhattan or Brooklyn trying to make their way to their parents' house tonight, the trip could easily take over eight hours. The Long Island expressway, on the first night of Passover, is God's way of reminding Jews about the whole 40 years in the desert after they left Egypt thing.
After Four Years, Dem Senate Passes a Budget
A doomed effort defined by crushing taxes and government spending.
Urban Problem Bigger Than Detroit
We are now hearing the usual voices of protest in Detroit in the wake of Michigan governor Rick Snyder appointing an outside expert to take over financial management of the near-bankrupt city. Detroit is the largest city in American history to be seized in this fashion and turned over to an outside manager. Reported deficit of the city is $327 million dollars and long-term liabilities are in the range of $14 billion. But no matter to the unions, politicians, and bureaucrats who have been at the helm for years as the city has spiraled into the depths of the black hole in which it now finds itself. These interest groups, who have been the driving force behind this fiscal travesty, have one interest -- to keep their respective beds feathered. Citizens and public welfare be damned.
The End of Utopia
One of many things I don't understand about those on the Left is how naïve they are. Even if you get past their childlike belief that human nature doesn't exist and that if you simply pass enough big government legislation, you can do away with greed, sloth, envy and evil, you still run into their conviction that nothing must ever be allowed to change the climate or the rate of federal spending. I mean, even if we overlook the idiocy of believing that man controls the elements, and that if we just stop driving around or using air conditioning we can stop that hussy, Mother Nature, in her tracks, what's so great about our weather? I happen to live in Los Angeles, where the climate is usually the only thing we have to boast about, but even I can see ways to improve it. For one thing, it's far too hot in the summer and, judging by this year, winter has been much too cold. But what if you live in Louisiana, New Jersey or North Dakota? I bet a lot of those people would be grateful for a little change. I bet there are even a few in Minnesota who wish there was something to do in December besides ice skate, bowl and skid into snow banks. And, furthermore, I'm willing to wager that a large number of Brits long for the good old days when it was possible to grow grapes in England.
Lynch's Vote Showed Backbone
Representative Stephen Lynch, the South Boston Democrat now running to succeed John Kerry in the Senate, voted against ObamaCare on the make-or-break House vote in March 2010. He was the sole member of the Massachusetts delegation to oppose the bill, and he did so in the face of personal entreaties by President Obama, by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and even by the widow of Senator Ted Kennedy, who had died just a few months earlier. He did so even though it angered many of his labor-union allies, and despite the president's enormous popularity in Massachusetts. In the end Lynch was one of just 34 Democrats in Congress -- and the only one in New England -- to vote no.
New Census Data Show People Go Where the Money Is
What parts of America have been growing during these years of sluggish economic growth? Answers come from comparing the Census Bureau's just-released estimates of metropolitan area populations in July 2012 with the results of the Census conducted in 2010. The focus here is on the 51 metro areas with populations of more than 1 million where 55 percent of Americans live, most of them of course not in central cities but in suburbs and exurbs. Two growth champs stick out -- Austin and Raleigh. A half-century ago, neither of them amounted to much.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Free the Workers
The labor market is one of the most regulated markets in our economy. Minimum wage laws effectively tell teenagers they cannot work unless they can produce $7.25 an hour. When the ObamaCare mandate kicks in next year, that hurdle will climb to more than $15 an hour for many potential employees. OSHA regulations dictate what risks workers may and may not take while on the job. Wage and hour laws dictate what wage rate a worker can accept in order to be able to work at nights and on weekends. Those same laws tell many parents they can't take off to see their kid's soccer game and make up the time in the next pay period.
For GOP Substance, Deregulate
Because of the grotesquely swollen place the presidency now occupies in the nation's governance and consciousness, we are never not preoccupied with presidential campaigning. The Constitution's Framers would be appalled. The nation reveres the Framers, but long ago abandoned the presidential selection process they considered so important that they made it one of the four national institutions created by the Constitution. Hence the significance of the Republican National Committee's suggested reforms for the 2016 process.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Why Not Just Put the Entire Federal Budget on Credit?
Let's finally open our arms really wide and embrace our massive debt, swiping the big government credit card to pay all our bills.
A Nation of Nannies & Julias
Last year, during the presidential campaign, Team Obama reached out to America's single women by showing how a fictional woman named Julia only managed to make it from the cradle to the grave by depending at every turn on the largesse of the federal government. And it worked so well that those women chose Obama over Romney by a huge margin. Why is it, though, that I haven't heard old-line feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Barbara Walters, Joy Behar and Rachel Maddow, taking young women to task? I thought young women were supposed to build on all that empowerment that the ladies of NOW have been spewing for the past 40 years. As I recall, Ms. Steinem insisted that women needed men the way a fish needs a bicycle. Apparently that's the case unless the man happens to reside in the White House. In which case, all bets are off. When they have a sugar daddy in the Oval Office, these powerful, glass ceiling-busting women can't even manage to come up with $25-a-month to pay for their own birth control pills.
Has Bernanke Gotten the Story Right?
The most important point in Ben Bernanke's Wednesday press conference was the announcement that the Fed will adjust the amount of monthly bond purchases according to economic conditions. In other words, an improving economy with stronger payrolls and lower unemployment could lead to a decline in Fed bond buying, from $85 billion a month to something gradually lower, so long as the economy keeps looking better. It won't happen all at once. The Fed is not convinced that the current economic upturn is truly sustainable. But Bernanke is implying that the Fed may become *less* easy in the second half of this year, perhaps ending QE in 2014.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama's limo wouldn't start at Ben Gurion Airport after they rolled it off the U.S. transport plane. It turns out the Israeli ground crew filled it up with the wrong type of fuel and it wouldn't start. They filled the tank with water instead of wine.
We're All Cypriots Now
Americans who still give a damn about anything important should pay close attention to what's going on in Cyprus. ... Margaret Thatcher once remarked, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money to spend." The thugs that run the European Central Bank (ECB) the European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ... are well aware of that reality. But rather than let those directly responsible take the hit, as in the bankers and their bondholders, the world is once again being subjected to the pathetically familiar refrain known as "too big to fail." Thus, instead of running out of other people's money to spend, the troika's "solution" is simple: find more people to shake down.