Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Brain-Lock Inside the Beltway
It's at times like this I'm ashamed to admit I live inside the Beltway. Well, that's probably not specific enough since I'm usually ashamed to admit I live inside the Beltway. Still, the second you try to explain the stupidity of this "fiscal cliff" fiasco to a normal person, it makes William F. Buckley's famous declaration that he'd rather be governed by the first few hundred people listed in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard seem all the more reasonable. While there are some responsible politicians and policymakers in Washington, if you look at the whole place collectively, Uncle Sam starts to look like a junkie. The logic of addiction dictates that you make a deal that allows you to avoid all of your problems now and enjoy a quick high in exchange for a painful confrontation with reality down the road.
Meeting 'We the People'
SAN ANTONIO -- One of the great upsides to a national book tour is the chance to break out of television's cocoon and interact directly with the American people. Don't get me wrong; I love what I do at Fox News. My "beat" is keeping company with soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen, Marines, special operators and others who protect us from harm. Though I live with these American heroes for weeks at a time overseas, I rarely have the opportunity to look their loved ones in the eye without visiting our wounded at a military hospital. A book tour completely alters that dynamic. All of the encounters are memorable. Some are humorous. Others are raw with emotion.
Time for Congressional Republicans to Expose Obama's Agenda
We can get back to discussing GOP minority constituent recruitment soon, but in the meantime, we have a fiscal cliff issue that beckons -- the real fiscal cliff (America's imminent financial collapse), not the government shutdown molehill everyone is agonizing over. Congressional Republicans should look at their party's loss in the presidential election as liberating. They surely now understand that the strategy of soft-pedaling Obama's record and agenda doesn't work. They surely grasp that its fear of calling President Obama out on his real intentions and the disastrous consequences of his destructive policies just plays into his hands and enables the advancement of his agenda.
Gitmo North Returns: Obama's Shady Prison Deal
If you thought President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had given up on closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing jihadists to American soil, think again. Two troubling developments on the Gitmo front should have every American on edge. The first White House maneuver took place in October, while much of the public and the media were preoccupied with election news. On Oct. 2, Obama's cash-strapped Illinois pals announced that the federal government bought out the Thomson Correctional Center in western Illinois for $165 million. According to Watchdog.org, a recent appraisal put the value of the facility at $220 million.
Fewer Babies Born is Bad News for America
The old adage "be careful what you wish for" is an apt reminder in light of this week's news that the U.S. birthrate has dropped to its lowest level on record. For years, population hysterics have tried to convince Americans to aim not just for zero population growth in the U.S. but its complete reversal. Many of the groups pushing this view have also been in the forefront of the anti-immigration movement -- NumbersUSA, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Negative Population Growth (NPG). They don't like immigrants -- even legal ones -- because immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants, traditionally have had higher birth rates than the native born. But the new report from the Pew Research Center suggests that even among Hispanic immigrants, birth rates are falling quickly. So why is this a problem?
Cliff Jumping With Barack
WASHINGTON -- Why are Republicans playing the Democrats' game that the "fiscal cliff" is all about taxation? House Speaker John Boehner already made the pre-emptive concession of agreeing to raise revenues. But the insistence on doing so by eliminating deductions without raising marginal rates is now the subject of fierce Republican infighting. Where is the other part of President Obama's vaunted "balanced approach"? Where are the spending cuts, both discretionary and entitlement: Medicare, Medicaid and now Obamacare (the health care trio) and Social Security?
The Fallacies That Guide Us
Republicans find themselves in the unenviable position of being forced to agree to raise taxes on those earning more than $200,000 (the actual cut off for those Mr. Obama refers to as "millionaires and billionaires"), or risk being blamed for a tax increase on all taxpaying Americans. They will probably agree, which means it's a politically unavoidable policy, not a good policy. Why does Obama insist upon raising taxes? Not because he believes it will improve the economy, and not because he believes it will increase receipts to the Treasury. The proposed taxes would bring in about $80 billion a year, a trivial number compared with our 1.3 trillion deficits. Making the books balance is (obviously) not Obama's goal. In 2008, when it was pointed out to him that President Clinton's *cut* in the capital gains rate increased the revenue from the tax (because lower rates encouraged more transactions), Obama was unmoved. He'd still favor an increase in the capital gains rate, he explained, for the sake of "fairness." In another famous and revealing moment, he told Joe the Plumber that he prefers to "spread the wealth around."
What Powers and Wehner Get Wrong About the Palestinians
Pete Wehner is a real gentleman. His reproofs are generally not caustic and are almost always intended to have his opponents listen to what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." Thus, when he recently criticized Kirsten Powers, he provided a most useful sketch of the history of Arab-Israeli conflicts in recent times, at least since 1967. Wehner's column should be required reading for anyone taking part in Mideast policy discussions. In the main, we agree with his assessment of this good woman's errors. But in gently rebuking Kirsten Powers, and, Pete Wehner compounds the errors of the past 24 years of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
Herbert Hoover Obama?
Once again, President Obama dodged the key fiscal-cliff issues at a campaign rally/press conference Wednesday morning. Campaign-style, he argued that the middle-class tax cuts (below $250,000) must be renewed in order to prevent a $2,200 average tax hike from hitting middle-class folks. He added that a middle-class tax hike would cost consumers $200 billion in spending power. OK, fine. But no one wants to raise middle-class taxes. That's not the issue. And even if those numbers are right, they dodge one of the key points in the dialogue between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner -- namely, what to do about top income-tax rates, which include capital gains, dividends and inheritance taxes.
Make the Democrats Own the Obama Economy
One bright spot of Barack Obama's re-election was knowing that unemployment rates were about to soar for the precise groups that voted for him -- young people, unskilled workers and single women with degrees in gender studies. But now the Democrats are sullying my silver lining by forcing Republicans to block an utterly pointless tax-raising scheme in order to blame the coming economic Armageddon on them. Democrats are proposing to reinstate the Bush tax cuts for everyone ... except "the rich." (Why do only tax cuts come with an expiration date? Why not tax increases? Why not Obamacare? How about New York City's "temporary" rent control measures intended for veterans returning from World War II?)
An Inappropriate Response
I have no idea what will be happening in the Middle East by the time this article is posted, but it almost doesn't matter. If there's a ceasefire, as now seems likely, everyone knows it will merely be a temporary stopgap until Iran supplies the barbarians with more missiles. What I have found peculiar about events in that part of the world is how predictable they are. We all know that at some point, the Arabs and Muslims will start firing missiles into Israel, will plant bombs in buses and pizza parlors, and the news won't even make page 27 of the NY Times. Then, after absorbing weeks of attacks and burying their dead, Israel will fight back, and the world media will start harping on Israel's "disproportionate response" and start publishing photos of some Arab child's dead body being carted through the streets of Gaza.
Republican Suckers
Republicans had better learn from history -- and from Ronald Reagan's mistake. President Obama and his fellow big-spenders in Congress are promising if they get higher tax rates today they'll make even higher spending cuts tomorrow. It's an old sucker's game. Republicans -- and the rest of the country -- should know it by now, because for three decades we've all been suckers. If history is our guide, and Republicans in Congress don't grow a spine, by this time next year we'll have higher taxes, higher spending, more debt and a bigger government.
What Medicare Needs Is a Consumer-Driven Market
Neurologists are about to feel the sting of the Affordable Care Act. Beginning Jan. 1, Medicare will be paying them less for electrodiagnostic procedures used in identifying and treating a wide range of nerve and muscle disorders. Reimbursement rates for some tests will be slashed by more than 50 percent, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimates that payments to neurologists overall will shrink by 7 percent next year. Medicare's cuts will be implemented by changing the way fees for the diagnostic procedures are calculated. Instead of reimbursing neurologists for each nerve analyzed, the new billing codes will henceforth bundle multiple nerve-conduction tests into a single fee. The Obama administration claims that under the current system Medicare has been paying too much for neurologists' overhead costs. But the American Academy of Neurology, in an advisory to its members, warns that the cuts will devastate "neurology practices large and small, many of which rely on these services to meet their bottom line." Patients will be hurt as well: As Medicare squeezes neurologists, seniors' access to neurological care will dwindle.
T-ball War in the Middle East
Classical explanations of conventional wars run something like this: An aggressor state seeks political advantage through military force. It has a hunch that the threatened target will likely either make concessions to avoid losing a war, or, if war breaks out, the resulting political gains will be worth the military costs to achieve victory. Wars then are prevented only by a balance of power and military deterrence: aggressors have to be warned that it would be stupid to start a war they will likely lose. If there are miscalculations or if emotions run high and logic is ignored, then the resulting conflicts only end when one side loses and has no choice but to accept the imposed terms of the winner.
A Cliff of Their Own Choosing
WASHINGTON -- With a chip on his shoulder larger than his margin of victory, Barack Obama is approaching his second term by replicating the mistake of his first. Then his overreaching involved health care -- expanding the entitlement state at the expense of economic growth. Now he seeks another surge of statism, enlarging the portion of gross domestic product grasped by government and dispensed by politics. The occasion is the misnamed "fiscal cliff," the proper name for which is: the Democratic Party's agenda. For 40 years the party's principal sources of energy and money -- liberal activists, government employees unions -- have advocated expanding government's domestic reach by raising taxes and contracting its foreign reach by cutting defense. Obama's four years as one of the most liberal senators and his four presidential years indicate he agrees. Like other occasionally numerate but prudently reticent liberals, he surely understands that the entitlement state he favors requires raising taxes on the cohort that has most of the nation's money -- the middle class.
The Tyranny of Good Intentions at U.S. Colleges
In 1902, journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote a book called "The Shame of the Cities." At the time, Americans took pride in big cities, with their towering skyscrapers, productive factories and prominent cultural institutions. Steffens showed there were some rotten things underneath the gleaming veneers -- corrupt local governments and political machines, aided and abetted by business leaders. In recent weeks, two books have appeared about another of America's gleaming institutions, our colleges and universities, either of which could be subtitled "The Shame of the Universities."
The Republicans, The Democrats and Grover
Washington -- What is a Republican elected official? A Republican elected official is one who says, "I won't raise my constituents' taxes." Asked to elaborate, the Republican elected official explains, "I will keep taxes down to allow the economy to grow and to throw off ever more tax revenue." The Republican believes that the way to pay for government is to let the economy roar ... and to keep spending reasonable. What is a Democratic elected official? Back in the early 1960s a Democratic elected official, at least when it came to growing the economy, was not much different from a Republican. President John F. Kennedy called for a tax cut to fire up the economy. Things are different now. A Democratic elected official today is a crafty pol whose economic theories are, at best, muzzy-headed. The Democrats have supposedly embraced the middle class. That is, as the mathematician Senator Patty Murray of Washington said on National Public Radio the other day, "98 percent" of the American people. The Democrats promise not to raise taxes on this middle class. They will only raise them on the top two percent, who are mostly scoundrels anyway, and the economy will grow, and all will be well.
Buffettitis -- Is There a Cure?
Once again, billionaire investor Warren Buffett urges his fellow high-on-the-hoggers to pay more in taxes. "Only in Grover Norquist's imagination," says Buffett, do taxes make much of a difference in how people invest. "So let's forget about the rich and ultra-rich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if -- gasp -- capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased. The ultra-rich, including me, will forever pursue investment opportunities. ... "We need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that."