Herman Cain for President: the real deal?
Not all pro-lifers fit the profile you’ve probably been given.
Traitor Bradely Manning has gripes about the room service in the brig. Boo freaking hoo.
Michelle Malkin takes on the ACLU for taking on Catholic hospitals.
John Bolton explains how to deal with China; American Power has the video.
Cuban healthcare’s not so bad…PBS says so!
My latest NewsRealBlog post:
I don’t think this is quite what outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted the American people thinking about when she said we needed to pass ObamaCare to “find out what’s in it,” but a new Daily Beast column by Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation is a perfect example of why that statement rightfully scared people half to death. Dalmia takes a look at aspects of the “reform” that haven’t gotten much attention thus far, but threaten to transform American healthcare into “one big entrapment scheme”:
[I]n an effort to offset [the “doc fix’s”] $20 billion price tag, it has included a little twist to squeeze working families called “exchange recapture subsidy.” Under this provision, the government will go after low-wage families to return any excess subsidies they get under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
When the government hands out subsidies, it will use a household’s income in the previous year as the basis for guessing what the household is qualified to get in the current year. But if the household’s income grows midyear, the subsidy recapture provision will require it to repay anywhere from $600 to $3,500, compared to the $450 that the law originally called for.
This will make it very hazardous for poor working families to get ahead. In the original law, the loss of subsidy with rising income already meant absurdly high effective marginal tax rates—the implicit tax on every additional dollar of income earned. How high? The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon puts them at 229 percent for families of four who increase their earnings by an amount equal to 5 percent of the federal poverty level or $1,100. In other words, a family that added this amount to an income of $44,700 would actually see its total income fall by $1,419 due to the loss of subsidies.
The subsidy recapture provision—essentially a tax collection scheme—means that low-wage, cash-strapped families will have no escape from these perverse tax rates. Many of them will find themselves owing the government thousands of dollars in back taxes. Since it is unlikely that they will have this kind of money sitting around, they will face a massive incentive to either fudge their returns or work for cash to avoid reporting additional income. Either way, Uncle Sam will come after them, just as it does with recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit, the negative income tax scheme that is the inspiration behind Obamacare’s subsidies. In 2004, EITC recipients were 1.76 times more likely to be audited than others, no doubt because it is easier for the government to recover unpaid taxes from poor people than “lawyered up” rich people.
My latest NewsRealBlog post:
Many outlets, including the Huffington Post, Mediaite, and the Examiner, are increasingly taking notice of Fox News anchor (and longtime left-wing drama queen) Shepard Smith for his alleged courage and principle in distancing himself from the rest of the channel’s right-wing propagandizing. He’s currently being lauded for having taken up the cause of a controversial bill to provide medical care for 9/11 first responders, angrily unloading on Republican Grinches who would dare steal Christmas from American heroes:
We’re able to put a 52 story building so far down there at Ground Zero, we’re able to pay for tax cuts for billionaires who don’t need them and it’s not going to stimulate the economy. But we can’t give health care to Ground Zero first responders who ran right into the fire? Went down there to save people? Do people know what this city was like that day? People were walking over bridges, they were covered in ash, they were running for their lives, they were crying, their family members were dead. And these people ran to Ground Zero to save people’s lives. And we’re not going to even give them medicine for the illnesses they got down there? It’s disgusting, it’s a national disgrace, it’s a shame and everybody who voted against should have to stand up and account for himself or herself.
The Examiner’s Elliot Levin compares Smith to several of his Fox News colleagues, including Sean Hannity, who has endorsed the bill’s purpose but expressed reservations about the particulars, such as concern for potential abuse by illegal immigrants, suspicion about the Democrats’ refusal to pass it via simple majority in the House when they had the chance, and scorn for Rep. Anthony Weiner’s unwillingness to allow that reading a bill might be an important prerequisite for supporting it. Levin says:
While Fox’s primtime lineup of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and to a lesser degree, Greta Van Susstren, are all card-carrying Republicans and openly use their shows to press a conservative agenda, Smith, who anchors the 3pm and 7pm shows, is well-known and liked throughout the TV news world for his passionate and apolitical perspectives.
He has also broken away from the typical conservative line in the past on issues such as torture.
Smith is at his best when it comes to hard news stories, such as car chases, wars, and natural disasters, but when he steps into politics he epitomizes the Fox News slogan of ‘fair and balanced,’ speaking his mind regardless of what his fellow anchors may be saying or believing.
Smith’s caterwauling certainly makes good on the “balance” part of the Fox promise, but “fair” is questionable.
Judge Hudson’s decision, by ruling the individual mandate unconstitutional but leaving the rest of the Affordable Care Act intact, would, if it were to stand up on appeal, essentially be a death sentence for the private medical insurance industry in America.
After all, under the remaining provisions of the ACA, insurance companies would still be legally required to enroll applicants despite whatever pre-existing conditions the applicants might have—but they would no longer benefit from the crucial legislative quid pro quo that anyone who did not purchase insurance would be subject to a penalty in the form of a tax.
Of course it’s always possible that the Supreme Court would strike down the ACA as a whole. But given that even many of the biggest opponents of the law concede that its other provisions are constitutional, this seems extremely unlikely.
Is WikiLeaks an agent of liberty? No way, says Janet Daley.
Another powerhouse from my NRB colleague, Megan Fox: 28 Revolting Quotes That Define the Pro-Abortion Left.
The Other McCain has the scoop on a lefty academic and commentator who’s been charged with carrying on a sexual relationship with his own daughter.
Check out this priceless takedown of Andrew Sullivan’s never-ending dishonesty.
Doug Powers slaps down Bernie Sanders’ class-warfare demagoguery.
Has the Republican Party learned nothing? (That’s a rhetorical question, by the way).
Investors’ Business Daily has more on the not-so-dreamy effects of ObamaCare on the medical profession.
And in Iran, Stuxnet, the world’s early Christmas gift, keeps on giving.
My latest NewsRealBlog post:
Language is a powerful tool. Those who define what words mean (or are at least believed to mean) can drastically influence our government and culture. According to the Left’s lexicon, killing is “choice,” racial discrimination is “affirmative action,” thought control is “sensitivity training,” and property confiscation is “economic justice.” But does the Right play similar propaganda games?
At the Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz seems to think so. Today he reports on a “new” Media Matters attack on Fox News.
As the health-care debate was heating up in the summer of 2009, Republican pollster Frank Luntz offered Sean Hannity some advice.
Luntz, who counseled the GOP on how to sell the 1994 Contract With America, told the Fox News host to stop using President Obama’s preferred term for a key provision.
“If you call it a public option, the American people are split,” he explained. “If you call it the government option, the public is overwhelmingly against it.”
“A great point,” Hannity declared. “And from now on, I’m going to call it the government option, because that’s what it is.”
On Oct. 27, the day after Senate Democrats introduced a bill with a public insurance option from which states could opt out, Bill Sammon, a Fox News vice president and Washington managing editor, sent the staff a memo. Sammon is a former Washington Times reporter.
“Please use the term ‘government-run health insurance,’ or, when brevity is a concern, ‘government option,’ whenever possible,” the memo said.
The possibility that Sammon’s motives were partisan and that he was trying to influence Fox’s viewers against ObamaCare can’t be completely dismissed—“government option” polls the way Republicans want it to, and as Kurtz points out, Sammon is a right-leaning commentator who wrote several conservative books. Accordingly, I have scant patience for Sammon objecting, “Have I said things where I take a conservative view? Give me specifics.”
That said, there’s an obvious flip side that Kurtz and Media Matters ignore.
Hat tip to Ed Morrissey for posting this handy video on what the Constitution’s Commerce Clause does and doesn’t mean. It’s well worth your time:
British health care: not quite as romantic as previously thought.
I was in another debate firestorm at NewsReal this weekend (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). The short version: provocatively standing up to Islamofascism is good, accidentally suggesting that conservatives support genocide is really bad.
Arizona’s immigration law works! Imagine that…
Food for thought: what’s the difference between libertarianism and conservatism?
Neil at Eternity Matters takes on a common pro-choice lie.
Conservative Standards 