Newscom Congress is currently fighting over the future of U.S. farm programs. In 2011, taxpayers subsidized farmers to the tune of $10.4 billion in government payments. Imagine if the government had a way to increase payments to farmers while reducing taxpayer subsidies to zero. Such a policy exists. It’s called free trade. From 2004 to […]
Newscom Today marks three years since Obamacare was signed into law, and taxpayers probably aren’t celebrating. Over the last three years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has revised its cost estimates for Obamacare’s new entitlements—the Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies—many times, and they have more than doubled since 2010. The first estimate in 2010 pegged […]
KOBI GIDEON/G.P.O./SIPA/Newscom President Obama wowed his youthful audience in Israel on Thursday. Having arrived on Wednesday with a mere 10 percent approval rating, Obama clearly hoped to win Israeli hearts and minds with his almost hour-long speech. He went straight to the Israeli people with his pitch, eschewing a more traditional and formal address toIsrael’s […]
Arms Trade Treaty conference session (Photo by Ted Bromund) The fireworks at the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) conference in New York started late on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, the atmosphere, which had in previous days been calm, felt like last July, when the last negotiating conference collapsed into failure. The fun began with an […]
Newscom The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a policy statement yesterday indicating its support for same-sex marriage. Based on “extensive research,” this statement from a scientific organization may seem authoritative. In reality, however, the AAP’s position is based on ideology, not science. The AAP claims that children “receive similar parenting whether they are raised […]
Newscom President Obama is in the Middle East this week, two years and three months after Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi unleashed the Arab Spring by protesting against his lack of economic freedom. Mohamed’s father died when he was three years old. When his stepfather became ill, Mohamed quit school to support his family by […]
Korean Central News Agency via Korean News Service On Tuesday, several South Korean banks and television broadcasters were taken offline due to a “pretty massive” cyber attack. For the most part these attacks were just a nuisance, temporarily cutting off online access to bank accounts and freezing TV station computers, though not interfering with any […]
JENS NOERDAARD LARSEN/EPA/Newscom At yesterday’s debut showing of Silent Conquest: The End of Freedom of Expression in the West at The Heritage Foundation, one of the most shocking moments was a comment by Lars Hedegaard, a Danish historian and chairman of the Danish Free Press Society. Hedegaard was asked: Could the screening of this movie […]
Newscom What pain has sequester wrought at the federal Department of Education? Apparently, not much. The 4,200-person agency has just hired a new “executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.” Fox News reports that the position apparently commands a six-figure salary, as the new director—a former aide to Representative […]
Tetra Images Tetra Images/Newscom One of Obamacare’s many failures is the temporary small business tax credit, which is intended to encourage small employers to offer health insurance to their employees by partially offsetting the cost. Thus far it has largely failed to do so. Initially, the IRS estimated that 4.4 million taxpayers could have been […]
