Ethanol subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year continue to lose support among the public and in Congress. King Corn, understandably not too happy about this change in public attitude, has launched an extensive lobbying campaign targeting Capitol Hill and beyond. The Corn Farmers Coalition has launched a visible ad […]
After two and half months of watching President Barack Obama’s uncertain effort in Libya, the House has had enough. According to US News, “the House voted 268-145 to pass a resolution introduced by House Speaker John Boehner, which demands President Obama to give more detail on U.S. policy goals in Libya.” The signal from the […]
The Keynesian policy of trying to increase total i.e. “aggregate” demand – either by having government spend, or by cutting taxes just to leave more money in people’s pockets in hopes that they’ll spend – to revive the economy, never works. The latest installment of Keynesian failure is the payroll tax cut. Predictably, like its […]
The Obama Administration is pushing hard for a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) before the start of the 2011–2012 school year. Education Week reports that on Tuesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan told an audience that NCLB reauthorization “can’t be done on Washington time. It needs to happen on real people’s time.” But the […]
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Today, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released a scathing report that deconstructed the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) claims regarding the Screening Partnership Program (SPP). The SPP, created under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001, grants airports the ability to opt out of using federal screeners and instead rely on private screeners to […]
May 21, 2011, was supposed to be Judgment Day according to Harold Camping. It was, in a sense. As the day came and went, the world judged that Camping’s 15 minutes of fame were up. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner may yet learn something from Camping. Geithner has been a whirlwind of worry about the nation […]
Earlier in the week, the media reported the Pentagon’s position that a serious cyber attack might require a military response—to which the only logical response is: You think? Now we have the findings of a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey that 53 percent “of voters agree with this proposed new strategy and think a […]
Typically, demonstration programs exist to prove the effectiveness of a reform proposal before implementing it nationwide. This was apparently forgotten in the drafting of Obamacare, which relies heavily on accountable care organizations (ACOs) to curb runaway spending in Medicare and the health care system at large. Supporters claim ACOs, a form of managed care run […]
It’s a fact that runaway spending, not lack of revenue, is the cause of long-term federal deficits. Still, some continue to push for higher taxes to solve the problem. A favorite tool of would-be revenue raisers is to eliminate “tax expenditures”—revenue the federal government “forgoes,” they say, due to tax preferences given to priorities like […]
