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September 2009
Is the Earth Actually Cooling?The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says that’s the new hot topic...
What if you’d spent years trying to convince the public that the world’s getting warmer, threatening life and society as we know it, only to have the earth start getting cooler?
Well, that’s exactly what’s happening.
In 1998 the world began a cooling phase, just as it’s done many times in the past. Now many scientists, and especially Russian scientists, are wondering if we’re on the verge of a mini-Ice Age.
The reason, it appears, is tied to solar activity and the earth’s rotation, not carbon dioxide emissions.
The downside of this trend is that a cooler earth would actually be much harder on plants and people than a warmer earth.
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 Global Warming |
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Advocates of the national health care overhaul scrambling to raise the taxes to pay for it have floated the idea of imposing federal excise taxes on soda, fruit juice, and similar drinks. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a left-leaning advocacy group, wants to include energy drinks, sports drinks (e.g., Gatorade) and ready-to-drink teas as well.
But the tax would cover only a small fraction of any national health care bill. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that imposing a tax of 3 cents per 12-ounce serving would raise $6 billion a year. One proposal would increase the price of a 20-ounce soft drink by 15 percent to 20 percent.
Such a tax would be regressive, hitting the poor harder than the rich. The tax may not seem like much to Washington policymakers, but it adds up, especially for hard-pressed families in these difficult economic times.
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| Here’s a great idea for health care makeover—one you’ve heard precious little about from the Obama administration, which claims to be so determined about reducing health care costs: Redo the laws on medical liability, counsels Texas Sen. John Cornyn. And then sit back and watch malpractice premiums fall and overall expenses slump as the trial lawyer spiders look for other flies caught in the frivolous-lawsuit net. How would Cornyn know any such thing? By looking around Texas, of course. “We know a thing or two about this subject in Texas,” Cornyn wrote recently on a D.C. blog. It’s kind of an understatement actually. A decade ago, Cornyn related, “frivolous lawsuits and jackpot justice” were pushing up insurance costs and driving physicians out of the state. Fluent trial lawyers talked particular juries in particular localities into sticking it to doctors they portrayed as hardly human. Read More...
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Late last week the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission shared his view that it was critical for the Federal Government to start regulating the Internet. Hey, we’ve got an idea: Before the Feds start regulating the Internet, why not start using it?
Why not, for instance, try to crack the problem of posting the text of major legislation on-line for 72 hours before debate, so that all Members of Congress and informed Americans can see for themselves what is being considered?
We’re pretty sure that when our country was founded over 200 years ago, our representatives had a copy of the bill in their hands before they had to vote on it. Yet today, in the era of the Internet, mobile broadband and thumb drives, we’re told that this is impossible, unnecessary, or undesirable.
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Did the Summer of 2009 Transform American Politics? Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says real change may be coming—next year.
Most Americans pay little attention to politics or public policy; not so last summer.
The public turned out en masse to hear their congressmen talk about the state of the economy, ballooning federal spending and debt, and health care reform.
And they wanted to be heard.
You’d think politicians would welcome this new-found interest in public affairs. But some congressmen shunned the public, even called them names.
Democratic leaders have called these interested voters “un-American” and “evil mongers,” though many were independents, seniors or even Democrats. And President Obama’s Organizing for America called them “Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists.”
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Town Halls |
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Like all of the Democrats trying to push through health care reform with no way of paying for it, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) has been on a quest to find new revenue for his plan.
He was considering imposing a tax on employer health insurance contributions above a certain level, say $20,000 for a family. That means that a worker with dependant coverage whose employer spends $25,000 a year on the policy would have to pay normal income taxes on an additional $5,000. The first $20,000 would still be tax free.
Besides raising revenue to pay for the legislation, there was an expectation that employees would opt for higher deductibles in order to stay under the limit and avoid the additional tax, which would eventually help bend the health care cost curve by lowering utilization.
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I’ve just returned from an overseas trip, and once again I was reminded of how pervasive American entertainment media is around the world.
Wherever you go in the world, you find American television shows and movies on TV, American movies in the theaters, and American music on the radio. Looking beyond entertainment, you’ll see American-made software on their laptops and on the computers in the hotel business center.
And the medicines they’re taking are mostly made by American companies as well.
You don’t find American plumbing fixtures in the hotel bathroom, and you don’t see people wearing American-made clothes. They’re not driving American cars, and they’re not using American-made electrical appliances. But they’re consuming American creative goods almost to the exclusion of anything else. It’s striking, actually.
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Should the Census Count Illegal Aliens? The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says citizens are what really count.
The U.S. Constitution requires the government to conduct an “actual enumeration” of the population every 10 years. A lot depends on that count, including how many congressmen each state will have.
For nearly 200 years the Census tried to determine whether a person was a U.S. citizen. But no more, say a constitutional law professor and a demographic expert in The Wall Street Journal.
A question to determine citizenship status is no longer on the Census.
The authors say that means millions of noncitizens, including illegal aliens, will be counted, making states with large immigrant populations look bigger than they really are. That means they get more congressmen and more power.
And that could make the Census as inaccurate as those Washington budgets. Read More...
Census |
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President George W. Bush had been in office a little more than a year when, on March 5, 2002, he decided to impose temporary tariffs on steel. It was clearly a calculated political move to try and curry favor with steel unions in the rustbelt swing states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
As if backtracking on its strong commitment to free trade weren’t enough, the administration pushed economist and presidential advisor Larry Lindsey into writing an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal defending the tariffs.
Conservatives around the country groaned for their friend Lindsey and pitied the fact that he was compelled to defend what he knew was bad policy.
Now President Barack Obama has imposed a 35 percent tariff on Chinese-made tires, and some are lamenting this as a reversal of his stated support for free trade. Read More...
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A pond’s a pond, a tank’s a tank. At least until they get to be bona fide federal problems under the Clean Water Restoration Act, a nifty piece of legislation that Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold is trying to float through Congress.
Feingold makes it sound easy and obvious. U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 held that the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 applies only to “navigable” waters. The senator says the two decisions provide clear sailing to pollution and unregulated development on 60 percent of the nation’s small streams and 20 million acres of its wetlands.
Feingold’s notion is to strike the word “navigable” from the original law, making it cover waters of every kind in a way, and to an extent, no mere judge can dispute. Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison says that word “navigable” is the most important word in the legislation.
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In just a few weeks a tax you pay will increase – by 36%.
Part of some plan to fund health care? No. Another bailout? Wrong again.
Without a vote by Congress or a signature from the President, the unelected members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have determined that despite recession, the highest unemployment in decades and rampant government spending, now is the time to hike a tax that almost every telephone user must pay.The FCC has raised the Universal Service Fund (USF) tax to 12.9%, up from 9.5%.
The federal USF tax, typically listed as an individual line item on phone bills, is levied to subsidize telecommunications services for low income households, schools, libraries, and consumers in rural or high cost areas. However, the federal universal service program is widely regarded as too large, too redistributive, largely unnecessary and with potential for serious problems due to lack of adequate oversight.
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Can Health Insurers Compete with a Government Plan? Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says when the government’s accounting is so dishonest, who knows.
The real problem with a government-run health insurance option is the government would hide the costs, making it look more affordable than it actually is. We know, because that’s what Medicare does.
Medicare’s official administrative costs only count what it takes to process claims checks. Rent, salaries, management, even the numerous fraud investigations all appear in other parts of the federal budget.
Now some Democrats want to create a health insurance co-op with $6 billion of taxpayer seed money. If you were a private insurance company, you’d have to borrow the money and pay interest or sell stock.
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Public Option |
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President Obama wants to make some changes to the current 401(k) regulations in an effort to make it easier for people to sign up for the plans and thereby save more for the future.
The fact is that many Americans are reluctant to invest (or save for that matter), and most invest very conservatively when they do.
The president wants 401(k)s and especially IRAs to become a voluntary opt-out program, where employees are automatically enrolled unless they choose otherwise. He also wants to make it easier for individuals to put money for unused vacation or sick-leave into their retirement plan, and to receive tax refunds in U.S. Savings Bonds.
These are largely very good ideas—in fact, ideas that were first proposed by conservative-leaning think tanks. But the president should have gone further to create parity among the various individual retirement options.
Workers are currently allowed to invest up to $16,500 this year in the Read More...
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After uncovering yet another troubling aspect of the current health care proposal, IPI recently wrote, “Because HR 3200 (the House of Representatives health care reform legislation) contains the most egregious violations of Americans’ privacy imaginable. Indeed, one way to characterize HR 3200 is as ‘The End of Privacy.’”
HR 3200 would protect your privacy right up to the point that it runs into the most disgruntled, curious or careless government employee.
Bad enough. But wow, did we miss the big story…
As it turns out, privacy is under attack from many new “programs,” creating a virtual pattern of turning a person’s private life into a public exposition. |
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How Do You Get Good Health Care in Great Britain? The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says become a dog.
A British physician writes in The Wall Street Journal that his dog has a better health care system than most Brits.
In the privately funded animal system dogs can:
- Pick their doctor, and change veterinarians if the service is bad.
- Have no waiting line.
- Get treated immediately.
- And the Brits even have a safety net system for dogs with no money.
The British public isn’t so lucky. The government, which runs the health care system, wants to ensure that everyone is treated equally, which means everyone is treated equally bad.
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Dog's Health |
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President Obama says that his health care overhaul plan will reduce costs. But the career estimators at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) say it will actually increase federal spending by close to $1 trillion. President Obama keeps saying that his health plan will reduce the deficit. But CBO says it will increase the deficit by hundreds of billions.
So now liberals are arguing that the CBO actually has a history of overestimating health costs and underestimating savings. A New York Times op-ed, echoed by the Commonwealth Fund, insists that CBO underestimated the cost savings from reduced reimbursements in the past for hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health services, and from the market competition included in the 2003 Medicare prescription drug plan.
But the government’s official estimators actually have a long history of grossly underestimating the costs of new health programs.
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Author: Merrill Matthews Jr. || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA