In The Spotlight Blog

In the News: Blog 03/7/2014
The president's great achievement turns out to be poison
The Obama administration decreed on Wednesday that health insurance plans that don’t meet the costly standards of Obamacare can still be sold through October 2016. It’s an extension of the president’s unilateral declaration late last year that health plans millions of people were forced out of by the “Affordable” Care Act could, instead, live on for a little while. He was making up for having told the lie of the year. Now those plans will live on past this fall’s elections. Then, long after the votes are counted, the people who chose those plans and liked them will get dumped, unless the president is feeling generous again.
In the News: Blog 03/6/2014
A good Democrat idea like cutting taxes
It was 50 years ago, Larry Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic remind us in the Wall Street Journal, that the president signed on of the 20th century’s three great across-the-board tax cuts. That president was Lyndon Johnson. He was seeing through the proposal of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, to cut the income tax rate dramatically. The bottom rate fell from 20% to 14%. The top rate went from 91% to 70%. This was the work of Democrats in the presidency and in Congress, Kudlow and Domitrovic write, reminding us that once Democrats knew tax cuts do wonders for an economy.
In the News: Blog 03/3/2014
Another year older and deeper in debt. Thanks, big government.
The Wall Street Journal writes about the latest trend of a lender offering vulnerable borrowers plenty of rope to hang themselves: “Some Americans caught in the weak job market are lining up for federal student aid, not for education that boosts their employment prospects but for the chance to take out low-cost loans, sometimes with little intention of getting a degree.” The weakest recovery since World War II is one big factor driving people who cannot find work. But now that the federal government has taken over student lending, its policies are at the center of the problem, the paper reports. Low-rate student loans cover not just tuition and books but also living expenses. Getting student loans is easier than borrowing from a bank because, as the paper reports, “the government performs no credit checks for most student loans.” The result is ominous: “Take Ray Selent, a 30-year-old former retail clerk in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was unemployed in 2012 when he enrolled as a part-time student at Broward County's community college. That allowed him to borrow thousands of dollars to pay rent to his mother, cover his cellphone bill and catch the occasional movie."
In the News: Blog 03/1/2014
How the IRS has been made a more dangerous weapon
More than 140,000 Americans commented on the IRS’ proposed rules that would allow it to go on targeting political groups based on their views. I was one of them. If my comments sound stern, it is because the IRS’ encroachment on the First Amendment is incredibly dangerous. How dangerous? Kimberly Strassel outlined it in the Wall Street Journal. For one thing, the IRS appears to have learned nothing from last spring’s scandalous revelations: “About a month after the IRS inspector general released his bombshell report about IRS targeting of conservative groups last May, Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel unveiled a ‘plan of action’ for correcting the mess. One highlight was that targeted groups would be offered a new optional "expedited" process for getting 501(c)(4) status. “The deal, which received little public attention, boiled down to this: We'll do our job, the IRS said, if you give up your rights. Those taking part in the ‘expedited’ process had to agree to limit to 40% the amount of spending and time (calculated by employee and volunteers hours) they spend on political activity. Current 501(c)(4) rules allow political spending up to 49%, and have no ‘time’ component. The clear point of the ‘deal’ was to use the lure of 501(c)(4) approval to significantly reduce the political activity of targeted conservative groups going forward.”
In the News: Blog 02/28/2014
Wise move by the FCC
The Federal Communications Commission is pulling the plug on its plans to probe journalists’ news judgment. As I said before, federal regulators with the power to shut down broadcasters should not do anything that could possibly be interpreted as intimidation – certainly not questioning how journalists select stories. Studies by academics are one thing. Studies by federal regulators are another.
In the News: Blog 02/28/2014
De-escalate the IRS war on the First Amendment now
The IRS, which did not seem to find any lessons in its political targeting scandal last spring, is proposing new regulations to restrict political speech. I submitted comments, as did well over 100,000 other Americans. This is what I told the IRS: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is today the most widely feared federal agency, and rightly so in light of last spring’s revelations about the politically motivated targeting of certain organizations. To all but the most partisan eye, the IRS was turned into a political weapon against the opponents of the current administration. This is simply wrong. It is un-American.
In the News: Blog 02/27/2014
A Greenpeace founder says panic is not justified
It’s worth reading what Patrick Moore has to say about man-made global warming. He has a doctorate in ecology. He’s also one of the founders of Greenpeace. And he has the courage not to run with the herd. Moore told senators this about climate change: “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years.” Not that a little warming would hurt, Moore went on to say: “ ‘Today, we live in an unusually cold period in the history of life on earth and there is no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but beneficial for humans and the majority of other species.
In the News: Blog 02/26/2014
He imagined the Affordable Care Act was about affordable care
In the News: Blog 02/26/2014
Harry Reid should take it back
Today, the Senate Democrats’ leader, Harry Reid, stood on the floor of the Senate and called thousands of Wisconsinites liars. He was talking about Obamacare. These are his exact words: “There’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue. But they’re being told all over America.” This is an astounding and offensive statement. I have heard directly from hundreds of individuals, families, and businesses in Wisconsin who are being truly harmed by the law – premiums increasing by several hundred percent or the health plans that they liked and wanted to keep are being lost.
In the News: Blog 02/25/2014
If Obamacare is so great, why not use honest math?
What is it about President Obama, that he just cannot bring himself to use honest numbers when boasting about the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act? Even the left-leaning press feels compelled to call him out. The Washington Post, for example, dismantles his claim that expanding Medicaid has given “access to health care for the first time” to “close to 7 million Americans”: