This kind of thing is what happens once you put the government in charge of your lives.
Of course, no one will read the bill before it passes, so it’s OK.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Obama On Mount Rushmore
This is pretty funny.
The Myth Of Low Medicare Overhead
Veronique de Rugy has found a couple of interesting analyses. I particularly agree with this take by Alex Tabbarok:
I find the debate peculiar for a number of reasons:
1) Picking out one measure of health care “costs” to compare systems is sadly reminiscent of the arguments for socialism. Do you remember those arguments? Under socialism:
* “Think of how much money we will save on advertising!”
* “Socialism will lower costs by maximizing economies of scale!”
* “Money will be used for production not profits!”Exactly these arguments are regularly trotted out in the debate over administrative costs in health care so color me unimpressed. To be clear, the point is not that these statements are false – the point is that these premises to the argument are all in some sense true it’s just the conclusion, socialism is more efficient than capitalism, which turned out to be false. We tried that and it didn’t work. In other words, you have to compare systems not arbitrarily pick out for comparison one type of costs.”
They never learn.
Another Novel Idea
How about let’s treat borrowers like adults. For that matter, how about treating all of us like adults (even if many of us don’t always act that way)? At least those of us who are legally adults?
New NASA Administration
If you have NASA TV, the hearings for Bolden and Garver are scheduled for 2:10 PM today.
Does NASA Need More Money?
Paul Spudis doesn’t think so. Neither do I. In fact, given what they’re doing with it, they apparently have too much.
Out Of Touch
Does Steny Hoyer have any idea how comments like this come across to normal people?
“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.
Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.
In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.
So, therefore, it’s not reasonable to expect people to read it. Right.
I have an radical idea. How about shorter bills?
[Update a few minutes later]
I think that this would be an item for a new Republican Contract with America.
[Update mid afternoon]
Voxiversity Continues
It’s chapter three, on Woodrow Wilson. Go take the quiz, and discuss.
No More California Dreamin’
If California is really where national trends start, the nation is in trouble. The good news, though, is that an anti-big-government revolt may be brewing out there.
[Update]
Michael Barone: Are Americans getting cold feet over Obama economic proposals? Let’s hope so, finally.
Five Stimulus Plans
…better than Obama’s first one. It’s not hard.
If they want a “second stimulus,” step one would be rescinding the first one.