Commentary
Commentary
Bye Bye ‘Cadillac’ Tax?
As congressional negotiators wrangle this morning over whether to soften the potential blow of the so-called “Cadillac” tax or kill it altogether, health care insiders on National Journal’s Health Care Expert Blog are discussing the plan’s effect on controlling skyrocketing costs. When congressional Democrats meet with President Obama today, the ...
Commentary
On the Merits of Merit Pay
Last week California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two education bills that will make California more competitive for federal Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. The bills endured months of wrangling in the legislature and reformers remain concerned that the measures will not translate into the sweeping changes needed to improve ...
Business & Economics
Golden Stem Cells: Agency Triples the Salary of Former Democratic Party Boss Torres
The Flash Report, January 13, 2010 Torres, former legislator and now vice-chair of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which in December tripled his salary from $75,000 to $225,000. California taxpayers will find Mr. Torres golden windfall educational in many ways. At $150,000, the raise itself is more than ...
Commentary
More Medicare Patients Dropped
The first two we’ve known about for some time. However, “unfunded liabilities” are not an issue folks discuss at the kitchen-table. The cost shift, which is actually a hidden tax that the government levies on the privately insured, is opaque enough that ordinary citizens are unable to discover it. The ...
Business & Economics
Class War
How public servants became our masters In April 2008, The Orange County Register published a bombshell of an investigation about a license plate program for California government workers and their families. Drivers of nearly 1 million cars and light trucksout of a total 22 million vehicles registered statewidewere protected by ...
Business & Economics
Policies Should Promote Wealth Creation
What causes poverty? That’s what North Carolina’s “Poverty Reduction and Economic Recovery Commission” — which met again last week — claims to be investigating. Specifically, the law that created the commission declares “an understanding of the causes and effects of poverty are critical in the reduction of poverty and economic ...
Commentary
A Choice Between the President and the Future
Despite the truly historic events listed above, U.S. deficits from President Washington through the election of President Obama averaged only 1 percent of GDP. Since President Obamas election, they have averaged 10 percent of GDP and they are on the rise. President Obama and the Democratic Congress racked up ...
Business & Economics
PRI’s CalWatchdog Seeks to Expose Waste, Fraud and Abuse in the State
Sixteen years ago, as a building and remodeling editor for Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Des Moines, I desperately wanted to get my opinions heard not the ones about the latest kitchen remodeling or home addition, but about the hot political debates of the day. I had little ...
Commentary
No cost control here
National Journal – Health Care, January 11, 2010 The idea that the massive new taxes raised in either House or Senate health care bills are in service of overall cost control is just one of the great many collective fictions proponents of doing something on health care have perpetuated. The ...
Commentary
Time For Some To Slip Noose Of ObamaCare
It’s painfully obvious the American people don’t want ObamaCare and equally obvious that the Democrats, especially President Obama, don’t particularly care. The Democrats feel inoculated against voter dissatisfaction because they’ve bought into their own wishful narrative: that voters punished them in 1994 because they failed to pass HillaryCare, not because ...
Bye Bye ‘Cadillac’ Tax?
As congressional negotiators wrangle this morning over whether to soften the potential blow of the so-called “Cadillac” tax or kill it altogether, health care insiders on National Journal’s Health Care Expert Blog are discussing the plan’s effect on controlling skyrocketing costs. When congressional Democrats meet with President Obama today, the ...
On the Merits of Merit Pay
Last week California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two education bills that will make California more competitive for federal Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. The bills endured months of wrangling in the legislature and reformers remain concerned that the measures will not translate into the sweeping changes needed to improve ...
Golden Stem Cells: Agency Triples the Salary of Former Democratic Party Boss Torres
The Flash Report, January 13, 2010 Torres, former legislator and now vice-chair of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which in December tripled his salary from $75,000 to $225,000. California taxpayers will find Mr. Torres golden windfall educational in many ways. At $150,000, the raise itself is more than ...
More Medicare Patients Dropped
The first two we’ve known about for some time. However, “unfunded liabilities” are not an issue folks discuss at the kitchen-table. The cost shift, which is actually a hidden tax that the government levies on the privately insured, is opaque enough that ordinary citizens are unable to discover it. The ...
Class War
How public servants became our masters In April 2008, The Orange County Register published a bombshell of an investigation about a license plate program for California government workers and their families. Drivers of nearly 1 million cars and light trucksout of a total 22 million vehicles registered statewidewere protected by ...
Policies Should Promote Wealth Creation
What causes poverty? That’s what North Carolina’s “Poverty Reduction and Economic Recovery Commission” — which met again last week — claims to be investigating. Specifically, the law that created the commission declares “an understanding of the causes and effects of poverty are critical in the reduction of poverty and economic ...
A Choice Between the President and the Future
Despite the truly historic events listed above, U.S. deficits from President Washington through the election of President Obama averaged only 1 percent of GDP. Since President Obamas election, they have averaged 10 percent of GDP and they are on the rise. President Obama and the Democratic Congress racked up ...
PRI’s CalWatchdog Seeks to Expose Waste, Fraud and Abuse in the State
Sixteen years ago, as a building and remodeling editor for Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Des Moines, I desperately wanted to get my opinions heard not the ones about the latest kitchen remodeling or home addition, but about the hot political debates of the day. I had little ...
No cost control here
National Journal – Health Care, January 11, 2010 The idea that the massive new taxes raised in either House or Senate health care bills are in service of overall cost control is just one of the great many collective fictions proponents of doing something on health care have perpetuated. The ...
Time For Some To Slip Noose Of ObamaCare
It’s painfully obvious the American people don’t want ObamaCare and equally obvious that the Democrats, especially President Obama, don’t particularly care. The Democrats feel inoculated against voter dissatisfaction because they’ve bought into their own wishful narrative: that voters punished them in 1994 because they failed to pass HillaryCare, not because ...
