Commentary
Business & Economics
Frosting on an already-sweet pension deal
When people have an entitlement mentality, enough is never enough. Even though government employees enjoy absurdly generous defined-benefit pensions that often allow them to retire with 80 percent to 90 percent of their final year’s pay guaranteed forever, employees game the system by taking advantage of various pension-spiking schemes. A ...
Business & Economics
Giving Thanks for Leading Health Technology Advances
While Congress debates an US$850 billion healthcare bill with questionable benefits, leaders in the technology industry are quietly creating products and services that will truly reform healthcare. This Thanksgiving, for example, Americans can be appreciative of the incredible price decline in genome sequencing, one of the most important health advances. ...
Charter Schools
Who’s Afraid of Charter Schools?
On November 12, parents of children at Gratts Elementary in Los Angeles received a flier, in Spanish, warning that if they signed a petition to convert their neighborhood school into a charter school they would be deported. This threat, though bogus, teaches parents and policy makers a lesson about the ...
Commentary
Cutting Medicare Benefits Will Not Protect Taxpayers
While much of the “savings” promoted by the deficit chicken-hawks are delusional (waste, fraud, abuse, and no longer “fixing” doctors’ Medicare Part B reimbursement), one is very real: Cutting actual Medicare benefits by reducing seniors’ choices of Medicare Advantage plans. Traditional Medicare Part A (hospital) and Part B (outpatient) benefits ...
Commentary
Hiding Health Reform’s Real Costs
Washington: Senate Democrats say their reform bill will cost $848 billion over 10 years. They’re misleading the public by starting the count in 2010. The true cost would be $1.8 trillion over a decade. The $848 billion figure is based on a 10-year run beginning in 2010 when there will ...
Commentary
What the Health-Care Debate Is Really All About
Rather, it’s about liberty versus equality, personal control versus governmental control, dispersed power versus centralized power, freedom versus statism, American Founding principles of limited government and natural rights versus Progressive principles of activist government and conventional (man-made) “rights.” There is nothing particularly noble, compassionate, or decent about helping to hold ...
Commentary
A Cool $3.5 Trillion
And as the trajectory of the chart strongly suggests, it would get even worse from there. In the next five years (forget ten) after those depicted on the chart, the bill’s costs would be $1.7 trillion (double what Senator Reid is claiming for “ten years”). Thus, the true first-15-year costs ...
Commentary
LAUSD is selling out English Learners to fatten its finances
IT recently emerged that many Los Angeles students placed in classes for English-language learners in the early elementary grades were still taking such classes when they entered high school. That’s not a knock on the students, but a damning indictment of how government at all levels has sold them out ...
Commentary
Good News
While there is a long road ahead and this is no time to become at all overconfident or complacent, it nevertheless appears that Americans who believe in anything remotely resembling our Founding principles of limited government now have increasing evidence of favorable developments for which to be very grateful this ...
California
State must reveal, not conceal, school aptitude
San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 2009 This year marks the 10th anniversary of California’s Public Schools Accountability Act, an early legislative triumph of then-Gov. Gray Davis. While some good things have come out of the law, the act has failed in its two key missions: to inform parents and the ...
Frosting on an already-sweet pension deal
When people have an entitlement mentality, enough is never enough. Even though government employees enjoy absurdly generous defined-benefit pensions that often allow them to retire with 80 percent to 90 percent of their final year’s pay guaranteed forever, employees game the system by taking advantage of various pension-spiking schemes. A ...
Giving Thanks for Leading Health Technology Advances
While Congress debates an US$850 billion healthcare bill with questionable benefits, leaders in the technology industry are quietly creating products and services that will truly reform healthcare. This Thanksgiving, for example, Americans can be appreciative of the incredible price decline in genome sequencing, one of the most important health advances. ...
Who’s Afraid of Charter Schools?
On November 12, parents of children at Gratts Elementary in Los Angeles received a flier, in Spanish, warning that if they signed a petition to convert their neighborhood school into a charter school they would be deported. This threat, though bogus, teaches parents and policy makers a lesson about the ...
Cutting Medicare Benefits Will Not Protect Taxpayers
While much of the “savings” promoted by the deficit chicken-hawks are delusional (waste, fraud, abuse, and no longer “fixing” doctors’ Medicare Part B reimbursement), one is very real: Cutting actual Medicare benefits by reducing seniors’ choices of Medicare Advantage plans. Traditional Medicare Part A (hospital) and Part B (outpatient) benefits ...
Hiding Health Reform’s Real Costs
Washington: Senate Democrats say their reform bill will cost $848 billion over 10 years. They’re misleading the public by starting the count in 2010. The true cost would be $1.8 trillion over a decade. The $848 billion figure is based on a 10-year run beginning in 2010 when there will ...
What the Health-Care Debate Is Really All About
Rather, it’s about liberty versus equality, personal control versus governmental control, dispersed power versus centralized power, freedom versus statism, American Founding principles of limited government and natural rights versus Progressive principles of activist government and conventional (man-made) “rights.” There is nothing particularly noble, compassionate, or decent about helping to hold ...
A Cool $3.5 Trillion
And as the trajectory of the chart strongly suggests, it would get even worse from there. In the next five years (forget ten) after those depicted on the chart, the bill’s costs would be $1.7 trillion (double what Senator Reid is claiming for “ten years”). Thus, the true first-15-year costs ...
LAUSD is selling out English Learners to fatten its finances
IT recently emerged that many Los Angeles students placed in classes for English-language learners in the early elementary grades were still taking such classes when they entered high school. That’s not a knock on the students, but a damning indictment of how government at all levels has sold them out ...
Good News
While there is a long road ahead and this is no time to become at all overconfident or complacent, it nevertheless appears that Americans who believe in anything remotely resembling our Founding principles of limited government now have increasing evidence of favorable developments for which to be very grateful this ...
State must reveal, not conceal, school aptitude
San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 2009 This year marks the 10th anniversary of California’s Public Schools Accountability Act, an early legislative triumph of then-Gov. Gray Davis. While some good things have come out of the law, the act has failed in its two key missions: to inform parents and the ...
