After nine months of explosive monetary and fiscal stimulus, you'd think economic recovery would be upon us. But the June jobs report tells a much different story.
Americans hope to discuss health care, climate change, green economics or public infrastructure with any degree of realism, then the time has come to acknowledge that hearing someone say "a trillion dollars" is no reason to panic. Politicians and pundits cite that figure to argue that we cannot afford health care reform, following recent cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), but the plain truth is that we spend (and squander) more than that on purposes not nearly so wise and humane as universal quality health care.
Americans agree on health care. Ask them, "Who should pay for it," and they all answer, "Not me." But follow up with, "Who, then?" and you have a fight on your hands.
The Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case of the New Haven firefighters, was a ringing endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's ban on racial discrimination and a repudiation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's decision in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Is there still a revolution about to happen in Iran? Is my state going to run out of money tomorrow, and start printing IOUs? Can the crazy North Koreans really attack Hawaii? Was there a coup in Honduras? Do we care? The short answer to all the above questions is -- who knows? What I can tell you is that the traffic on Sunset near Michael Jackson's house is backed up. Again.
How many California state employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?
An open-minded individual, I am willing to support an adulterer for elective office. But my ability to look past marital infidelity depends on how much humiliation was heaped on the wife. The details matter.
Democrats' plans to pass major health care legislation have been stymied, at least for the moment, by the Congressional Budget Office's cost estimates. To the consternation and apparent surprise of leading Democrats, the CBO scored Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus' latest offering at $1.6 trillion over 10 years, while it scored the completed sections of Sen. Christopher Dodd's bill at $1 trillion. Presumably, the incomplete sections would cost more.
This is not a joke. Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision that required an Oregon public school district to pay a $5,200 monthly tuition (plus fees) for a private boarding school for a high-school senior whose psychologist had diagnosed him with ADHD, depression, math disorder and cannabis abuse.
Why do we need President Obama's big-bang health-care reform at all? What's the real agenda here? If it's really to cover the truly uninsured, a much cheaper, targeted, small-ball approach would do the trick.
There is a tendency for newly installed presidents, like adolescents suddenly liberated from adult supervision, to do the exact opposite of what their predecessors did. Presidents of both parties indulge in this behavior, though Democrats who campaign as candidates of hope and change are more likely to do so.
If Congress fails to enact health care reform this year -- or if it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the "public option" -- then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption. The punishment inflicted by angry voters is likely to be reduced majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives -- or even the restoration of Republican rule on Capitol Hill.
An 11th Commandment could read: Thou shalt not cheat the meek.
There are two schools of thought on this nation’s health care dilemma. One asserts that the primary issue is the 47 million uninsured.
I always love it when politicians start talking about "the American people" believing this or that, as if we all do and they know it.
As recent AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin tells the story, when a White House aide called him on June 10, Walpin thought the administration was calling him to enlist his support -- as a prominent Republican member of the New York bar -- for the confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, Special Counsel to the President Norm Eisen informed Walpin that President Obama wanted Walpin out of his job.
President Obama has a green light and open eight-lane highway for health-care reform. But somehow the guy can't put his foot on the gas.
"We certainly recognize that Chevron does not make a sympathetic victim here," company spokesman Kent Robertson told me over the telephone.
There are no legal grounds for prosecuting Bush administration lawyers who supported the use of enhanced interrogation techniques to thwart planned terrorist attacks, so civil libertarians have the tort system to try to ruin Bush lawyers.
Campaigning to build the widest possible consensus for reform of the nation's health care system, Barack Obama told the delegates of the American Medical Association (AMA) that he wants their support, too.
