Tag Archives: Subsidies

Videos

MSNBC anchor asks Democrat Congresswoman about choice and competition

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This is from Newsbusters.

Excerpt:

RATIGAN: So, here’s a couple of the issues that come up I would love to get your response to, and I want to show you this, and you can explain it to me. As you know, in addition to everything you just described, this does very little to bring real competition and choice into the insurance marketplace. It does very little to reform the insurance monopolies. It does very little to create more choices for everybody in America for their healthcare. But at the same time, it mandates that everybody in America face penalties if they don’t buy healthcare.

So the result of that has been the following: you know the monopoly scenario. I want you to take a look at the insurance stocks in this country on news that a bill may be passed that mandates the creation of millions of new customers but does not reform the monopoly structure. Take a look at the insurance stocks since November 17th. WellPoint up thirteen percent, that’s over a course of a few weeks, United Health up ten percent, Aetna up twelve percent, Humana up six percent. Those health insurance companies are up because being an unreformed oligopoly, monopoly, and having now the benefit of a government that is assigning the expense of covering the uninsured without reforming the monopoly. It basically allows the taxpayer to take the hit to pay for the uninsured, but it does not deal with the underlying symptom as to why there are so many uninsured, which is we have an unreformed private insurance monopoly in this country that is now being guaranteed more customers by the government. Why is that a good thing for America?

Holy snark! Please watch this! I can’t believe that this news guy is from the hard-left MSNBC network.

He is basically pointing out that government is going to force a bunch of uninsured Americans to buy the products of these medical insurers, and force ordinary productive taxpayers to pay the bill. So it’s a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary productive taxpayers to big medical insurance companies, for the benefit of Obama’s key voting groups.

News

Pro-life Democrat will vote for taxpayer-funded abortion in health care bill

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Story from the Washington Post. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Democratic leaders worked for days to hammer out a deal with Nelson, and finally reached a tentative agreement late Friday night with him on abortion coverage provisions that had proven the major stumbling block to winning his support. Nelson also secured favors for his home state and to benefit different factions of the health-insurance industry.

Thirty pieces of silver.

The Weekly Standard comments:

Harry Reid has released the manager’s amendment that Ben Nelson has reportedly agreed to vote for, meaning that the Senate bill has 60 votes. The abortion language includes the phony segregation of funding language that was rejected in the House. It would allow individual states to opt out of the abortion-funding program–in other words, the default position is to pay for abortions; states would have to pass legislation to not fund abortions. But states where public abortion-funding is mandated by state court rulings would be required to pay for abortions…

If Nelson is indeed on board, then he just voted for Christian taxpayers to subsidize the murder of innocent babies. But Planned Parenthood will probably be happy and will no doubt offer many more political donations to Democrats in exchange for these new taxpayer subsidies to their booming business.

Commentary

Should government spend so much money to push people into higher education?

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Both fiscal conservatives and social conservatives agree: government spending on higher education should be cut.

Fiscal conservatives oppose government spending on higher education

Consider this podcast from the libertarian Cato Institute.

Here is the MP3 file. (7 minutes)

It’s an interview with Dr. Neal MCluskey.

Topics:

  • does higher education necessarily deliver skills that employers want?
  • do most degrees really benefit employers?
  • should government subsidize higher education?

About the guest:

Neal McCluskey is the associate director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom. Prior to arriving at Cato, McCluskey served in the U.S. Army, taught high school English, and was a freelance reporter covering municipal government and education in suburban New Jersey. More recently, he was a policy analyst at the Center for Education Reform. McCluskey is the author of the book Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education, and his writings have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, and Forbes. In addition to his written work, McCluskey has appeared on C-SPAN, CNN, the Fox News Channel, and numerous radio programs. McCluskey holds a master’s degree in political science from Rutgers University.

I think people should face the costs of the university education themselves. Then they would choose areas where they could make enough money to live and pay back their loans.

Social conservatives oppose government spending on higher education

My wonderful friend Andrew sent me this notice about an upcoming Family Research Council lecture.

Allan Carlson to Speak on Student Loans at Family Research Council

World Congress of Families founder and International Secretary Allan C. Carlson will deliver a Witherspoon Lecture at the Family Research Council on December 4 at 11:00 am, on “The Crushing Burden of Student Loans on Family Formation For Generation X.”

Studies have shown that significant numbers of graduates who are burdened with college loans are less likely to marry and have children – with negative consequences for society. Thus, there is a need to re-think the entire program.

[…]Allan Carlson has a Ph.D. in Modern European History. He is the author of many books, including “Conjugal America: On the Public Purposes of Marriage” and “The Natural Family: A Manifesto,” with Paul Mero. Click here to order his books.

Click here to download the flier.

Isn’t it amazing that fiscal conservatives agree with social conservatives? Actually, they should agree on many more things, in my opinion. It’s a bad idea for government to redistribute taxpayer money to schools, because the teacher unions just turn around and use it to influence politics, which cannot be good for giving children a quality education. Teacher unions are bad for fiscal and social conservatives – we really need to unite and make sure that they are de-funded, and de-fanged.

A funny story about libertarians

And I have to tell you a funny story. One of the quirky things about me that everyone knows is that I am able to get into the most deep and controversial conversations within a few seconds of meeting someone. For example, in the time it takes to get a blood test, I was talking to the nurse about lethal injections, capital punishment and different goals of the criminal justice system. Well, I managed to beat my score on Monday.

I was passing by a security guard to show him my badge and I noticed a book on his desk. As soon as he turned his back I leaned over the desk and read the back cover. It was a book by Lew Rockwell. So I asked him about it, and then we started talking about how libertarians ought to support social conservatism in order to keep government from having to deal with the fallout from broken homes and crime. I was just about to start talking about John Lott’s study on the link between abortion and increased crime, but there was a line-up by then, so I moved along.

So that’s what my life is like – the joy of a comprehensive Christian worldview means that you are never at a loss for something interesting to talk about. And there is a lot of reading people – knowing who you can talk to and when you’ve gone too far. Practice, practice, practice.