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April 2009
Can the Government Compare Medical Treatments? The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says the government is better at comparing price than quality...
Congress recently created a 15-member committee whose job is to compare various types of medical treatments to determine which is the most effective.
It’s known as comparative effectiveness research.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with scientists comparing therapies and drugs to see which works best. The government has been doing that for years through the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.
The concern is that this new committee won’t just ask what works best, but also which procedures and treatments cost the least.
And when government budgets are tight, there will be a lot of pressure for the committee to choose the least-expensive therapies.
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It appears that Democrats in Congress have decided to use the budget reconciliation process—which allows the Senate to approve legislation with 51 votes rather than the 60 needed to quash a filibuster—in their effort to pass sweeping health care reform legislation.
For two months some Democratic leaders in the Senate, especially Sens. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Max Baucus (D-MT) have claimed that health care reform legislation is too costly and important to force it through the reconciliation process. Both senators are from relatively conservative states, and Conrad stands for re-election next year, so they don’t want to rile their constituents.
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Oil and natural gas prices are way down, yet Texans’ electricity bills have remained stable, or have even increased a little. So what gives?
There seems to be a natural tendency for the public and their elected officials—with a big push from the media—to blame profit-hungry energy-company CEOs.
But as in so many other cases, when prices go up, a good place to find the explanation is the state Legislature.
See, even as oil and gas prices have gone down, the state has been requiring energy companies to use more “clean fuels,” such as wind and solar power, which come at a premium.
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Does Congress Deserve a Bonus? Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says not if the criterion is successfully managing an organization.
Remember how angry Congress and the country got when we learned that insurer AIG used $165 million of taxpayer money to pay bonuses?
The backlash was from a sense that the company had been horribly managed, and the rest of us would have to pay for it. Bad management doesn’t deserve a bonus.
Well, it seems that members of Congress have also handed out millions of dollars in bonuses—to their staffs. Up to $14,000 a person.
Now, many Hill staff are hard workers and may deserve a bonus.
But if bankrupting an organization and leaving taxpayers with billions of dollars in debt is the hallmark of poor management, that should be condemned, not rewarded, And that sounds almost like a perfect description of … Congress. Read More...
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We have been warning that the budget deficit being pushed through by this administration and Democratic-led Congress is unfathomable. But words don’t quite do it justice.
Thankfully, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is charged with estimating the economic impact of all budget-related legislation, has given us a picture of future deficits under the Obama administration.
We take the point that the President inherited some of the financial challenges. But it’s how he’s addressing those challenges that’s the problem.
When President Ronald Reagan was first inaugurated in January 1981, he too was handed a weakened economy—weakened by four years of Carter policies.
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Allow us to make some informed observations about the “Tea Party protests” that have apparently escaped the mainstream media and those currently in political power in our nation’s capital.
(“Informed because IPI Resident Fellow Dr. Merrill Matthews spoke at the Dallas Tea Party event, and IPI president Tom Giovanetti spoke at the Denton County event.)
The Obama administration has dismissed the tea parties with feigned confusion. “We don’t understand what all these people are worked up about? After all, we gave 95% of them a tax cut, didn’t we?”
But people aren’t that stupid, and the tea party protesters aren’t just worked up about taxes. Read More...
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Okay, so justice has prevailed (thus far), and criminals who gleefully thumbed their noses at the law and who recruited others to do the same have been found guilty of breaking laws that they undoubtedly broke.
It would have been an outrage had it turned out any other way.
Let me just ask a question: Do we think Bernard Madoff should be convicted for bilking his investors out of their money?
You said "yes." I heard you say it.
I agree with you. But I'd like to point out that, at the very least, his investors willingly chose to trust him with their money and apparently at least had the ability to do due diligence on the person they gave their money to.
While the Pirate Bay crooks stole from people who did NOT willingly give their money or property to them. The Pirate Bay crooks stole money from others, and encouraged others to engage in similar theft on a massive scale.
The Pirate Bay crooks are, by any Read More...
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We’re firm believers that the 25-year economic expansion that started in 1982 and lasted through 2007 was due in large part to adoption of policies that rewarded investment capital, by encouraging its formation, incentivizing its deployment, and resisting the devaluation of inflation.
But it’s also undeniable that a key driver of the increase in productivity that buoyed the economic expansion was technological innovation and its adoption throughout the economy.
We would argue that, in fact, this was a virtuous cycle, with increased investment capital helping to fund and to drive innovation in the American economy.
Innovation also requires human capital—where knowledge and understanding, thinking, experimenting, trying and failing, and eventually succeeding result in innovation.
In other words, human capital + investment capital = innovation, and innovation drives increased productivity and economic growth. Read More...
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“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another … a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
That’s how our Founding Fathers, with special thanks to Thomas Jefferson, began the Declaration of Independence. You can feel the sense of urgency in their voices. It was time for them to make plain and make public why they could no longer abide by the policies and practices of their rulers.
Tomorrow, April 15, Americans around the country, feeling something of the same urgency, will turnout at town halls and other spots around the country. And they will declare their grievances: that the government is getting too big, too intrusive and spending too much.
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At the annual Cable Show last week in Washington DC, when Neil Cavuto asked News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch what he thought about the plan to raise taxes in New York City, Murdoch casually replied that he might have to consider moving to Texas.
Mr. Murdoch, consider this an invitation: Come on down. The weather’s better and the taxes are low—and will remain that way if we have anything to say about it.
New York City residents and companies choose to subject themselves to the most onerous taxes in the nation. NYC has 14 separate business income and excise taxes, including a General Corporation tax, computed four different ways, depending on which yields the most revenue. A banking corporation tax can run 9 percent of “entire net income allocated to the city.” The local income tax rate ranges from 2.907 percent to 3.648 percent.
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Should Governors Refuse Part of the Stimulus Money? The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says four governors are … and it’s costing them.
The governors of Texas, South Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi claim that part of the money from the stimulus package will force them to spend more in unemployment benefits in the future—after the bailout money’s long gone.
So they’re taking a principled stand and turning down part of the funds.
Steve Moore of The Wall Street Journal reports that their refusal has Democrats hopping mad. The Democratic National Committee is running ads in South Carolina criticizing Governor Mark Sanford for not taking “free” money.
Of course, the money isn’t free. Our children and grandchildren will be handed the bill.
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Camille Paglia continues to delight with her intellectual honesty in her latest Salon column. Here is a particularly rewarding passage, though you should follow the link and read the whole thing.
Yes, something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power. Read More...
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I fundamentally believe that, ultimately, government is always about control. Yes, there's plenty of rhetoric about helping people, doing good, creating jobs, protecting people from bad stuff, etc., but ultimately the result of almost everything government does is control.
Accordingly, about a month ago it occurred to me that the feds were going to quickly come to enjoy all the control they had gained over banks and financial institutions as a result of the bailouts, the TARP money, etc., and that they weren't going to want to give it up. It occurred to me that they were going to make it as difficult as possible for financial institutions to pay back the money, because they want to maintain control. They like being able to fire CEOs, replace boards, set salaries and compensation policies, etc. I'm sure they've already got plans about dictating lending practices to an even greater degree than they already do through existing legislation. And so it occurred to me that we we Read More...
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This week the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asked for input about PEG channels (public, educational and governmental access channels) in the states as PEG activists demanded that:
- Preferential spectrum be preserved for these channels and preferential menu placement of PEG channels be given; and,
- Video service providers be restricted from moving PEG channels from old analog technology to new digital delivery.
These channels often include (if you’re lucky) a school board or county council meeting. But they often carry obscene, offensive or wasteful
programming—such as the channel that shows a bird feeder 24 hours a day.
The short answer to the FCC’s question is "no." PEG content should not be considered sacred or treated preferentially compared to other video content.
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Author: SoundBytes || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA