Under the Government’s Wing
If this survives its legal challenges and becomes our national healthcare system, perhaps they’ll give us breadcrumbs or string to navigate. By the way, kudos to 71% of Missouri voters for boldly (but possibly non-bindingly) turning thumbs down on this idea Tuesday. [Compiled by Republicans on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.]
Did you happen to catch this in the New York Times, last week? Even as the new coalition government [of Great Britain] said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite,…
The article, by Neil Downing, takes the tack of describing people who find their Social Security checks indispensable, but the recipient numbers are the important part, to my mind: Now, 200,202 Rhode Islanders are collecting Social Security benefits, according to newly issued figures from the Social Security Administration’s Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics. ……
One wonders whether U.S. legislators don’t understand the consequences of their work — which isn’t implausible, inasmuch as it’s a real question whether they read the legislation on which they vote — or don’t care. Of course, the conservative critique of government is that big government will tend to work in the interests of those…
Public education is in keeping with much else during the Obama administration: The trends toward big-government control have long been in motion, their seeds well sown and fertilized, but are now being coaxed to the next stage of flowering. Lindsey Burke elaborates: The New York Times reports that 27 states are planning to adopt the…
It’s always notably plausible that there’s a larger truth in the mix when I agree with Bob Kerr, but while his column lamenting the possibly fatal restrictions that the Tiverton Town Council has placed on an annual charity event, this year, counts in that regard, I’d suggest that he should think on the larger lessons…
Some folks–who I’ll conveniently pigeon-hole as “Whole Foods” types–want to raise chickens in Providence. About 35 people packed a small City Council meeting room on Thursday in support of a proposed ordinance that would allow residents to raise up to six chickens. Proponents said raising home-grown hens provides a local source of high-quality protein, fertilizer…
Stephen Spruiell argues that there have now been five rounds of stimulus spending by the federal government, totaling $1.085 trillion, which surpasses the cost of both wars in which our nation has been engaged over the last decade. He further argues that the approach that the government has been taking has been flawed in its…
Having followed the work of Providence Journal reporter Neil Downing for years, now, I’m confident that it was not a deliberate omission, but I can’t help but wonder why a particular factor contributing to economic malaise didn’t make it into his recent article about unemployment: In the current recession — which began in late 2007,…
As Marc noted yesterday (and as we’ve been talking about for quite some time), Rhode Islanders are due to see their annual expense for public-sector pensions grow into the foreseeable future. I wonder how much issues such as this have contributed to the increasing disaffection with government. Partly, that angst is a function of the…