The rollout of the Affordable Care Act is one of the most dismal policy failures ever to take place at the federal level. The ACA has resulted in the cancellation of millions of existing policies and rapidly rising health insurance costs. The mostly inoperable website has become a symbol of an overly complex, unworkable law. The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that 31 million Americans will be left uninsured when the ACA is fully in place. By definition it will have failed in its primary mission. The President’s plan does recognize, however, that there is a health care problem. The United States is the only industrialized democracy that allows its citizens to go bankrupt from health care bills. Millions of Americans are without health insurance (those that would like to see the true figures for the uninsured, which are substantially lower than the “official” figure should see Beyond Those Healthcare Numbers, by Gregory Mankiw, New York Times, November 4, 2007). Many millions more fear that a job loss or sudden illness will result in bankruptcy. If the Republican Party plans to recapture the middle class and working poor, this problem must be addressed. The … [Read more...]
The Real Cause of the Flood of Illegal Immigrants – Jim Himes and his cronies at Goldman Sachs
Jim Himes and the Democrats are often displaying their compassion for the illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants that have entered our country over the past decades. Yet, no one ever asks why these people – the vast majority who are decent and hard-working – came to the United States. The answer is simple. Jim Himes’ former employee Goldman Sachs, in their infinite greed, destroyed the Mexican economy in the 1990’s. Mexican politicians, like all politicians worldwide, have discovered that the best way to win elections is to promise services without raising taxes. To fund the resulting deficits, they issue bonds which are purchased by individual investors and institutions such as banks, brokerage firms, corporations and insurance companies. Purchasing bonds from a foreign country such as Mexico carries a certain risk, because the interest and principle payments are made in the country’s currency. If the country devalues the currency, the investors get taken to the cleaners. This is what happened in December of 1994. Mexican government officials had suckered Wall Street into buying bonds that paid inordinately high interest rates while promising not to … [Read more...]
Neo-Darwinism Misses the Point
Printed in the Torrington Register on November 10, 1994 The cumulative frustration caused by the failure of government intervention to create an integrated egalitarian society is now boiling over in academia and on our op-ed pages. A new book, “The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray and Richard Herrstein, resurrects the concept that intelligence has a racial component and further postulates that a disproportionate percentage of African-Americans are thus genetically incapable of entering the middles class. It fails to acknowledge how misguided social policies have decimated the black family and how structural changes in our economy make it virtually impossible for the working poor, who are disproportionately black, to afford safe housing and health insurance. Especially disturbing is the pseudoscience used to further this thesis. While there is a difference between the IQs of blacks and whites, this difference narrows with increased economic status, yet does not close completely. Therefore, it is concluded that the difference is genetic. This fails to account fo the fact that our popular culture promotes blacks as either entertainers or athletes, … [Read more...]
