The Italian premier has accused newspapers and television stations of slandering him and damaging the country’s reputation by highlighting his alleged faux pas.
He said he was considering taking “hard measures” against reporters, without specifying what that might entail.
We wish we could say that Republicans had stepped up to the plate with a compelling, competing vision of America’s future. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet. As visions go, the alternative budget that the House GOP offered last week is pretty dim. It’s the same platform Republicans rode to defeat in 2008: a five-year spending freeze, extending the Bush tax cuts, and reducing the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent. It would tie Medicare benefits to income so that high-earners receive less. It would prevent future bailouts and repeal much of the stimulus. And it would increase domestic oil and natural gas production.
There are plenty of good ideas in the House GOP budget. We’re particularly fond of the energy program, for example, and think voters would be, too. Nonetheless, the good ideas don’t yet add up to an attractive picture of a prosperous and responsible America. The party of Lincoln has a real opportunity to rechristen its relationship with the American middle class, and to chart a way forward for democratic capitalism. That work has just begun, so perhaps it’s not fair to expect it to be reflected in this year’s Republican budget alternative. But, even judged by limited expectations, this budget’s pretty uninspiring.
Today, Bud Day, Orson Swindle, and a bunch of other high-profile veterans sent a letter to New York election officials about the problems faced by active duty military in exercising their right to vote in the NY-20 special congressional election that is currently in recount. We have written about this issue before here at Redstate. The letter is pretty hard hitting: (more…)
It’s politics
There’s another abortion bill on its way to what will probably still be the desk of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius when it gets there that, well, has become increasingly politically touchy.
The bill, passed to the governor by the state Senate just minutes before it adjourned the main portion of the 2009 legislative session, would require more specific information about late-term abortions. The specific requirement is that abortion providers diagnose-for the public record-exactly what life-threatening or life-changing malady a post-22 week abortion is performed to cure.
It also broadens the possibility of lawsuits against abortion providers-which essentially will insert the issue of abortion, not just who is “toughest” on crime, into every Kansas county and district attorney race on the ballot if the bill becomes law.
Weekly Standard has the text of a question and answer:
As bizarre and disturbing as it was to see Barack Obama bow to Saudi King Abdallah, it is certainly true, as White House spokesman Robert Gibbs claimed today, that there are more important issues facing the country. (more…)
When you’re the president of the United States, only the best pizza will do, even if it means flying a chef 860 miles from St. Louis to D.C.
KFL:
Pro-life Victory! Late-term Bill Passes As New Stats Show Late-term Abortions Up 10% and Post-Viable 13%
Late on April 4, 2009, the last day of the legislative session, the Kansas Senate sent Gov. Sebelius a bill regulating late-term and partial birth abortions, HsubSB218!
Action in the closing hours was spurred by two recent bombshells:
(1) release* of 2008 state abortion data showing late-term abortions rose 10% and postviabililty abortions rose 13%
(2) last week’s state medical board announcement that they are seeking to revoke George Tiller’s license. (more…)
That’s the first sentence in Virginia Postrel’s article in the Atlantic on the hidden costs of health care reform. Actually, as she admits, she doesn’t know whether she would be dead or not, just that she would have a much greater chance of being dead by now.
The article makes several points often left out of the debate on health care reform. If government runs health care, bureaucrats and politicians will take charge of who gets paid what, what’s affordable, and what are the best avenues for research. That scares me.
The rest of the world today often free rides off the US, with all the money our drug and medical device companies put into research. If other countries use the drugs, they often price control them, putting more of the burden on US consumers to pay for R&D.
Postrel summarizes:
In a public system, trade-offs don’t go away; if anything, they get harder.The good thing about a decentralized, largely private system like ours is that health care constantly gets weighed against everything else in the economy. No single authority has to decide whether 15 percent or 20 percent or 25 percent is the “right” amount of GDP to spend on health care, just as no single authority has to decide how much to spend on food or clothing or entertainment. Different individuals and organizations can make different trade-offs. Centralized systems, by contrast, have one health budget. This treatment gets funded, and that one doesn’t.
WSJ:
The G20 turned out to be a good indicator of how different President Barack Obama’s perceptions of the world are different from George W. Bush and John McCain’s visions of it.
Time’s Michael Scherer writes, “Like Bush, McCain believed in something called ‘American exceptionalism,’ which separated the U.S. from the rest of the world, in moral standing, in military power, in economic might, and in the ability to influence other nations…Obama came at the issues of foreign policy from an entirely different direction. While he said his first role as president would be to protect and improve the United States, he placed his country in a larger framework of nations, not above the framework. While McCain spoke about U.S. leadership (what ‘we did for Europe after World War II’), Obama spoke about collaboration, of a ‘new era of international cooperation,’ of ‘rebuilding our alliances,’ of rejecting ‘a foreign policy that lectures without listening.’ ‘America is strongest when we act alongside strong partners,’ Obama said in a major foreign policy speech last year, in reference to World War II. For McCain, that war showed how America could reshape the world. For Obama, the same conflict showed how America could work with others.”
Barack Obama shunned political contributions from lobbyists and, on his second day as president, announced new ethics rules to reduce their influence. Republican nominee John McCain disdained lobbyists as “birds of prey.”
Still, about one-quarter of the House and Senate members who retired or lost elections last year have found new jobs with lobbying firms, where business is booming as Obama pushes for multitrillion-dollar changes in federal banking, health care, energy and military procurement policies.
And:
Former appropriations chairman Bob Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who left the House 10 years ago, leads a firm that was paid $9 million last year by such clients as Hamilton, Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd., and Redwood City, California-based Oracle Corp. Former Senate Majority Leaders George Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, and Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican, both registered as lobbyists.
“It is a natural progression, and it is not an unhealthy one,” said Jim Greenwood, 57, a Republican who represented a Pennsylvania House district until 2005 and now heads the Biotechnology Industry Association. “I know how lawmakers think, what they need to make good decisions, what’s counterproductive, and what’s reasonable to ask and what’s not reasonable.”
KMBC:
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Fourteen months after forcing former school superintendent Anthony Amato out of his job, the Kansas City, Mo., School Board is hiring a national search firm to find a successor.Instead of hiring such a firm immediately, the board tried to save money by using a team of networkers. Candidates were identified, but according to board president Marilyn Simmons, too many dropped out.Imagine that! Why would this school system possibly have trouble finding a new superintendent? Maybe because it is provisonally accredited and facing possible state takeover, or maybe because the board has changed superintendents too many times to count.
HT Pollster.com
As President Barack Obama works to sell the American people on a sweeping agenda of domestic spending and policy changes, he’s relying on three men who have gone through neither Senate confirmation nor cable news spin cycles.
Data from pollsters Joel Benenson and Paul Harstad has become increasingly important to shaping the White House’s message as the crucial battle over the president’s budget intensifies.
“The pace [of polling] is picking up,” said one source familiar with the data.
In addition, David Binder, a San Francisco-based focus group expert, also has been traveling the country taking the national temperature on issues like energy and health care, others close to the White House said.
Presidents have long pooh-poohed polls while privately conducting them. Jimmy Carter had Patrick Caddell, Reagan had Dick Wirthlin, and Bill Clinton relied on Mark Penn for weekly, personal briefings on the numbers.
NRO:
Andrew Sullivan used my first-ever post for National Review Online to bash National Review Online. I don’t want to get too involved in what appears to be a long-running dispute, but it’s important to draw the right lessons from the path that David Cameron has followed and which, according to the London Times, should lead him to become the world’s foremost conservative leader in about one year’s time.
First of all, don’t exaggerate the importance of David Cameron’s emphasis on green issues and his respect for same-sex partnerships. I happen to support the “decontamination” of the Conservative brand but, because it was first pursued at the expense of traditional Tory values rather than alongside them, it took the party perilously close to defeat in 2007. If Gordon Brown had called a General Election during his honeymoon period, he would have probably won. The Tories only avoided defeat by taking a decidedly right turn. The October 2007 promise to abolish inheritance tax for nearly all Britons was decisive in rescuing David Cameron’s leadership.
HT RCP:
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Look at the divide over age 30:
Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.
Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.
There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.
Just 45% of U.S. voters now think they pay more than their fair share of taxes, the lowest finding on this question since regular tracking began last July.
This number has fallen below 50% just once since Election Day.
Thirty-one percent (31%) do not believe they pay their fair share of taxes and 24% are not sure, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Unusually, the findings are largely the same among Democrats, Republicans and voters not affiliated with either party. Higher-income voters are more likely to think they pay more than their fair share than those who earn less.
Americans tend to believe they pay a higher share of their income in taxes than people in other income brackets.
NEW YORK - Drugstore operator Walgreens will offer free clinic visits to the unemployed and uninsured for the rest of the year, providing tests and routine treatment for minor ailments through its walk-in clinics - though patients will still pay for precriptions.
Walgreens said patients who lose their job and health insurance after March 31 will be able to get free treatment at its in-store Take Care clinics for respiratory problems, allergies, infections and skin conditions, among other ailments. Typically those treatments cost $59 or more for patients with no insurance.
Walgreens runs 341 Take Care clinics (pictured above) in 35 markets around the country, including Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and Cleveland.
AFP:
Some two million residents of Mexico City on Thursday began 36 hours without water under an emergency plan over Easter vacation to respond to a record drop in water supply and to work on repairs.
The Cutzamala supply system is at 47 percent capacity, its lowest ever level, due to low rainfall in 2008 and serious leaks, according to national water commission Conagua.
The cuts, in the giant city of some 20 million that once sat on lakes, coincide with Semana Santa, Mexico’s second most important holiday season when many leave the city.
They are part of a five-month emergency rationing plan announced in January, and include repairs to stop massive leaks in the distribution network of one of the main water supply systems.
