Truly Right View

Health policy economists are puzzled by a persistent slowdown in the growth of health care spending that seems to have started in mid-2005, and accelerated since then. The Wall Street Journal summarized it on Monday, saying, “The health [spending] growth rate has flattened out at about 3.9% over the last three years — a record low since the 1960s and down from the old normal of 6.2% to 9.7% in the 2000s.” Economists thought at first that the slowdown in spending was due to the recession, when people didn’t have the money to continue to increase health care spending as much as in the past. But new papers published in the journal Health Affairs last week provide “evidence that the moderation [in rising health spending] is durable, and that it is structural — the result of permanent changes in the health … Read entire article »

The body count from the scandal of IRS agents targeting Tea Party groups finally rises — to 1. CBS News reports: President Obama on Wednesday announced that acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller is stepping down amid investigations into political discrimination carried out by the IRS against conservative groups. Miller, a career bureaucrat at the IRS, was tapped to serve as acting commissioner after commissioner Doug Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, stepped down in November. Mr. Obama said Miller resigned Wednesday at the request of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. […] “The misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable,” Mr. Obama said, referring to the report. “It’s inexcusable and Americans are right to be angry about it. And I am angry about it.” Read more CompleteIRS Scandal Claims Its First Victim … Read entire article »

Fifty-one years ago on a bright spring day in a sun-dappled grove, a pair of young lovers rose from slumber, spread their wings and burst into song. For the next month or so, Sam and Cindy spent their days and nights engaging in the ritualistic mating-cycle practiced by their progenitors for centuries. At the end of their courtship, Cindy Cicada gave birth to 500 or so offspring thus giving new meaning to the phrase, “making beautiful music together.” These two would be the first of the Brood II Baby Boomer cicadas to reproduce. As they prepared to hand over the future to the next generation of red-eyed, American Homopterae, they looked around and saw that all was good. The nation was at peace, JFK was in the White House and the new age of hope and prosperity was expected to last forever. John … Read entire article »

As Kaylin just reported, Attorney General Eric Holder just told congressmen on the House Judiciary Committee that Deputy Attorney General James Cole authorized the subpoena of AP phone records. Cole, it seems, is being positioned to take the blame for the scandal. Yesterday, the AP reported that it received a letter from Cole this week defending the subpoena: The AP revealed Monday that federal agents had collected two months of telephone records for some of its reporters and editors without notifying it of the subpoena. In a letter to the news service’s president, Gary Pruitt, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the Justice Department had balanced the public’s right to know with national security. “The subpoenas were limited to a reasonable period of time and did not seek the content of any calls,” Cole wrote. Meanwhile Holder yesterday claimed he recused himself from the matter … Read entire article »

Facing scrutiny from Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, moments ago Attorney General Eric Holder punted on responsibility for the subpoena of two months of phone records from Associated Press employees by the Department of Justice. Pressed on who was responsible for signing off on the subpoena, his answer was, “I don’t know” and “I’m simply not a part of that case.” The subpoena of records should have been approved by Holder according to DOJ rules, but Holder was recused from the case. After saying he assumed that deputy Attorney General James Cole signed off on the subpoena, he added, “I was just handed a note that we’ve just confirmed that the deputy was the one who authorized the subpoena.” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) attacked him on issues of responsibility, saying, “There doesn’t seem to be any acceptance of repsonsibility for things that have … Read entire article »

Colorado Congressman Cory Gardner (R) has released an actual letter to a Colorado conservative non-profit which was applying for tax-exempt status. Yes, we have heard stories of intrusive questions, but there is something about seeing an actual letter which really makes my blood boil. Letter here Read more CompleteAn Actual IRS Letter … Read entire article »

There are faint signs of cognition in Maureen Dowd’s latest column, which raises the remote possibility that the brain-dead left is not completely dead, but only mostly dead — in terms of its ability to hold a critical thought about the disastrous Obama presidency for half a second or more. She wrote in Sunday’s New York Times: “The administration’s behavior before and during the attack on Benghazi, in which four Americans died, was unworthy of the greatest power on earth.” She used the word “unworthy.” That is muted criticism, and if the New York Times is willing to go that far in criticizing the Obama administration, that in itself is one kind of a story — not man-bites-dog, but the faithful lapdog — ever so slightly — raising a lip at its master. Even this little performance won a few plaudits for Dowd and the New … Read entire article »

Like every other observer of Canadian politics, I was shocked at the outcome of last night’s provincial election in British Columbia which saw the B.C. Liberal Party re-elected to a fourth consecutive term in office.  This re-election is even more shocking than when the Wild Rose Party failed to unseat the Conservative Party in Alberta last year. Now before I go any further, I should explain that the B.C. Liberals haven’t had any affiliation with the Liberal Party of Canada in 25 years ago and after the collapse of the Social Credit government in 1991, conservative voters have coalesced around the B.C. Liberals who came to power in 2001 under the leadership of Gordon Campbell.  Campbell and the Liberals were re-elected in 2005 and 2009. But they would fall out of favor with the public shortly after the ‘09 election when plans were announced to … Read entire article »

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius was criticized last week for soliciting private contributions to Enroll America, a non-governmental organization run by former Obama campaign operatives. The real monkey business is what the Secretary is doing with taxpayers’ money. She’s pouring it into community organizations. The pretext is that community organizations will do a better job than government employees in enrolling the uninsured in Obamacare. But the likelihood is that these community organizations will steer the uninsured into the Democratic Party. And beware. The Senate immigration bill tries to repeat this unsavory use of community organizations. It pays community organizations to educate immigrants about American civics and the path to citizenship. Last week’s brouhaha came about because Sebelius raised money for Enroll America after House Republicans refused to approve additional public funding for Obamacare enrollment efforts. So what is Enroll America? Its board of directors … Read entire article »

LIKE ALL GOOD PARENTS, Hannah Horvath’s mother and father are worried about their daughter. What, her father wonders, is she going to do when she realizes that she’s no good at writing? Mom is, as moms tend to be, more optimistic: “She knows how to have fun.” Here is an echo, perhaps a conscious one, of the lyrics to Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” The reference—if it is a reference—is a nice touch, subtle but astute, just the sort of pop cultural allusion one would expect to encounter in a work of top-shelf postmodernism like Lena Dunham’s Girls, which recently finished its second season on HBO. (I used the possessive just now because Dunham writes, directs, produces, stars, and, for all I know, designs the series’ highly attractive title cards.) For Hannah and her friends—aspiring museum curator Marnie … Read entire article »