FreedomTalks

Fourteen years ago when she was First Lady Hillary Clinton unloaded a health-care plan on the country. Complex, confusing, and restrictive, the thousand-page proposal outlined a radical overhaul of the nation’s health system, and a small band of grassroots activists quickly rose up to successfully oppose it. At 1,342 pages, it was the Hindenburg of health-care plans, and it went down in just as grand a fashion.

Now Clinton is back with yet another health care plan, and she has learned some lessons. She is touting her plan as sleeker, leaner, and more palatable to both businesses and individuals. But despite her claims, it is little more than the same ugly gift wrapped in different paper.

It is true, of course, that Clinton is a better salesperson this time around. Her time in the Senate has made her a shrewd, formidable political operator. Her current plan has been calculatingly formulated to avoid the appearance of bureaucratic complexity that helped doom its previous iteration. But whatever simplifications appear are more than likely mirages. In place of the labyrinth of programs and agencies that cluttered her last plan, Clinton has opted for vagueness. Many key decisions have been left up to Congress. And many of the plan’s points remain a mystery.

Those mysteries, however, have a purpose: to increase the role of the federal government—despite the fact that it already accounts for 44% of the nation’s health-care expenditures. Questions in the plan abound: What, exactly, will be covered? Are wigs, for example, a necessary treatment? When treatments are necessary, but resources are scarce and expensive, who decides who will be treated and who will wait? Government-managed health care will never solve the problem of prioritization, but it will put those key, often life-saving decisions, in the hands of bureaucrats.

Senator Barack Obama is busy promoting his own version of HillaryCare. You can call it ObamaCare, because it differs only on whether or not the government should mandate individuals purchase health insurance coverage. ObamaCare would be just as disastrous for America as HillaryCare would be.

As Michael Tanner points out, “If enacted it would cost Americans dearly — in higher taxes, lost jobs, reduced freedom of choice, and lower quality health care.” Obama’s employer mandates would force them to offset the costs by reducing other benefits or hiring fewer workers. Many small business owners simply could not continue to operate under ObamaCare.

Then there is the question of how Obama plans to pay for his health care plan. Estimates for the costs are astronomical, and would be paid for through higher taxes on individuals, small businesses and corporations. The tax and spend agenda of liberals like Obama, while ignoring huge fiscal crises like Medicare and Social Security, will only cause more economic problems for our great country. It’s time to put Obama on the spot and ask him to stop pushing big-government ideas to deal with the rising costs of health care. The answer is more competition in the market and less government intervention.

The liberal candidates have been talking about health care, but their plans for this country are a nightmare. During the Indiana and North Carolina primaries next week, freedom advocates should ask tough questions and demand that Clinton and Obama drop their plans for socialized medicine.

The Taxation and Budget Reform Commission (TBRC) has almost resurrected Opportunity Scholarships in Florida. Not satisfied with a little success, the TBRC followed this effort with a second entry to be placed on the November Ballot on school spending, by mandating 65% of school spending would be require to be spent in the classroom.

The TBRC meets once every 20 years to consider placing issues on the November Ballot to be considered for the Constitution. Much was expected on property insurance and property taxes, yet a surprise came last week with two educational reform measures passing the two-thirds threshold.

In 2006 the Florida Supreme Court ruled against the Opportunity Scholarships targeting low income Floridians. The court cited the rarely used Blaine Amendment calling for “uniformity” in school funding. The court held that despite non-uniformity in public education, Opportunity Scholarships violated this provision and relegated 1000 or more recipients of better education back to failing government schools.

But we are hopeful because two good issues will be on the ballot this November. Struggling students in failing schools may have hope again with Opportunity Scholarships.

Floridians have the unique opportunity to show the nation that Opportunity Scholarships will lead to a better education system for all Floridians.

A record pro-school choice vote would give us the opportunity to lead the nation on this important issue.

Peter Swire of the Center for American Progress is urging Congress to enact technical measures that enable users to opt out of online cookies—typically invisible and unobtrusive digital trackers which send information about a user’s behavior back to their hosts. This isn’t a new thing for Swire; previously, he’s complained that current technologies used to block tracking cookies are too difficult. But what’s worth noting here is the Center for American Progress’s own policy on cookies:

The Center for American Progress Action Fund may use session cookies to enhance the experience of users. A session cookie expires when a user closes the browser in which the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s website was viewed. As with all cookies, users can personalize their browser settings to reject session cookies.

In other words, CAP uses cookies to track user behavior and provides no way to opt out other than what a user’s browser currently allows. Nor does CAP go out of its way to warn users of its cookies policy; the text above is located on the privacy policy page, the link to which is in small print stuffed at the bottom of their page design.

Now, it’s true that CAP is not using these cookies to deliver advertising, the main focus of Swire’s concern, but the fact that CAP employs cookies to “enhance the experience of users” at all—and without much in the way of notice—suggests that cookies can and do provide users with real value, and that most web surfers would probably be just fine without noisy, invasive warnings about their presence. Meanwhile, it seems a largely frivolous thing for the federal government to concern itself with: Users who’re particularly concerned about their online privacy will either take security precautions on their own or simpy avoid the net altogether.

Cross-posted at AmSpec.

Senator Hillary Clinton is the queen of pork barrel spending for fiscal year 2009. As The Hill reports, she is asking for $2.3 billion in earmarks for New York at the expense of taxpayers.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has requested nearly $2.3 billion in federal earmarks for 2009, almost three times the largest amount received by a single senator this year…

Clinton’s huge earmark requests have some speculating that the former first lady is preparing for a soft landing should she lose the Democratic primary to Obama and refocus her energy on winning a third Senate term.

Hillary had the audacity to vote for the Senate earmark moratorium bill, while at the same time refusing to give up her addiction to earmarks. The hypocrisy stinks, and the American people will not be happy to hear about how much money they will be sending to New York against their will.

Calls for regulation almost always mean well. but Congress doesn’t tend to make minor tweaks and tiny fixes.  This AP piece in the Politico makes the point well:

If history is a guide, Congresses and presidents don’t just tackle problems. They turn them into programs, departments and new regulatory regimes. Huge buildings stand around the nation’s capital as monuments to past crisis-management efforts.

• The energy crisis of the 1970s after the Arab oil boycott resulted in the creation of the Department of Energy.

• The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks gave birth to the Department of Homeland Security.

• The Great Depression led to a slew of New Deal federal social programs. Many of their successors remain today.

• The Federal Reserve was a response to bank runs in the early 1990s, the Pentagon was a crash construction project to put services fighting World War II under one roof, the Department of Housing and Urban Development owes its 1960s origins to President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty and concern about increasing inner-city crime.

The thing to remember is that regulation doesn’t just make rules. It makes programs and bureaucracy and spending and red tape — the stuff that all of us in Washington are surrounded by every day.  There’s always a cost. As Ronald Reagan famously said: “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”

British Conservatives are considering reducing corporate tax rates. No doubt this would be a good thing for the Brits, but I suspect it would also be a good thing here in the U.S., if only because it would increase the pressure from international competition to lower corporate tax rates.

Here’s what FW Chaiman Dick Armey wrote about corporate tax rates in USA Today earlier this year:

If the country’s high corporate tax rates persist, however, America might risk losing its global competitive edge. Globalization has made tax rates competitive, with each nation vying for businesses. But the United States is falling behind and risks losing out as a result. Corporate tax rates in the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand and even Sweden have all been slashed to 30% or less. The average corporate tax rate in the European Union is 26%. Compare this with that of the United States, where, if state-level taxes are included, the average corporate tax rate stands at an unfriendly 40% — hardly an encouraging number for businesses or investors.

The New York Times takes a stand: Taxes must go higher!  How bold, how tough-minded, how serious, how… utterly, utterly predictable.  The editorial is right that the candidates are all making spending promises they can’t keep, and that the budget has been mismanaged. But the solution here isn’t to make a grim face and say, “taxes must be raised!” Instead, it’s to stop proposing additional spending programs and start proposing substantial reductions — beyond just earmarks — in the programs which already exist. That means things like restructuring our entitlement system and getting rid of corporate welfare and wasteful ag subsidies. But the New York Times won’t have any of that — or at least not when they can sound brave and bold and blah blah blah by regurgitating every liberal’s favorite line: The government needs to take more of your money.

Via Cato’s Jerry Taylor, this wonderful bit on that oh-so-nasty corporate villain, Exxon-Mobil, from a professor of economics at Temple University:

Some presidential candidates have decided that Exxon is a symbol of what is wrong with America. Recent ads complain of Exxon’s 40 billion in profits as if Exxon is some evil entity. First of all, Exxon is not a person, it is millions of owners owning over 5 billion shares in their investment portfolios. Vanguard holds over 160 million shares for its clients, Fidelity over 100 million shares. Taking Exxon’s profits for hair-brained government schemes will just mean millions of people will have to work longer to accumulate their retirement assets. And, doesn’t return on investment count? 40 billion may not represent a particularly good return on the capital invested in the company. Size is not the issue, the percentage return is what counts.

And the government takes over 40 cents a gallon in tax, far more than the profit per gallon made by refiners. And the government doesn’t make any gas for you.

And yet Hillary Clinton continues to argue that government, by adding regulations, is somehow going to make gas prices drop.

Who’s paying for energy caps, like cap and trade, designed to address climate change?  You are.  Here’s CBO director Peter Orszag:

Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away. Indeed, the price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program because they would be the most important mechanism through which businesses and households would be encouraged to make investments and behavioral changes that reduced CO2 emissions.

And yet politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama keep employing cynical attacks on gas prices that are supposedly too high — while at the same time advocating climate change policy that will raise gas prices.

The way to lower gas prices is to reduce taxes on them and expand supply, not tighten the regulatory yoke.

Here’s Ron Utt’s newest report on the state of the subprime slowdown:

Many of these proposals would impose substantial regulations on mortgage market partici­pants to deter future problems. While many of these regulatory efforts are well meant, implementing them would likely limit access to mortgages to only those with high incomes and existing financial assets. In the end, such regulations are unlikely to make the mortgage market any safer and could make it more vulnerable, as the painful experiences of the 1970s and 1980s demonstrate.

We said it before…