Folks in rural Alaska are going through some seriously hard times. Due to global warming, their heating bills are approaching $1500/month, leaving little left over for basics…like food. Tip for these folks: move south where it’s warmer and we have food. Seriously. I know you love your native traditions and lifestyle, but you really abandoned those years ago when you adopted the snowmobile. We have plenty to share down here and would welcome you.
Am I really the only one who sees a pattern emerging here? The Dems keep running campaigns against “tax cuts for the rich” but fail to pay their taxes themselves. Guess what, America? You deserve what you voted for. Count me out.
I have to admit it’s a bit hard to feel much sympathy for the United Auto Workers union. They’ve bullied the Big Three for decades, forcing wages, benefits, and pensions up, up, up. Now it’s payback time.
When the UAW exposed the Big Three to insurmountable competitive disadvantages, it cut its own throat.
Yep. Now the UAW is going to have to accept a package that’s comparable to that received by the non-union workers at foreign auto makers’ plants here in the U.S. Domestic makes have already achieved parity in price, and are often cheaper than imports. To remain profitable, they’re going to have to cut costs, which necessarily means less pay for workers.
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It’s not really news that the state of California is flat broke. It’s also not surprising—that’s what happens when you spend more money than you take in. California has some of the most generous social programs in the nation, programs it is increasingly finding it can’t afford. Now reduced-cost and free school lunches are on the block.
“Without quick action by the governor and the Legislature, districts will be forced to make a series of unacceptable choices to dip further into their own bare-bones budgets, serve less nutritious foods and not comply with California’s nationally renowned nutrition standards, or reduce cafeteria staffing,” Supt. Jack O’Connell said in a statement.
I know this will come as a shock to many truly compassionate people, but it’s not the government’s job to feed people, even children. That responsibility falls on parents. According to the Census Bureau (Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005, Current Population Report, P60-231, August 2006, hat tip to The Heritage Foundation) almost two-thirds of America’s poor have cable or satellite TV, a third have cell phones in addition to traditional land lines, and so on. The list of monthly expenditures on what are, in fact luxuries, by the “poor” is quite long. Good grief! My wife and I have never been poor, but we couldn’t justify the cost of a cell phone in our budget until just a couple years ago. But we fed our kids, and so should all parents.
The entitlement mentality is bankrupting California and is pushing the rest of the nation down the same path. It was a renowned Democratic president that once exhorted the American people to ask what we can do for the nation rather than the other way around. It’s a shame we value his popular image more than his words.
This time it’s a chemical tanker. There were, apparently, three security guards onboard, but that was far too small a force to repel the pirates. A NATO helicopter in the area arrived within 15 minutes but was too late to stop the attack.
Someone has the right idea, but it won’t likely be adopted until the cost of paying ransom becomes significantly higher:
The U.S. navy says it is impossible to patrol all 2.5 million miles of dangerous waters. It has called on ship owners to hire private security contractors to protect vulnerable vessels
…after collecting a ransom. Continuing a craven policy that only encourages more piracy.
A recent survey indicates that almost half of America’s primary care physicians would leave medicine if they had the opportunity. The main reason given was “red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.” Per the same article another survey shows less than 2% of medical students are going into primary care. Insurance payments are going down and Medicare/Medicaid just don’t pay. The solution to this problem is obviously not to increase the involvement of insurance and government—the plan proposed by our next president—but to reduce it.
One step in the right direction would be to have patients pay more (or all) of the fees for primary care and to reduce (or eliminate) the share paid by insurance. A number of benefits would immediately accrue. First, physicians would receive more immediate payment (increased cash flow) and be encouraged to stay in primary care. This is crucial to avoiding a critical crisis in our health care system. They’d have less paperwork to deal with and be far less dependent on prompt payment by insurance or Medicare/Medicaid. Second, with patients responsible for a higher share of the payments they’d become more cost conscious, generating competition and driving down costs. Additionally, insurance premiums would come down as the industry moves toward plans that cover mainly, if not exclusively, major medical (e.g., surgery, chemotherapy) rather than primary care.
The current system doesn’t work. The fix is not to add more of the same (by making insurance available to everyone) but to make a fundamental change toward individual responsibility.
Are we even seriously considering bailing out the U.S. auto industry? Their financial woes are largely of their own (and unions’) making. Where does this insanity end? You make bad decisions, you suffer the consequences. Every industry has ups and downs. Even in a strong economy it’s a bad idea to prop up poor management. In a downturn it’s disastrous. What’s next? The mining, timber, electronics, and semiconductor industries are hurting as well. I suppose it’s only logical that we should shell out billions to keep them all going as is instead of forcing them to make tough (i.e., good) decisions and restructure their businesses.
At some point we have to make grown up decisions. If the domestic auto industry completely tanks, there will certainly be a lot of people hurt. We must,however, get away from the welfare mentality and ask what’s good for the country. Corporate welfare is not, particularly when it comes at the cost of continually increasing federal debt and placing that burden on future generations (since ours certainly won’t be able to pay it off).
Back to basics, folks. Personal responsibility. Consequences.