Filed under: Education, Freedom, Law, News of the Weird | Tags: Bureaucratic Control, Massachusetts, School Bake Sales
Common sense triumphs. Massachusetts state lawmakers overturned the ban on school bake sales. The controversial ban’s guidelines also prohibited pizza, white bread and 2 percent milk. Legislators heard plenty from outraged parents.
The theory is an “epidemic” of childhood obesity is threatening the lives of the country’s youngest generation —and that government bureaucrats must decide what foods children should eat and when. Hardly a day goes by without a new article about some bureaucrats somewhere telling people how to live their lives, or parents how to raise their children.
Filed under: Economy, Health Care, Law | Tags: Gov. Deval Patrick, Legal Challenges, Massachusetts
The legal challenge to ObamaCare has been filed. A half-dozen insurance companies have filed a lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts, seeking to reverse the decision by the insurance commissioner to block double-digit rises in premiums.
Massachusetts residents already pay the highest premiums in the country for their health care. Insurers wanted to raise base rates an average of 8 to 32 percent, and added to that are additional costs calculated according to factors such as the size and age of the workforce.
Governor Patrick insists that all is well, but he invoked his emergency powers to turn down the rate increases. According to the Wall Street Journal Massachusetts insurers “pay $1.12 in benefits for every $1 in premiums. Surely even the most committed anti-corporate liberal can understand that firms cannot survive while losing 12 cents on every dollar.
The reason for the rise in base rates is not that ‘fat cat’ insurance executives aren’t getting rich fast enough, but simply that reality is pointing out the fact that liberals’ bright ideas are driving costs through the roof.
Keep an eye on Massachusetts, for it is a barometer signaling a warning. Pay attention to the UK. They tell us to pay no attention to the “scare stories,” but the so-called scare stories expose how the system fails the most vulnerable. Healthy people usually like “free” health care — it’s how the frail and unhealthy are treated that matters.
Filed under: Economy, Health Care, Politics, Statism | Tags: Massachusetts, Political Earthquake, Scott Brown
This could be a Norman Rockwell painting for the Saturday Evening Post. Pure Americana. However the election turns out tomorrow, this special election represents a severe tremor in the American political scene.
That a race to replace Ted Kennedy, in the bluest of states could be so close is extraordinary. Ted Kennedy, the so-called “Lion of the Senate,” whatever that means, remains the patron saint of the liberals. The turnout of wildly enthusiastic voters in bitter, nasty weather shows that they are rebelling against the last year’s headlong pursuit of partisan liberal governance.
After only 12 months in office, Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have fallen further and faster than any recent president. Congress is despised. Nebraska’s Ben Nelson has dropped under 50 percent in approval ratings, and was boo-ed in a pizza parlor.
The Democrats are attributing their fall to GOP “obstructionism”, though how the GOP can obstruct anything when Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House remains unclear.
Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics lists the political blunders of the Obama White House. #1. A Lack of Bipartisanship. The left claims that the Republicans are too crassly political to compromise. The fact that most policies are decided behind closed doors that exclude Republicans make this a little hard to swallow.
#2. Installing Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as de facto prime ministers. Obama essentially turned everything over to these two, and the result was an enormous effort to reward supporters, relatives and donors, with little concern for spending, the economy or unemployment.
#3. Pursuing an agenda that doesn’t fit the times. The public is concerned about jobs, spending and debt, and the left is pursuing long-term ideological aims such as health care. Voters suspect with some justification that the Democrats are more than a little math-challenged.
The Wall Street Journal has fun pointing out the children of “The Great Society” who are now committee chairmen and their foibles, with pictures so you will recognize them. “They have spent their lives in government and know almost nothing about the private sector or how to grow an economy. They view the Reagan era as an historical aberration, and they have stayed in Washington for decades precisely in wait of this moment to realize 40-years of pent-up policy ambition. They believe this is their 1965, or 1933.”
As the Journal editors pointed out: “A crisis is a terrible thing to exploit.”