Fox News Forum
by John R. Lott, Jr.
06/17/09
President Obama is selling government health insurance to the American people as the way to save money. That government health insurance will merely provide competition to keep private insurance companies from gouging their customers. Indeed, Obama even claimed on Monday, in a speech before the American Medical Association, that a government insurance system is essential to holding down medical costs: ‘if we fail to act, federal spending on Medicaid and Medicare will grow over the coming decades … and impose a vicious choice of either unprecedented tax hikes, overwhelming deficits, or drastic cuts in our federal and state budgets.’ There are a couple of problems with Obama’s argument. Government is just not known for its cost effectiveness or quality. And the way for government enterprises to survive is with massive taxpayer subsidies and charging customers prices below the firm’s actual costs, driving more efficient private firms out of business...
http://tinyurl.com/ml6dln
Obama’s impossible healthcare reform promises
Foundation for Economic Education
by Sheldon Richman
06/19/09
In his drive to ‘reform’ health care — that is, redesign 18 percent of the U.S. economy — Barack Obama is clearly terrified that his mission will crash and burn if people think it will cost them their freedom of choice in doctors and insurance. He is surely convinced that this is what scuttled the Clinton plan in 1993 (he’s right), and he is determined not to let it happen again. So he must persuade us that this freedom will be safe under his plan...
http://tinyurl.com/nqambe
Obama’s false financial reform
The Nation
by William Greider
06/19/09
The most disturbing thing about Barack Obama’s call for financial reform was the way in which the president falsified our predicament. … ‘A culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street,’ Obama explained. ‘And a regulatory system basically crafted in the wake of a 20th century economic crisis … was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy.’ That is not what happened, to put it charitably. … The regulatory system was not overwhelmed by historic forces. It was systematically gutted and dismantled by the government in Washington at the behest of the banking interests...
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090706/greider2
Does Obama plan for Wall Street measure up?
Robert Reich's Blog
by Robert B. Reich
06/19/09
In a word: No. The plan doesn’t stop stop bankers from making huge, risky bets with other peoples’ money. It does increase capital requirements and oversight, but it doesn’t require bankers to take their pay in long-term stock options or warrants, and it doesn’t even hint that banks should go back to being partnerships instead of publicly-held corporations … Nor does the plan do anything to prevent banks from becoming too big to fail. It doesn’t hint at a return to the days before the late 1990s when commercial banks were separate entities from investment banks...
http://tinyurl.com/ld4q64
Open letter to Congress
Intellectual Conservative
by Jack Ward
06/19/09
The economy is in shambles, unemployment is increasing, the deficit is rising, the debt is outrageous, and Congress is spending money like it is Monopoly money. President Obama promised that the stimulus spending would create up to 4 million jobs over the next two years. Assuming that the promise could be fulfilled, with the rising unemployment it will take 4 million jobs to break even. But the economy doesn’t seem to be Congress’s primary concern. Congress is working on legislation that will increase energy and health care costs — exactly what the economy doesn’t need...
http://tinyurl.com/lt85hq
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=financial+reform
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=healthcare
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=health+insurance
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=taxpayer
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Main+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=unemployment
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=John+R.+Lott
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Sheldon+Richman
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Greider
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Reich+Blog
