With health-care reform passed, the Obama Administration is gearing up to tackle the next item on its agenda: financial reform. The president is expected to push Congress in the coming weeks, hoping to have some progress to show for by the fall when the midterm elections are set to ravish the country’s political landscape. Treasury […]
How an otherwise tempered remark by the president spawns a media fury, left and right.
With capitalism under persecution and “Wall Street greed” continually blamed for plunging the world economy into financial crisis, many bankers rather keep a low profile these days in order to avoid the crowds and pitchforks. Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co., however, is no stranger to the political arena and several […]
St Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania has announced its intention to stop hiring smokers, stating that it hopes to improve the health of its workforce and reduce medical costs. This May, the hospital starts screening prospective employees for nicotine use. Those testing positive will be precluded from the process. St Luke’s is not the first […]
“Regulated markets work best.” The words are coming from Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. After all, “we have traffic lights too,” he argued on Fox Business this Monday. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was set up as an independent government agency in the 1970s with the stated goal of protecting […]
Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin stubbornly persists in his crusade for free-market capitalism though criticism of his “Roadmap for America’s Future” is fierce. In February, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag deconstructed Ryan’s plans, stating that although they address long-term fiscal problems, many lawmakers might find them “objectionable” because, as Politico put it, […]
Surprise, surprise, health-care reform is going to cost corporate America dearly. The Wall Street Journal reports that telephone giant AT&T is among the first businesses to announce multimillion dollar writedowns solely due to the health bill. “The corporate damage rolls in, and Democrats are shocked!” writes the paper. To make health-care reform appear financially responsible, […]
American secretary of state Hillary Clinton returned empty handed from Brazil earlier this month with President Lula da Silva’s government unwilling to support tougher sanctions on Iran. Brazil has long maintained that it wants proof of Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions before it agrees to push for sanctions with the United Nations. Part of the reason […]
With dozens of states lining up to contest the constitutionality of health-care reform as it passed through Congress last week, there is ample reason to take this charge seriously, not treat it as the final breath of a party of sore losers. The states are fighting reform on two counts: first, that the Constitution doesn’t […]
Those who advocate for government controls in medicine cry, “People, not profits.” They say profits are unacceptable in medicine because our health is so important. But it is precisely because our health is so important that profits must be vigorously defended. If quality health care disappears for Americans, it will have been killed by the […]
The treasury secretary misdiagnoses the financial crisis and offers the wrong solutions.
The health-care reform bill must to back to the House for a revote. Democratic lawmakers in the Senate now have the possibility of including a public option after all.
Since the recent Federal Universal Healthcare Legislation has been made into quasi-law, state governments have been taking a stand for their constituents arguing that it is unconstitutional to force citizens to pay a penalty for refusing to participate in the federal health-care program. This includes states that Barack Obama both won and lost in the […]
Change has come to America with the passing of health-care reform earlier this week. The bill has been one of the most divise in recent political history, leaving the left ecstatic and the right in a state of distress. In an article for The New York Times, representing the left, is David Leonhardt, praising the […]
Right-wing commentators have repeatedly opined that the United States Democratic Party is pursuing a radical left-wing agenda that is undermining its appeal with moderate voters. On the left, a similar argument is made against the Republican Party now. On his Fox News show earlier this week, Bill O’Reilly urged Democratic leaders to understand that “the […]
