Wednesday, August 29, 2012
In general, I liked Paul Ryan’s speech tonight. But I was troubled by a few things, including his staunch defense of Medicare. “The greatest threat to Medicare is ObamaCare.” That’s true, and it’s a great political tactic to point that out. But is Medicare worth saving for generations to come? Did I just see thousands [...]
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
I didn’t get to watch Chris Christie’s keynote address to the Republican National Convention until this morning. And as I watched it, I thought, “why isn’t this guy at the top of the ticket?” The autobiographical sketch was too long for my taste, but overall, I liked the message: America has a problem, and we [...]
Four years ago, or perhaps six years ago, Paul Ryan was getting some national publicity, at least among political and policy nerds. I went to a Republican Party caucus, mostly to see what it was like. One of the people there was a long-time party volunteer; she had done some work during the Kennedy-Nixon race [...]
This is a dark day for the American ideal of representative democracy within a republican form of government. The Court has said that neither the judiciary nor the Constitution is a barrier to government expanding as fast and as far as politicians think they can get away with. The only barrier now is the political [...]
Monday, February 13, 2012
Should a state-focused think tank care about ObamaCare? How about state legislators? You betcha! That’s why the Minnesota Free Market Institute at the Center of the American Experiment has joined in a legal brief on the question of whether Congress can require you to purchase health insurance. Let’s review a few of the harms that ObamaCare [...]
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
[The following was the lead article on "The Michigan View," an opinion portal of the Detroit News.] The Republican Party battle between the establishment and the tea party took another twist today, with a would-be populist throwing his weight behind the candidate of the establishment, Mitt Romney. Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, has endorsed [...]
Thursday, September 8, 2011
When industry trade groups and companies talk about public policy, they often engage in special pleading, asking for special tax breaks or regulatory preferences. But sometimes their claims do in fact serve the public interest–especially when they call attention to unusual taxes or onerous regulations. Such is the case with the medical hardware industry and [...]
As Henry Payne notes, Mitt Romney has not backed down on his defense of RomneyCare, or as I like to call it, ObamaCare 1.0 That’s disappointing, but I will give Romney credit for framing it in terms of federalism. If I recall correctly, his defense is that it’s not something he would advocate for the whole [...]
Thursday, February 17, 2011
My friends at the North Dakota Policy Council alerted me to yet another arrow that advocates of health care freedom have in their quiver: an interstate health care freedom compact. Coupled with lawsuits and variations on the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, interstate compacts form an interesting and perhaps successful action against an overreaching federal [...]
Thursday, January 20, 2011
As you probably know by now, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). Legally, it means nothing, since it’s only an action of one chamber of Congress. Politically, it shows that Republicans may have gotten the message that the law is unpopular, and filled with problems. The Washington Post called [...]