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Last year, Utah Congressman Jim Matheson (D) voted against the healthcare bill. This year, Obama nominated Matheson’s brother to be a federal judge just ahead of the healthcare vote. I wonder how Matheson is going to vote now…

Current crisis notwithstanding, Toyota is the world’s leading automaker. The United States is now third on the list of the world’s top goods exporters (I don’t count the European Union as one).  There are 105 countries with better unemployment percentages than the United States. There are 150 countries with higher growth rates than the USA. The USA is now the world’s top importer. The United States is BY FAR the country with the world’s largest foreign debt. The USA’s current account balance (net trade, dividends, lendings, etc with the rest of the world) is dead last – at minus $380,100,000,000. Spain is next at minus $69,460,000,000.

What is wrong with us? This is not a G.W. Bush thing or a Barack Obama thing. It’s not even a George H.W. Bush thing or a Clinton thing. It’s not a Democratic or Republican or Libertarian thing. It’s not a man thing or a woman thing. This is an American thing.

We Americans are pathetic. We wave our flags and tout our freedom and democratic values, meanwhile we are buying Chinese made toys, German metals, and Indian labor from overseas. The 4^th Reich is well on its way, and we outsource so much of our information technology to India that it’s almost come to the point where we need an interpreter just to hold a conference call.

And then you have China. They are communist. They have one of the world’s worst human rights records. They allow the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people in neighboring countries whom they control just so that they maintain vital supply lines. They hate the USA militarily, and they own us financially. Read the rest

President Obama is going to town on his new healthcare bill, trying to find the best of both the House and Senate bills and merging them together. Obama states that he will include some measures regarding cost control that the Republicans have been asking for, however the specifics of those cost cuts have not yet been released. One would hope that these measures would include tort reform, but at this point nothing is known about that.

There are really three major points to Obama’s plan. One is good, one is bad, and one is ugly. Read the rest

President Obama is working on taking the best from the congressional and senate healthcare plans and merging them into one bill where the intent is to use “reconciliation” to pass through the senate. Never has a measure as significant and life-altering been pushed through using this controversial procedural method.

The president made healthcare his top priority while on the campaign trail, and to his credit he has made good on his promise to keep it a top priority during his first year in office. This has been a difficult path due to extreme Republican opposition. There has even been stiff opposition to the healthcare bills within the Democrats own party.

In what has been termed the “Cornhusker Kickback”, expanded medicare coverage for the state of Nebraska will be subsidized by the federal government. According to John McCain, this subsidy will last “forever”. That’s $45 billion dollars that the taxpayers will be subsidizing so that Senator Nelson (D-NE) votes for the senate healthcare bill.

Nebraska wasn’t the only state to get special consideration. Louisiana, Montana, Connecticut, Vermont, and Florida also received special consideration. While the recipients of these favors all denied that they had anything to do with their votes on healthcare, each of them, in turn, ceased their opposition to the bill. Read the rest

Let’s get in our way-back machines and go back four months. Then, White House economic advisor Christina Romer sat before the Joint Economic Committee and testified that the economic stimulus package would have its “greatest impact on growth” in second and third quarters of 2009.  That by mid-2010 the bill would have run its course.

If you watched Good Morning America this morning you would have learned from Romer that the employment effects were going to grow over time. Vice President Biden added Wednesday that the job creating portion of the will be felt in the coming months.

On CBS’ “The Early Show,” Biden said that the taxpayers have gotten their money’s worth. Read that sentence again. Ok, technically he’s right, because the TAXPAYERS are getting their money’s worth. Unfortunately, tell that to the people who were a part of that incredible rise in unemployment .

The government needs to learn that they cannot spend their way out of a recession. They cannot spend their way towards new jobs. Giving a company a $5000 tax break for creating a $50,000 job isn’t exactly encouraging them to spend an extra $45,000. Read the rest