'Cooking the Frogs'

Basic Economics w/Thomas Sowell Pt.5

"A Steaming Pile of a Statute"

"Put together like Frankenstein, ObamaCare risks coming apart at the seams."

[snip]"Look at any other consequential piece of legislation, and the record is brimming with sober congressional investigations into its legal merits and ramifications. ObamaCare? It was a largely unread, 2,700-page fiend—crafted in secret, fed on deal-making, birthed on late-night votes. The Senate and House judiciary committees didn't hold hearings. The record is bereft of letters from congressional chairmen requesting Justice Department legal analyses of the bill. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus actually ruled out of order an amendment that would have required expedited judicial review of the individual mandate. Asked about the bill's constitutionality, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's only retort was: "Are you serious?"

"The result is a bill that is "in its design, the most profoundly unconstitutional statute in American history; in its execution, one of the most incompetent ones," says David Rivkin, the lawyer who represents the 20 state plaintiffs in the Florida suit. The best example is the individual mandate, the requirement that all Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty..." -KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL, W.S.J (full article here)

And from 'Report on health care spending shows government with 44% share' by K.E. Campbell
"[...] the market that Democrats argue is the most broken is the one in which government meddles most. By its own account, the government already accounts for nearly half of the nation's health care spending, even before ObamaCare takes effect. With that much government intervention, is it any wonder why the healthcare system seems in need of repair? All of that meddling has crowded out market forces and mucked-up this sector like no other in our economy. But what are the Democrats prescribing? An even bigger dose of what's ailing us.[...]" [emphases mine]

Basic Economics w/Thomas Sowell pt.4

Basic Economics w/Thomas Sowell Pt.3

...D'oh !

Basic Economics w/Thomas Sowell Pt.2

Public Employee Pension Bailouts

Rep. Devin Nunes challenges transparency on the enormous public employee pension pyramid scheme.

Basic Economics Revisited With Thomas Sowell

"Bottom line: too many people go to college."

"What Happens When College Is Oversold?"

"...We have created a Potemkin Village -a few truly good universities that come close to meeting the former academic standards, but a vaster melange of institutions that are often neither "higher" nor even "education" in the classical sense, particularly since the typical student spends less than 30 hours a week on academics. Bottom line: too many people go to college."

[snip] "First, the federal financial aid system deserves much of the blame for the current disconnect between labor market realities and the supply of new college graduates. The fact that a Pell Grant recipient with a 2.1 grade point average studying physical education for five years gets the same aid and sometimes more as a 3.9 point GPA physics, engineering or economics student who finishes in four years has caused a disaster, augmenting such modern problems as grade inflation.Second, Toby [Jackson Toby author of 'The Lowering of Higher Education in America: Why Financial Aid Should Be Based on Student Performance' ] points out that declining college admissions standards have contributed to the deterioration of the academic quality of our secondary schools, which do not have to teach much to get kids ready for universities.
"Lastly, I include my own Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2004). I observed that increases in state government spending for higher education is associated with lower -not higher---rates of economic growth. The new CCAP study is consistent with this. We send kids to school for 17-18 years to prepare for a job, say restaurant manager, that a generation ago would have involved 12-13 years of schooling. We are doing less with more. Putting resources into higher education crowds out spending on worthwhile things, like new machinery for businesses or even folks buying new electronic gadgets.
"Read From Wall Street to Wal-Mart: Why College Graduates Are Not Getting Good Jobs and you will understand a little better what Charles Murray, Jackson Toby and I, plus several others have been saying for years: we have oversold college in America." (full article)--( Richard Vedder directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, is Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ohio University and an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.)
John Stossel stokes the issue: