Health Care’s Obstacle: No Will to Cut
David Leonhardt, The New York Times, Washington
For anyone who cares about medical costs — which is to say anyone who cares about the take-home pay of American families or about the budget deficit — President Obama’s health reform plan is a terribly mixed bag.
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Swiss say no to animal rights referendum
Meat Info, UK
Animal rights activists in Switzerland have failed in a bid to have animals represented by lawyers in a nationwide referendum over the weekend. Swiss Animal Protection had called for the introduction of a nationwide system of state-funded lawyers to represent animals in court in cases of cruelty,
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UPDATED: Activist ‘Green’ Lawyers Billing U.S. Millions in Fraudulent Attorney Fee
Richard Pollock, Pajamas Media, Nation
The activist groups have generated huge revenue streams via the obscure Equal Access to Justice Act. Congressional sources claim the groups are billing for “cookie cutter” lawsuits — they file the same petitions to multiple agencies on procedural grounds, and under the Act, they file for attorney fees even if they do not win the case. Since 1995, the federal government has neither tracked nor accounted for any of these attorney fee payments.
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Capitalism: A Good Word for a Bad Thing
Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society
A lot of countries with relatively low indices of economic freedom (including those ranked as “mostly unfree”) are conventionally regarded as “capitalist,” and referred to as such in neoliberal agitprop comparing them favorably to non-capitalist countries like Cuba. And the talking heads at CNBC and scribblers in the business press commonly refer to “our capitalist system,” even though it’s doesn’t even remotely approximate a free market.
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Tea party gets TN Republican candidates' attention
Chas Sisk, The Tennessean
Tea party activists have helped a Republican win Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat. They have propelled the Texas governor to a third nomination. And they have shaken up races in New York, New Jersey and Virginia.
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Obama 9th Circuit Nominee: Constitution Must Adapt to Changes in the World
Shannon Bream, Fox News, Washington
"Applications of constitutional text and principles must be open to adaptation and change ... as the conditions and norms of our society become ever more distant from those of the Founding generation."
That theme -- that the Constitution's text and principles must be adapted to changes in the world -- repeats throughout the book and raises eyebrows among conservatives.
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Iceland financial crisis: Voters reject debt repayment plan
Christian Science Monitor, London
With more than 98 percent of the ballots from Saturday’s nationwide referendum counted, more than 90 percent of voters have resoundingly rejected a $5.3 billion plan to pay off Britain and the Netherlands for debts spawned by the collapse of an Icelandic Internet bank.
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Obama's Health Care Pitch to Democrats: Trust Me
Charles Babington, Associated Press, Washington
In private pitches to Democrats, President Barack Obama says he will persuade Congress to pass his health care overhaul even if it kills him and even if he has to ask deeply distrustful lawmakers to trust him on a promise the White House doesn't have the power to keep.
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