Showing posts with label The Wall Street Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Wall Street Journal. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Interesting Development...

June 24, 2015 Donald Trump , Gov. Jeb Bush 0 Comments
Trump Surges in Popularity In N.H., Taking Second Place in Suffolk Poll

Dominick Reuter/Reuters
By Reid J. Epstein, Jun. 23, 2015, The Wall Street Journal

He’s dismissed by the political professionals, but there is no denying that the appetite forDonald Trump among Republican primary voters is real.

The New York developer and reality television star is second among 2016 presidential candidates in a new Suffolk University poll of New Hampshire Republicans – behind only former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The poll of 500 likely GOP presidential primary voters found 14% back Mr. Bush. Mr. Trump is right behind at 11%. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio come next, with 8% and 7%, respectively. The poll tested 19 GOP candidates – a rare survey that included ultra-longshots like Mark Everson and former Govs. Bob Ehrlichand Jim Gilmore.

More: www.wsj.com

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Saturday, June 6, 2015

Chock Full 'O Lefty Operatives

June 06, 2015 Clinton Foundation , Kimberly Strassel 1 Comments
The Clinton ‘Charity’ Begins At Home 

By Kimberly Strassel, Jun. 4, 2015, Wall Street Journal

The scandal of the century at the IRS was that agency’s secret targeting of conservative nonprofits. Perhaps a close second is the scandal of what the IRS hasn’t been investigating: the Clinton Foundation.

The media’s focus is on Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, and whether she took official actions to benefit her family’s global charity. But the mistake is starting from the premise that the Clinton Foundation is a “charity.” What’s clear by now is that this family enterprise was set up as a global shakedown operation, designed to finance and nurture the Clintons’ continued political ambitions. It’s a Hillary super PAC that throws in the occasional good deed.

That much is made obvious by looking at the foundation’s employment rolls. Most charities are staffed by folks who have spent a lifetime in nonprofits, writing grants or doing overseas field work. The Clinton Foundation is staffed by political operatives. It has been basically a parking lot for Clinton campaign workers—a comfy place to draw a big check as they geared up for Hillary’s presidential run.

Read the full story: www.wsj.com

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Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Time for a study on the whereabouts of that missing free lunch?

June 03, 2015 Newsmax , Obamacare 0 Comments
WSJ: Worried State Officials Met in Secret on Obamacare Subsidies

By Courtney Coren, Jun. 2, 2015, Newsmax

A secret meeting was held in early May with state officials from around the country to discuss the possible fallout from the upcoming Supreme Court decision over Obamacare subsidies and what to expect if they have to begin operating health insurance exchanges on their own.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the state officials met for 24 hours at the O'Hare International Airport's Hilton hotel in Chicago. The conclusion from the meeting was that the possible options are unworkable.

The Supreme Court is expected to release its decision this month on the King v. Burwell case, which challenges language in the healthcare law that says that subsidies are only supposed to come from exchanges created by the states.

When Obamacare was being implemented, 34 states did not establish their own exchanges, leaving residents in those states with no choice but to use the federal marketplace set up on HealthCare.gov to shop for health insurance if they were in need of subsidies.

If the high court rules that healthcare subsidies must come through the states, the residents will likely lose their health insurance, and health insurance premiums will also likely spiral, the Journal said.

Read the full story: www.newsmax.com

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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Unsustainable

February 04, 2015 Debt , Joe Zumburn 0 Comments
The Legacy of Debt: Interest Costs Poised to Surpass Defense and Nondefense Discretionary Spending 

By Joe Zumburn, Feb. 3, 2015, Wall Street Journal

The U.S. has come a long way since the days of trillion-dollar deficits, just a few years ago. The White House projects 2016 will have the smallest budget deficit in eight years. Yet the budgetary impact of the debt that’s been accumulated–$18 trillion in total, $13 trillion of that owed to the public–will reassert itself.

Currently, the government’s interest costs are around $200 billion a year, a sum that’s low due to the era of low interest rates. Forecasters at the White House and Congressional Budget Office believe interest rates will gradually rise, and when that happens, the interest costs of the U.S. government are set to soar, from just over $200 billion to nearly $800 billion a year by decade’s end.

Read the full story:  www.blogs.wsj.com

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Sunday, December 7, 2014

"...second rescue attempt in as many weeks"?

December 07, 2014 al Qaeda , American Hostage 0 Comments
American Hostage Luke Somers Killed in Rescue Attempt

Julian E. Barnes and Maria Abi-Habib, Dec. 6, 2014, Wall Street Journal

An American and a South African held hostage for more than a year by al Qaeda’s Yemen branch died after a raid by U.S. Special Operations forces just after midnight Saturday, in the second rescue attempt in as many weeks.

Luke Somers, 33 years old, was mortally shot by militants during the raid, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday. South African teacher Pierre Korkie also was shot during the raid, according to a charity that had been trying to help negotiate his release. Both hostages died later after U.S. forces evacuated them from the building where they were held, U.S. and Yemeni officials said.

Read more: online.wsj.com


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Monday, September 29, 2014

Credibility gap

September 29, 2014 Iraq , ISIS 0 Comments
WSJ: Poll Shows Americans Expect U.S. To Send Troops To Fight Islamic State

By Reid Epstein, Sept. 28, 2014, WJS.com

Nearly three-quarters of Americans don’t believe President Barack Obama’s assertion that the country won’t use ground troops to fight the militant group Islamic State in Iraq or Syria, the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg survey finds.

The poll shows a substantial lack of trust in Mr. Obama’s repeated assertions that American military efforts will be limited to airstrikes and other efforts that don’t include ground troops. Some 72% of registered voters surveyed said U.S. ground troops eventually will be deployed against Islamic State’s fighters. Only 20% said they believe the U.S. won’t end up using military ground forces.

The Obama administration has cautioned that the battle against Islamic State won’t be won quickly. It has said it will proceed with an international coalition and that the U.S. won’t commit ground troops to combat.

“I want to be clear: The American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and won’t have a combat mission,” Mr. Obama said Sept. 17. “As your commander in chief, I won’t commit you and the rest of our armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq.”

Read the full story:  www.blogs.wsj.com

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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Some pay less, others a lot more

September 27, 2014 Affordable Care Act , Chris Jacobs 0 Comments
ICYMI: WSJ--How Affordable Is the Affordable Care Act?

By Chris Jacobs, Jul. 1, 2014, Wsj.com

The Department of Health and Human Services recently released a report making the case for how Obamacare’s premium subsidies have made health insurance more affordable for individuals. But those who do not qualify for federal subsidies appear to find exchange coverage anything but affordable.

As some have noted, a separate HHS report released in May highlighted the fact that during the 2014 open-enrollment period, 13.5 million individuals were found eligible to purchase coverage on state or federal exchanges. Of these, about 8.7 million qualified for federal insurance subsidies. That means nearly 4.8 million individuals were not eligible for subsidies. And while more than three-quarters of the 8.7 million who did qualify for subsidies (or 6.6 million) selected an insurance plan, only 1.2 million of those who did not qualify for subsidies selected a plan.

In other words, only about one-quarter of those not receiving federal insurance subsidies decided that the options offered were worth selecting a plan. It’s possible that even fewer decided to pay their first month’s premium. (Worth monitoring as more data become available: Are unsubsidized individuals not paying insurance premiums at greater rates than those receiving federal subsidies?)

Several studies suggest that Obamacare’s package of mandated benefits and other regulations have increased premium levels substantially. Advocates of the Affordable Care Actsay that federal subsidies have made coverage more affordable, but others have argued that using government spending–more than $1 trillion in exchange subsidies and $1.8 trillion in spending on new coverage overall–to mitigate the effects of regulation presents a solution in search of a problem.

Read the full story:  www.wsj.com

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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Brit lectures on how to be black

August 26, 2014 Race Relations , Russell Brand 0 Comments
Russell Brand: WSJ's Riley Sounds White, 'Betraying His Race'



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Monday, May 5, 2014

The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease--Dubious Anti-Fat Science --More junk science?

May 05, 2014 Healthy Eating , Heart Health 0 Comments
By Nina Teicholz, May 2, 2014, The Wall Street Journal

"Saturated fat does not cause heart disease"—or so concluded a big study published in March in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. How could this be? The very cornerstone of dietary advice for generations has been that the saturated fats in butter, cheese and red meat should be avoided because they clog our arteries. For many diet-conscious Americans, it is simply second nature to opt for chicken over sirloin, canola oil over butter.

The new study's conclusion shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with modern nutritional science, however. The fact is, there has never been solid evidence for the idea that these fats cause disease. We only believe this to be the case because nutrition policy has been derailed over the past half-century by a mixture of personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias.

Our distrust of saturated fat can be traced back to the 1950s, to a man named Ancel Benjamin Keys, a scientist at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Keys was formidably persuasive and, through sheer force of will, rose to the top of the nutrition world—even gracing the cover of Time magazine—for relentlessly championing the idea that saturated fats raise cholesterol and, as a result, cause heart attacks.

This idea fell on receptive ears because, at the time, Americans faced a fast-growing epidemic. Heart disease, a rarity only three decades earlier, had quickly become the nation's No. 1 killer. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in 1955. Researchers were desperate for answers.

As the director of the largest nutrition study to date, Dr. Keys was in an excellent position to promote his idea. The "Seven Countries" study that he conducted on nearly 13,000 men in the U.S., Japan and Europe ostensibly demonstrated that heart disease wasn't the inevitable result of aging but could be linked to poor nutrition.

Critics have pointed out that Dr. Keys violated several basic scientific norms in his study. For one, he didn't choose countries randomly but instead selected only those likely to prove his beliefs, including Yugoslavia, Finland and Italy. Excluded were France, land of the famously healthy omelet eater, as well as other countries where people consumed a lot of fat yet didn't suffer from high rates of heart disease, such as Switzerland, Sweden and West Germany. The study's star subjects—upon whom much of our current understanding of the Mediterranean diet is based—were peasants from Crete, islanders who tilled their fields well into old age and who appeared to eat very little meat or cheese.

As it turns out, Dr. Keys visited Crete during an unrepresentative period of extreme hardship after World War II. Furthermore, he made the mistake of measuring the islanders' diet partly during Lent, when they were forgoing meat and cheese. Dr. Keys therefore undercounted their consumption of saturated fat. Also, due to problems with the surveys, he ended up relying on data from just a few dozen men—far from the representative sample of 655 that he had initially selected. These flaws weren't revealed until much later, in a 2002 paper by scientists investigating the work on Crete—but by then, the misimpression left by his erroneous data had become international dogma.

In 1961, Dr. Keys sealed saturated fat's fate by landing a position on the nutrition committee of the American Heart Association, whose dietary guidelines are considered the gold standard. Although the committee had originally been skeptical of his hypothesis, it issued, in that year, the country's first-ever guidelines targeting saturated fats. The U.S. Department of Agriculture followed in 1980.

Other studies ensued. A half-dozen large, important trials pitted a diet high in vegetable oil—usually corn or soybean, but not olive oil—against one with more animal fats. But these trials, mainly from the 1970s, also had serious methodological problems. Some didn't control for smoking, for instance, or allowed men to wander in and out of the research group over the course of the experiment. The results were unreliable at best.

But there was no turning back: Too much institutional energy and research money had already been spent trying to prove Dr. Keys's hypothesis. A bias in its favor had grown so strong that the idea just started to seem like common sense. As Harvard nutrition professor Mark Hegsted said in 1977, after successfully persuading the U.S. Senate to recommend Dr. Keys's diet for the entire nation, the question wasn't whether Americans should change their diets, but why not? Important benefits could be expected, he argued. And the risks? "None can be identified," he said.

Read the full story:  www.online.wsj.com

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Monday, April 14, 2014

Hirsi Ali: What I Would've Said At Brandeis: 'We Need To Make Our Universities Temples...Of Truly Critical Thinking

April 14, 2014 Ayaan Hirsi Ali , Brandeis University 0 Comments
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Apr. 10, 2014, The Wall Street Journal

On Tuesday, after protests by students, faculty and outside groups, Brandeis University revoked its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree at its commencement ceremonies in May. The protesters accused Ms. Hirsi Ali, an advocate for the rights of women and girls, of being "Islamophobic." Here is an abridged version of the remarks she planned to deliver.

One year ago, the city and suburbs of Boston were still in mourning. Families who only weeks earlier had children and siblings to hug were left with only photographs and memories. Still others were hovering over bedsides, watching as young men, women, and children endured painful surgeries and permanent disfiguration. All because two brothers, radicalized by jihadist websites, decided to place homemade bombs in backpacks near the finish line of one of the most prominent events in American sports, the Boston Marathon.

All of you in the Class of 2014 will never forget that day and the days that followed. You will never forget when you heard the news, where you were, or what you were doing. And when you return here, 10, 15 or 25 years from now, you will be reminded of it. The bombs exploded just 10 miles from this campus.

Read the full story: www.online.wsj.com
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Thursday, April 3, 2014

'Evil' Charles Koch: 'I'm Fighting To Restore a Free Society'--But 'Collectivists Engage In Character Assassination'

April 03, 2014 Charles G. Koch , Daniel Patrick Moynihan 0 Comments
Charles G. Koch
By Charles G. Koch, Apr. 2, 2014, The Wall Street Journal
I have devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people to improve their lives. It is those principles—the principles of a free society—that have shaped my life, my family, our company and America itself.
Unfortunately, the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation's own government. That's why, if we want to restore a free society and create greater well-being and opportunity for all Americans, we have no choice but to fight for those principles. I have been doing so for more than 50 years, primarily through educational efforts. It was only in the past decade that I realized the need to also engage in the political process.

A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value. In a truly free society, any business that disrespects its customers will fail, and deserves to do so. The same should be true of any government that disrespects its citizens. The central belief and fatal conceit of the current administration is that you are incapable of running your own life, but those in power are capable of running it for you. This is the essence of big government and collectivism.

Read the full story:  www.wsj.com


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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

"Millennials, Once a Democratic Stronghold, Are Going Wobbly" --Not just "wobbly," but "wobbly" unemployed.

March 26, 2014 Democratic Party , GOP 0 Comments
By Neil King Jr., Mar. 26, 2014, The Wall Street Journal
Here’s a question that will be chewed over a lot as the two parties rumble toward 2016: Are young voters up for grabs?
The youth vote not long ago appeared to belong to the Democratic Party, but that grip has weakened since Barack Obama twice racked up huge margins among younger voters. Less clear is whether the GOP can pick up the slack.
Among those eyeing 2016 bids, both Hillary Clinton and Republican Sen. Rand Paul have recently made pitches to young voters. Mrs. Clinton hit on education and the troubles in the job market; Sen. Paul appealed to queasiness over government surveillance. These early skirmishes will get a lot louder over the next two years.
It would be a stretch to say millennials are warming to the GOP. Just a quarter of those under 35 said they had positive feelings toward the Republican Party in the last Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, which came out two weeks ago.
At the same time, millennials aren’t exactly in love with the Democratic Party. Soon after Mr. Obama took office in 2009, nearly half looked favorably on the Democrats. That number has since slipped to 36%.
Younger voters have also soured on Mr. Obama.
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