IBD Editorials
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Updated: 2 days 21 hours ago
Obamanomics Has Gov't Workers Happy, Others Miserable
Economy: The media's "improving economy" this election year exists only in Democrats' talking points. A new congressional report shows that joblessness is underestimated, while debt skyrockets. Thirty-six pages into the Congressional Budget Office's "Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022," released Tuesday, is the news that "the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1 1/4 percentage points higher
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Congress Warns Holder Over Acorn Payola
Oversight: Thanks to IBD, Congress is finally probing the administration's shakedown of banks over alleged "lending discrimination." At issue is backdoor funding of Acorn clones. Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith fired off a three-page letter to Attorney General Eric Holder warning that his recent punishment of Bank of America's mortgage unit seemed political. In fact, he may have abused his power. As IBD first reported
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Mother Of All Stimuluses
Housing Policy: The listless recovery has forced the president to go back to the drawing board on his mortgage program. His latest tonic is a massively risky stimulus financed on the backs of banks. In a major program expansion, President Obama in his State of the Union proposed authorizing FHA to provide all "responsible" homeowners the chance to refinance their mortgages at today's record-low interest rates. "I'm sending this Congress a plan
Categories: News (Local, Florida, National & Legislative)
Gulf Deepwater Drilling Ban's Hidden Victims
Energy: Small- and medium-size businesses serving Louisiana's energy industry are shedding employees, dipping into personal savings or moving elsewhere to stay afloat. The administration's war on fossil fuels is taking its toll. The federal six-month moratorium on drilling that was issued in May 2010, after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, has been officially lifted, but it might as well still be in effect. The glacial permitting
Categories: News (Local, Florida, National & Legislative)
Rep. Allen West Is Conservative Slam Dunk For Veep
There is no doubt that as important as the state of Florida is for the GOP candidates running for the right to oppose Barack Obama, it will be even more critical in the general election. Since he was first elected to the Senate, we have heard Marco Rubio's name floated time and again as a potential running mate for the Republican nominee. To be sure, Sen. Rubio would be an outstanding candidate and would bring many built-in advantages to the
Categories: News (Local, Florida, National & Legislative)
Economy's Fate Hinges On GOP Winning Control Of Senate
All eyes seem to be on the presidential race -- and, indeed, the defeat of Barack Obama is essential to protecting Americans from still further damage by this most left-wing of presidents. It is time for him to go. But in addition, before the damage can be repaired, before freedom and job-creating prosperity can be fully restored, before genuine tax and entitlement reforms can be enacted, Republicans must succeed in wresting control of the Senate
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Tax Reform Is Popular, But Politically Tough To Pass
Almost everyone favors "tax reform" in the abstract: broaden the tax base by reducing deductions, credits and other tax breaks; and then cut top tax rates. But this sort of sweeping tax reform is usually a political non-starter, and if you want to understand why, take a look at the tax proposals in President Obama's State of the Union address. His recommendations include: a new corporate tax credit to subsidize moving jobs from abroad back to the
Categories: News (Local, Florida, National & Legislative)
Fearful GOP Party Bigwigs Sabotage Gingrich Campaign
The Republican establishment is pulling out all the stops to try to keep Newt Gingrich from becoming the party's nominee for president of the United States -- and some are not letting the facts get in their way. Among the claims going out through the mass media in Florida was that Newt Gingrich "resigned in disgrace" as speaker of the House of Representatives, as a result of unethical conduct involving the diversion of tax-exempt money. Mitt Romney
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California's High-Speed Rail: Going Nowhere, Very Fast
California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Gov. Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system. Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people's money, including among those other people generations yet-to-be born.
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Eric Holder's False Testimony Warrants Impeachment
Scandal: For incompetence alone, Attorney General Eric Holder should resign in the wake of the illegal "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal. But fresh news that he knew of it and is covering it up warrants impeachment. In the latest Friday night document dump -- news released as to minimize its scandalous impact on the White House -- congressional investigators learned that Attorney General Holder knew all along that a gun his Justice Department
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Don't Blame School Food For Obesity
Obesity: Don't blame the on-campus sale of snacks for making kids fat. So says a study of 19,000 middle-schoolers. Shouldn't it be clear by now that good health starts at home? It's time to chill out about the Cheetos, if these or similar guilty pleasures are being sold at your kids school. It's not that they're nutritious. It's just that they're not the dangerous fat bombs that many dietary activists have made them out to be. And another thing:
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When Global Warming Freezes Over
Climate: Global warming alarmists won't give up their campaign to spread fear and backward thinking until an ice bridge stretches from New York to Paris. Science, though, says they should. Al Gore, who invented global warming hysteria, has most recently been found planning a trip to Antarctica where he will surely find evidence that man is overheating the planet. This clearly insecure man who so desperately needs an audience that approves of his
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Media Act As Though Only Republicans Misbehave
Journalism: What's the difference between Republican and Democratic political operatives who end up on the wrong side of the law? In the "unbiased" press, only the Republicans' party ID and connections merit attention. In a blog post on Publius' Forum this week, Warner Todd Huston noted the glaring difference in how the media treated the recent arrests of Zachary Edwards and Tim Russell. Edwards, an Iowa Democrat, was charged last week with trying
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Jan Brewer Didn't Roll Over In Her Obama Photo-Op
The now-famous picture of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer shaking her finger at President Obama is both appropriate and deserved. In America, we don't have rulers entitled to the deference and obsequiousness other countries show to their kings; our elected officials are ordinary citizens whom we are free to criticize. Obama apparently took offense at the way Gov. Brewer described her meeting with the president in the Oval Office. She said he had been
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California Issues Clown Car Mandate
Green Politics: Golden State regulators have passed sweeping emission standards requiring one in seven new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. What can go wrong? Plenty, for if we've learned anything in recent years, it's that industrial policy and telling consumers what they need and must have vs. what they want
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Reports Of Capitalism's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
Klaus Schwab, a German academic and founder of the World Economic Forum, recently proclaimed the death of capitalism as we know it -- a curious critique coming from the head of an organization whose motto finds "entrepreneurship is in the global public interest." "Capitalism, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us," Schwab declared at the most recent installment of his globalist gathering in Davois, Switzerland, adding that the
Categories: News (Local, Florida, National & Legislative)
'Mack Plan' Cuts Pennies To Slash Trillions In Budget
Members of Congress often over-simplify complex issues and over-complicate simple issues. This rhetorical jujitsu allows them, as Oscar Wilde once put it, to "sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground." Some members of Congress, however, still believe in speaking candidly. Consider the example set by Rep. Connie Mack of Florida. Mack suggests the answer to the federal government's deficit spending problem is ... reduce deficit spending.
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Flawed GOP Candidates Prompt Question: Is This it?
On Saturday night, at precisely 9:19 and 30 seconds, my iPhone, my iPad, my computer and, for all I know, my toaster were informed that Herman Cain had endorsed Newt Gingrich. The ping-ping of the devices suggested that something momentous had happened -- alerts from both the Washington Post and the New York Times -- but in fact it was just additional evidence that the Republican Party has become a circus: One clown endorsed another. It's hard to
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Yet Another Obama-Favored Green Company Goes Bankrupt
Energy: In yet another "Solyndra," a car battery maker that got $118 million in stimulus funds has declared bankruptcy. Once again, when this administration picks corporate winners, the taxpayers become losers. A year ago, Vice President Joe Biden toured the Ener1 Inc. battery factory in Greenfield, Ind., and viewed a "THINK City" electric car that uses Ener1 batteries. Ener1's employees "will surely benefit from the three-part plan that Vice
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Obama Tosses Left A Bone With Anti-Bank Witch Hunt
Politics: President Obama has unveiled a new task force to "investigate" America's banks. But he's just pinning blame for bad economic choices on the victims of job-killing mandates, while throwing a bone to his political base. Nobody was happier than the leftists of MoveOn.org when the president announced at his State of the Union address that he'd ask Attorney General Eric Holder to form a special unit of federal prosecutors and state attorneys
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