Ted Nugent reminds us that freedom isn’t free this Memorial Day weekend.

Find the Memorial Day service at the Tomb of Unknowns on television and watch it with your children. Tell your children that many heroes have paid for their freedom with their lives. Remember U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Eric MacRae, who left behind a wife and children. Say a prayer for his family. Say a prayer for all the fallen warriors and the families they left behind.

Read the whole thing.

Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday that every member of the state legislature in Wisconsin received an email that said “we’re going to put a bullet in your head. We know where you and your family live.”

Johnson, speaking in Washington, D.C. at America’s Future Foundation’s annual gala, said that at the height of Gov. Scott Walker’s fight against the unions, every member of the state legislature was threatened.

“The story really wasn’t told properly — we had every member of the state legislature get an email that said, ‘We’re going to put a bullet in your head. We know where you and your family lives.’ Now, that wasn’t reported very well because I guess that’s not newsworthy when it’s a union thug making a threat against a conservative.”

Johnson told The Daily Caller that the high level of intimidation and political divisiveness in Wisconsin is due to Walker’s fight to reign in spending pushed by public sector unions.

“Scott Walker did a hard thing — he actually solved a problem, and he did it in a way that recognized and addressed one of the growing problems here, and that is really the power of the public sector unions and, I would say, the unholy alliance between elected officials that get supported by those unions and the unions themselves,” Johnson told TheDC.

You can watch the video and read the rest of the story at The Daily Caller.

Can you imagine if Tea Party people were going around issuing death threats against Democrats? We’d never hear the end of it. But this, not a peep.

Sharp change in present economic policy is an absolute necessity. The problems of inflation and slow growth, of falling standards of living and declining productivity, of high government spending but an inadequate flow of funds for defense, of an almost endless litany of economic ills, large and small, are severe, they are not intractable. Having been produced by government policy, they can be redressed by a change in policy.

The Task Force reports that you commissioned during the campaign are now available. They contain an impressive array of concrete recommendations for action. More than that, the able people who served on the Task Forces are available to provide further detail and backup information to you or your designees. We all want to help and you can count on enthusiastic and conscientious effort.

Your Coordinating Committee has reviewed the Task Force reports. With due allowance for some differences in view about particulars and relative importance, we have found that they offer a substantial base for action by you and the team you assemble. We focus here on guiding principles, on priorities and linkages among policy areas, and on the problem of getting action.

You have identified in the campaign the key issues and lines of policy necessary to restore hope and confidence in a better economic future:

• Reestablish stability in the purchasing power of the dollar.

• Achieve a widely-shared prosperity through real growth in jobs, investment, and productivity.

• Devote the resources needed for a strong defense, and accomplish the goal of releasing the creative forces of entrepreneurship, management, and labor by:

• Restraining government spending.

• Reducing the burden of taxation and regulation.

• Conducting monetary policy in a steady manner, directed toward eliminating inflation.

This amounts to emphasis on fundamentals for the full four years, as the key to a flourishing economy. (Read More)

It could have been written yesterday, but it wasn’t. It’s an excerpt of a memo written to President-elect Ronald Reagan in November, 1980 by his team of economic advisers. It’s long, but worth reading because there’s some good advice there (which Reagan took) that applies today. If President Obama wins reelection in 163 days all hope is lost. But what if Mitt Romney wins? Is there reason for optimism? According to The Wall Street Journal there is.

One lesson is how similar current economic problems are to those Reagan faced when he took office. The late-1970s were also a time of great economic anxiety fed by runaway government. Spending was out of control, taxes were too high, regulation too burdensome and energy too expensive. The big difference is that inflation today is lower, though food and energy prices have climbed fast until recently.

But the cause for optimism is that if the problems are similar, the solutions can also be similar. The memo is a tacit rebuttal of the White House talking point that today’s Republicans are more radical than Reagan. Today’s policy debates are remarkably similar to those 32 years ago. The Gipper’s advisers wanted to reduce the cost of capital by cutting capital-gains taxes, for example, while Jimmy Carter thought like Mr. Obama that taxes don’t much matter to economic growth.

A second lesson is the imperative for consistent policy that focuses on the long term: “The need for a long-term point of view is essential to allow for the time, the coherence, and the predictability so necessary for success.” (Read More)

I’m thinking that even without the financial crisis in 2008, the economy would have slowed down after Democrats took control of Congress and promised to end the Bush tax cuts which are set to expire at the end of this year. So not only is it imperative that we elect a Republican to the White House, we also need the Senate and House bring some fiscal sanity back to Washington, DC and see the economy start growing again. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

Well, this ought to be awkward. President Obama is going to have to take a few minutes off from bashing his predecessor. According to The Caucus, he’ll be hosting George W. and Laura Bush at the White House for the unveiling of a presidential portrait.

The ceremony on Thursday follows a longstanding tradition of welcoming back former presidents and first ladies for the hanging of their portraits in the White House. Each time a new painting is added, those of other recent presidents are rotated to different spaces in the main floor of the White House and up the large staircase. The first lady paintings are generally hung on the floor below.

Such ceremonies often bring together current and former presidents with rivalries, grudges or awkward relationships. But the timing of this unveiling is particularly delicate as Mr. Obama uses Mr. Bush as a foil on the campaign trail against former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, his presumptive Republican challenger. Although Mr. Obama generally does not mention Mr. Bush by name, he often says Mr. Romney wants to replicate the former president’s agenda but “on steroids.”

Who knows, it may not be all that awkward. Bush is pretty easy going. It should be fine, unless Obama tries to get in a dig or two. If he does, Bush can say he eagerly looks forward to welcoming Obama into the former presidents club.

The subject came up on CNN when DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz debated The Blaze’s Will Cain. DWS was asked why Obama should accept campaign contributions from private equity executives. She fired back that it’s like comparing apples to coconuts. So Cain asked her to compare “apples to apples” and explain how a government reorganization resulting in layoffs is somehow different than when it happens with private capital. Of course, DWS refused to answer the question, and tried to change the subject. Cain asked her to answer the question and she replied “You asked me a question, and I’m going to answer the question. I may not answer it the way you want me to.” But she didn’t answer the question, she changed the subject. Watch:

First of all, there are a few methodological problems with Nutting’s analysis — especially the beginning and the end point.

Nutting basically takes much of 2009 out of Obama’s column, saying it was the “the last [year] of George W. Bush’s presidency.” Of course, with the recession crashing down, that’s when federal spending ramped up. The federal fiscal year starts on Oct. 1, so the 2009 fiscal year accounts for about four months of Bush’s presidency and eight of Obama’s.

In theory, one could claim that the budget was already locked in when Obama took office, but that’s not really the case. Most of the appropriations bills had not been passed, and certainly the stimulus bill was only signed into law after Obama took office.

Bush had rescued Fannie and Freddie Mac and launched the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which depending on how you do the math, was a one-time expense of $250 billion to $400 billion in the final months of his presidency. (The federal government ultimately recouped most of the TARP money.) So if you really want to be fair, perhaps $250 billion of that money should be taken out of the equation — on the theory that it would have been spent no matter who was president.

Nutting acknowledges that Obama is responsible for some 2009 spending but only assigns $140 billion for reasons he does not fully explain.

On the other end of his calculations, Nutting says that Obama plans to spend $3.58 trillion in 2013, citing the Congressional Budget Office budget outlook. But this figure is CBO’s baseline budget, which assumes no laws are changed, so this figure gives Obama credit for automatic spending cuts that he wants to halt.

The correct figure to use is the CBO’s analysis of the president’s 2013 budget, which clocks in at $3.72 trillion.

Read the whole thing. Kessler gave Team Obama three Pinocchios.

Now a soon-to-be published biography by David Maraniss entitled “Barack Obama: The Story” gives more detail on Obama’s pot-smoking days, complete with testimonials from young Barry Obama’s high school buddies, a group that went by the name “the Choom Gang.” Choom was slang for smoking marijuana.

Maraniss portrays the teenage Obama as not just a pot smoker, but a pot-smoking innovator.

“As a member of the Choom Gang,” Maraniss writes, “Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends.”

The first Obama-inspired trend: “Total Absorption” or “TA”.

“TA was the opposite of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled,” explains Maraniss. Here’s how it worked: If you exhaled prematurely when you were with the Choom Gang, “you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around.”

As one of Obama’s old high school buddies tells Maraniss: “Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated.”

If only he had the same philosophy about taxpayer money that he used to have about weed, we’d be in much better shape.

Buzz Feed has more of a photo essay that’s a bit more fun.

So nothing inspires more angst than when that same Obama stumbles, as he has leaving the gate in 2012.

That’s the unmistakable reality for Democrats since Obama officially launched his reelection campaign three weeks ago. Obama, not Mitt Romney, is the one with the muddled message — and the one who often comes across as baldly political. Obama, not Romney, is the one facing blowback from his own party on the central issue of the campaign so far — Romney’s history with Bain Capital. And most remarkably, Obama, not Romney, is the one falling behind in fundraising.

To top it off, Vice President Joe Biden has looked more like a distraction this month than the potent working-class weapon Obama needs him to be.

Not only did they point out Team Obama’s struggles, they also noted how Mitt Romney is getting better at staying on message now that the Republican primary is effectively over.

Romney has surprised his many critics with a clear and consistent focus on the economy, hands down the issue of the race. After months of missteps, the guy looks steady and disciplined again, much like he did in the early days of the GOP primaries. By playing to his strength, he has masked his weaknesses — for now. (Read More)

Well, I’m sure Politico will be there to help Team O with that last part.

***

The No Growth Zero Sum Pie

HasAmericareached the stage where we all stand in a circle and take turns holding a constantly shrinking dollar?

If our Dear Leader and the Daley led Outfit wins re-election next year perhaps a few more people will see the hand writing on the wall.  Though the Constitution is undeniably the greatest work to come from the hand of man, though it provided the safe haven of freedom for generations it is today a dead letter.  If after the coming November election the Democrats tax storm sweeps us down the economic drain and inflation kicks in those dazed by the success of theChicagosystem in re-electing the first anti-American president then the silent majority will be ready to hear the watchmen on the walls.

We have sold our birthright for a bowl of entitlements.  We have stood silently by while corrupt politicians have looted our posterity of opportunity and hope.  We have allowed our Federal Government to assume powers never delegated to them by the Constitution.  We have spent the revenues of the future for a present that no longer resembles the last best hope of mankind.  We have followed the pipers from the Land of the free and the home of the brave onto the road to serfdom and we are about to learn that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

While our nation wallows in the Great Recession which our Progressive leaders and their water boys in the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media keep trying to tell us is over Chinakeeps eating our lunch.  Starting with NAFTA both Democrats and Republicans have agreed to free trade deals that aren’t free and have suppressed our trade.  For these economic geniuses who think they can centrally plan the largest economy in the history of the world let me spell this out slowly and clearly:

• If you buy more than you sell you have a negative balance of trade
• If you spend more than you make you eventually go bankrupt

AND…..

• Everyone else except you seems to know these two simple truths.

Maybe our economic geniuses should try Economics 101.  They want us to accept thatAmericahas become a no growth zero sum pie.  It doesn’t fit their game plan to take their foot off the throat of the economy.  If they did it would roar to life as the liberty and opportunity which is our heritage, and once again prove that free people making free choices is the best way to grow the pie and enrich the people.

A new book calls President Obama an amateur, and at first glance he may appear to be one.  However he does not stand alone.  He is the front man for a triumphant Progressive Movement which has successfully implemented a strategy that has taken more than a century to mature.  Starting in the 1890s they set their sights on education capturing the universities and then training generations of teachers, journalists, and lawyers.  These people have infiltrated every aspect of our lives, dumbing down successive generations while Progressive politicians have worked at getting a majority of the voters addicted to government handouts.  Then in the1960s the Cloward and Piven Strategy was embraced as a way to spend the country into oblivion so that it could be remade in a Progressive image.  Step by step, inch by inch, line upon line these webs have been woven, and as the average American twists and turns trying to find some avenue of escape from the shabby future these want-to-be commissars have planned, all they see is the party line on the major networks telling them everything is coming up roses.

It is time to WAKE UP!  It is time to prepare as if the world we have known will end and expect major dislocations in every aspect of life.  Even an overwhelming defeat for President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the rest of their fellow travelers will only mean this train wreck is slowing down.  The so-called draconian Ryan Budget never gets to a balanced budget for 40 or 50 years.  More than 30 years out the national debt is still growing.  Projections show that by 2025 the interest on the debt alone will begin to consume any hope of getting out of the trick bag they have spent us in to.  Our elected leaders have no plan to reverse the decline. They merely want to manage it in a more orderly fashion.

Each of us must decide what is most important.  Each of us must either prepare for the coming contraction or hit the wall like a crash dummy.

Personally I have decided that family is more important than career, food is more important than convenience, and honor is more important than status.   I have left the tenured halls and headed for the hills.  I have abandoned friends of many years to be surrounded by family.  I have embraced the soil to grow my own food. In other words, I believe I have been to the top of the mountain, I have seen what is coming, and I have taken my own advice.

When I was the Dean of a School of Christian Ministries I used to tell my students to prepare as if there was no Holy Spirit and preach as if there were no notes.  Today I advise my readers, prepare as if the America we have known and loved is about to be transformed before our eyes into a social democracy of European proportions, and live as if there is still hope.

For as long as we believe there is still hope we will not be hopeless.

So we come to the ultimate message: hope in Christ and you will never be disappointed.  All things must pass and only those things done in Christ will last.  All empires fall.  It is our place in History to watch the slow motion fall of a mighty empire: Western Civilization. But if we hold on to what is true, if we stand for what we believe, though a thousand fall on our right and ten thousand fall on our left it will not come upon us.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

What he probably didn’t realize is that conservative bloggers don’t take kindly to attacks on our friends. An attack on one is an attack on all. He wanted to quietly terrorize anyone who wrote about his evil ways through “lawfare.” Little did he know is that he had kicked a bees nest. The Army of Davids has answered the call.

He may have cost one couple their jobs, and forced a family out of their home, but in doing so, he invited a level of scrutiny upon himself that was surely unexpected. There’s now a web page devoted to exposing his evil ways. His deadly deeds may have been scrubbed from Wikipedia, but thanks to big voices like Michelle Malkin and Lee Stranahan, Kimberlin will go on to live in infamy.

***

In the late 1970′s Brett Kimberlin planted bombs all over the town of Speedway Indiana. One of those bombs was in a gym bag placed outside a school. Carl DeLong, a Vietnam War veteran, picked up the bag thinking he would be able to identify the owner and return it. For his trouble he had his leg blown off, his body filled with shrapnel, and an injured wife. DeLong was in so much pain he took his own life a few years later. His widow won a wrongful death suit against Kimberlin, who has not paid up.

The police who investigated the bombings believed Kimberlin planted the bombs to deflect attention from another crime – the cold-hearted murder of the grandmother of a girl he may have molested. They didn’t have enough evidence to charge him for that crime, especially after the victim’s husband died. Eventually, Kimberlin was sentenced to fifty years in prison, but thanks to lax federal parole laws at the time he got out early. The Indy Star covered the events, and their reporting is available online. (Follow that link for one article, and look to the left of the page for a number of other articles they ran at the time.)

Ace of Spades summed up one story, the one where they recounted how Kimberlin put out hits on his enemies.

But remember, this is the guy who is being “harassed” and even viciously “decked” by bloggers.

It’s not this guy himself who’s causing the problems– no, not the guy who had a list of witnesses against him to be killed.

Not the guy who tried to pay off another convict to plant a bomb, of the exact same design as his own bomb, so that he could argue that cops “got the wrong man” for the Speedway Bomber.

No, it’s this guy who is the innocent victim of cruel right-wingers conspiring to besmirch his good reputation with smears.

While in prison Kimberlin boned up on the law, and claimed to have sold drugs (he was also convicted of drug dealing) to Dan Quayle. Those claims caught the attention of the left. Fox News documented his post-parole activities in 2010.

Now, 22 years later, Kimberlin has taken that lesson and made unfounded accusations a profession of sorts. Using two popular leftist blogs, the 56-year-old from Bethesda, Md., has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public and left-leaning foundations by promising to put conservatives he disagrees with in jail, often with offers of large rewards. So far — without success — he has called for the arrest of Karl Rove, Andrew Breitbart, Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue, Massey Energy Chairman Don Blankenship and other high-profile public figures.

A review of tax filings for Kimberlin’s blogs, “Velvet Revolution” and “Justice Through Music,” raises troubling questions about whether his “nonprofit” operations are dedicated to public activism — or are just a new facade for a longtime con artist.

Though neither website publicly reveals Kimberlin’s role, tax and corporate documents show that he is one of four directors who incorporated the Velvet Revolution, and that he is the registered agent for the tax-exempt, non-stock company, which is registered at his mother’s house in Bethesda. In 2008, the last year for which tax records are available, Velvet Revolution took in $83,000 in gifts and contributions.

Kimberlin is also one of two incorporators of Justice Through Music, as well as a $19,500-a-year employee of the non-profit, whose purpose is to “shed light on some of the injustices of the world through music” and which took in more than $550,000 in contributions in 2008.

What those who view the blogs — and those who donate to them — aren’t told is who Kimberlin is and where he’s been. And that is a twisted story, indeed. (Read More)

Kimberlin is making a mockery of the legal system. Via Absolute Moral Authority, just search him on Google Scholar. It’s one lawsuit after another. Who do you think is paying for all of this litigation? We, the taxpayers are, while Kimberlin is funded by liberal groups like the Tides Foundation, John Kerry’s wife and Barbara Streisand, and his “non-profits” have tax-exempt status. Lee Stranahan has a list of his more recent activity, as well as some of his political connections, all Democrats, I might add.

***

The national media has remained pretty silent on this matter. But Ann Coulter tweeted one of my posts, and maybe now that Michelle Malkin took the time to write about it something will happen. My prior posts have links to all of the bloggers I’ve found who have written about this saga to date, and here’s the list Malkin published.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds

iowntheworld.com

The American Thinker
Walter Olson at Overlawyered
Blazing Cat Fur
Donald Douglas at American Power
The American Catholic
The Lonely Conservative
Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury
Nice Deb
Sundries Shack
PJMedia Tatler
Dan Riehl
Film Ladd
The Coalition of the Swilling
DaTechGuy
Richard Fernandez
Legal Insurrection
Doubleplusundead
Daley Gator
The Camp of the Saints
Wake Up America
Darth Chipmunk
Zilla of the Resistance
Lady Liberty 1885
Goldfish and Clowns
Small Dead Animals
Hillbuzz
Yid with Lid
Evil Blogger Lady
Israel Matzav
Lisa Graas
Bob Owens

Here are a few more:

Zilla of the Resistance

PL Birnam Wood
POH Diaries
Granite Grok
PJ Tatler
Wake Up America
Capital Research Center
Day By Day Cartoon
Bookworm Room

Daley Gator

Adrienne

The Pirate’s Cove

Political Junkie Mom

Sister Toldjah

Ask Marion

Reform a Liberal

An Ex Con’s View

Radio Patriot

Like I said, Kimberlin poked a bees nest, and the bees are really going to start swarming today. Just wait until he sees the next Google alert. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall for that?

Thanks to his liberal benefactors Kimberlin has the resources to take on a handful of bloggers. But what’s he going to do now that so many of us are weighing in? It’s like trying to take down an angry swarm of wasps with a fly swatter.

(I know I’ve missed a lot of bloggers, but there’s only so much time in the day. If I missed you, please leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it.)

Update: Michelle Malkin updated and bumped her earlier post and it’s at the top of her page today. The story caught the attention of Mark Tapscot at the Washington Examiner. The Blaze published a comprehensive post, and Glenn Beck talked about it on his radio show this morning and interviewed Patrick Frey, who detailed the nearly fatal harassment he’s been subjected to. It’s chilling. Now wonder The Other McCain is still at an undisclosed location.

Ali Akbar has created a donation page to help the bloggers who are targets of this criminal and his allies.

Since last night the following blogs have weighed in, with links to this post or my earlier posts:

WyBlog

All American Blogger

Bookworm Room

The Daley Gator

Lady Liberty

Conservative Hideout

Radio Patriot

Darth Chipmunk

Political Junkie Mom

Right Wing News

Daria DiGiovanni

The Pirate’s Cove

Hogewash

Ask Marion

LD Jackson

The Right Planet

Legal Insurrection

Da TechGuy

Plus there’s an updated post at The Other McCain.

Back to Patrick Frey, who blogs as Patterico. He told his whole story today. It is a must read. If only we were all paying attention back when Andrew Breitbart warned us about this Kimberlin menace and his associates, Frey and his family would not have been subjected to such terror.

What you just heard and read is no joke. It actually happened. The phenomenon is called “SWATting,” because it can bring a SWAT team to your front door. SWATting is a particularly dangerous hoax in which a caller, generally a computer hacker, calls a police department to report a shooting at the home of his enemy. The caller will place this call to the police department’s business line, using Skype or a similar service, and hiding behind Internet proxies to make the call impossible to trace. Anxious police, believing they are responding to the home of an armed and dangerous man, show up at the front door pointing guns and screaming orders.

That is exactly what happened to me. It is a very dangerous hoax that could get the target killed.

I should note that Frey believes it was one of Kimberlin’s associates who made the call, not Kimberlin himself. But it’s all tied together and leads back to Kimberlin.

Also, John Hawkins interviewed Stacy McCain, who explained why he and his family left their home. Again, if you read what happened to Frey, you’ll understand why.

Update: No One of Any Import also has a new post up today.

Update: Ladd Ehlinger is having a little fun with mockery.

Update: NRO’s Jim Geraghty weighed in on the Swatting of Patrick Frey, and King Shamus linked. Also, Legal Insurrection updated the post with video of Glenn Beck’s interview of Frey and Walker.

Update: Read a very moving tribute to Carl DeLong, Kimberlin’s bombing victim. Oh, and why the heck is the State Department working with one of Kimberlin’s charities?

Update: More Links: Haemet, Zilla, The Camp of the Saints, Sentry Journal, LD Jackson, Intangible Soul, Sundries Shack, Stop the ACLU, Ironic Surrealism, All American Blogger, Absolute Moral Authority, Right Klick.

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating almost half its streetlights.

As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can’t afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing’s plan would create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year.

…

“You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas like we light other areas.”

Detroit’s dwindling income and property-tax revenue have required residents to endure unreliable buses and strained police services throughout the city. Because streetlights are basic to urban life, deciding what areas to illuminate will reshape the city, said Kirk Cheyfitz, co-founder of a project called Detroit143 — named for the 139 square miles of land, plus water — that publicizes neighborhood issues. (Read More)

This is the same city that recently spent nearly $1100 per chair to spiff up a library.

How long until Detroit looks like North Korea from space? The only thing missing are the gulags.

Am I the only one who notices how regressive progressive policies are? Please, tell me I’m not.

Front page thumbnail image via Wikimedia Commons

But a majority of the plans in today’s individual market cover less than 60 percent of all costs, according to the Health Affairsstudy.

Slightly more than half of people on the individual market are enrolled in policies that cover less than 60 percent of plan costs. One-third of individual policies pay 60 to 69 percent, enough to meet the lowest thresholds under the healthcare law.

Many consumers will therefore get more generous coverage by buying through an exchange. But, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the boost in benefits could also raise premiums.

“Premiums for health insurance in the individual market will be somewhat higher on average under [the healthcare law] than under prior law, mostly because the average insurance policy in that market will cover a larger share of enrollees’ costs for health care and provide a slightly wider range of benefits,” CBO said in a 2009 report. (Read More)

You didn’t think you were going to get free health care did you? Didn’t your mama ever tell you that nothing in life is free?

Let’s hope this idea doesn’t take traction elsewhere.

Furthermore, reusable bags being touted as a “green” alternative carry their own environmental costs.  Unlike locally manufactured plastic bags, reusable woven bags are primarily produced in China and imported to the U.S. on cargo ships which burn millions of gallons of dirty low-grade fuel oil. Because they’re made of mixed materials, these reusable bags can’t be recycled and will eventually end up in landfills, unlike plastic grocery bags which are fully recyclable.

Bags made of canvas have an even greater impact on the environment due to the natural resources required to grow cotton and manufacture bags. Frequently, reusable bags often carry more than just groceries. In a recent study by the University of Arizona, almost every bag sampled contained large amounts of bacteria including coliform, E. coli, and other opportunistic pathogens. The public is being instructed to wash these bags after each use, which, over time, will require huge amounts of energy and waste precious water.

So if banning free plastic grocery bags won’t save the planet, what will it do? For one thing, it will lead to the loss of American jobs. More than 30,000 people in the U.S. are directly employed by the plastic bag manufacturing and recycling industry, and thousands more are indirectly employed.

If passed, the L.A. bag ban could potentially lead to the loss of manufacturing jobs that support more than 1,000 families in the Los Angeles area alone, according to Pete Grande, CEO at Command Packaging, a recycler and producer of environmentally friendly plastic bags.

Read the whole thing. If a ban like this comes to my town I’ll shop somewhere else, causing me to use more gas and increase my carbon footprint. Is that what the environmentalists want people to do? And if I have to spend more on gas, I’ll be spending less on other things. What a bone headed idea. Then again, you get what you vote for.

It’s not very good, as Marc Thiessen pointed out in his column today. Here are a few examples:

● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.

● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”

Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”

But that’s not all, there are plenty more failures. Even his great “success story” GM left taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars and screwed over private investors. Is it any wonder? Obama never ran a business. He never met a payroll. He was a community organizer, autobiographer and a college lecturer before entering politics. All he knows how to do is redistribute wealth others have created to his cronies and favored groups. That’s it. That’s all he’s got. He’s a statist with no business experience whatsoever who thinks he can centrally plan the economy. He’s a disaster.

Update: Kim Strassel also weighed in:

Like Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama has presided over bankruptcies, layoffs, lost pensions, run-ups in debt. Yet unlike Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama’s C-suite required billions in taxpayer dollars and subsidies, as well as mandates, regulations, union payoffs and moral hazard. Don’t like “vulture” capitalism? Check out the form the president’s had on offer these past three years: “crony” capitalism.

The case study is the solar-panel maker Solyndra, which was part of a green-energy sector that even by 2009 was flailing. The president took one look at the industry’s utter lack of both profits and sellable products, and yelled “that’s my baby!” The stimulus bill shipped tens of billions of dollars to the Energy Department to pour into green companies via grants and loans. It promised five million jobs.

Be sure to read it all.