Uncle Sam wants you — to inform on your doctor
There was a bit of an uproar recently when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced, then withdrew, a plan to hire your fellow citizens to pose as patients seeking appointments with thousands of medical practices, using a script of false symptoms — alternately pretending to have private insurance and [...]
What will it take to end this depression?
The U.S. economy is in a full-fledged depression. We are not in “recovery,” nor are we simply feeling the residual effects of the financial crisis of 2008. Instead, we are feeling the effects of the government’s response to the financial crisis three years ago, and until government changes its strategy, we can look forward to [...]
A dark tunnel growing deeper
Here we are in the second year of the economic “recovery” from a recession that has plagued our nation and state for the past several years. While the nation’s unemployment rate is declining, in Tennessee it has risen slightly in the past month. Granted, Knox County’s unemployment rate is the lowest metropolitan rate in the [...]
Pearls of wisdom, or a tale of two athletic directors
As a University of Tennessee sports alumnus (track and cross-country, 1971-75), I still take a strong interest in UT athletics, so the latest situation regarding alleged NCAA violations in the football and basketball programs obviously piques my interest. Like most other UT alums and fans, I have my own opinions on the situation, and I [...]
Will the tax deal help or hurt the economy?
It’s not a done deal yet, as of this writing, but the past couple of days the Obama administration has been making it sound like the president is willing to compromise on extending the Bush tax cuts. He is also willing, so we hear, to extend unemployment benefits again to millions of workers who say [...]
Bill Haslam’s most excellent adventure
The elections are over and the voters of Tennessee have spoken — and ever! While I figured that Bill Haslam would win the gubernatorial election, nonetheless I did not think that he would win by this kind of a margin, 65 to 35 percent over Mike McWherter. One wonders if McWherter could have won, even [...]
Is Islamophobia really “indefensible”?
On Aug. 29, an editorial ran in the Times Free Press titled, “Indefensible Islamophobia.” Considering the blatant and obvious liberal slant that side of the paper embraces, it was not surprising the editorial was rife with example after example of horrors committed in the U.S. against Muslims. The editorial writers are aghast that time and [...]
Obama and the age of political entrepreneurship
The jobs numbers are bad and the overall economic numbers are even worse. Paul Krugman and his groupies at the New York Times are claiming that government is not printing and borrowing enough money, which is why we are in the doldrums. I have written many times why we are in this fix, and why [...]
Stimulus bill stimulated the government
Back in February of this year, President Obama joyfully celebrated the one-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), by insisting that the economy was on the mend thanks to his wisdom and passage of ARRA. But wait a minute. Economies — at some point — always recover. Even from a complete deep [...]
Obama’s phantom “clean energy” jobs
While pontificating on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, President Barack Obama told his audience that his government was going to lead us away from the tyranny of “oil addiction” and lead us to the bright lights of “clean energy.” Oh, he added, his initiatives would “add 700,000 new jobs to the U.S. economy.” When [...]
