Tag: Barack Obama

“Skinny Repeal” Would Still Deprive 15 Million Americans of Their Health Insurance

The Senate has rejected Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)’s proposal to repeal Obamacare without a replacement, 55-45. Of the eight potential moderate Republican opponents I highlighted in June, five voted against repeal (Capito, Collins, Heller, Portman, and Murkowski), along with two whose opposition to repeal was not known at the time (McCain and Alexander). But the Republicans have not quite given up–they plan to attempt “skinny repeal,” in which only the individual and employer mandates would be repealed.  But while this may sound appealing (nobody likes mandates), it’s much worse than it appears.

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When it Comes to Sanctions, Both Democrats and Trump are Inconsistent

Toward the end of his presidency, Barack Obama began relaxing economic sanctions on Cuba. The argument was simple–the sanctions had been in place half a century, but there was no hard evidence that they were affecting Cuban policy or seriously encouraging regime change. It seemed to many that the sanctions just made ordinary Cubans worse off and enabled the Castro regime to blame America for economic setbacks. Why not flood Cuba with American goods and American culture instead, and try to win the Cuban people over with goodies? The Trump administration never liked this idea, and it immediately set about reinstating the barriers. But now many of the same people who enthusiastically supported Obama’s efforts to change policy on Cuba–including many Senate Democrats–are calling for Trump to perpetuate and intensify sanctions against Russia, and Trump is reluctant to go along. This is intellectually inconsistent–on both sides. It reveals that when it comes to sanctions, both the Democrats and Trump are more interested in scoring political points at home than they are in having a coherent foreign policy.

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Teach for America Tricks Young People into Being Scabs

Last month, we talked about how Mike Pence ran down the schools in Indiana while he was governor, slashing state educating spending by about 11.5% (relative to GDP) and creating a massive teacher shortage as good teachers defected to neighboring states and fewer Hoosiers elected to go into education. Today I want to talk about the pivotal role programs likes Teach for America play in aiding and abetting these efforts to annihilate the public schools.

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