Obama's Big Government Approach Turning Off Voters

Latest from Rasmussen:

Sixty percent (60%) of Americans say the federal government has too much power and too much money, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Just nine percent (9%) say the government has too little power and money. Twenty-four percent (24%) believe the government has about the right amount of both.

While slightly more than half of those working for both the government and private industry say the government is too big, 79% of entrepreneurs feel that way.

Republicans and adults not affiliated with either major political party are far more concerned about the government’s size and wealth than Democrats are. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans and 62% of unaffiliateds say the federal government as too much power and money. Among Democrats, however, just 35% agree, while 44% think the size of government is about right.

Those who earn less than $40,000 per year are more wary of the size of the government than are those who earn more. Sixty-two percent (62%) of investors say the government has too much money and power, compared to 57% of non-investors.

Call To Let Big Bad Banks Fail, falls on Obama's Deaf Ears!

Those big ears must be useless.

From a recent testimony by some prominent economists:

Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz and MIT professor Simon Johnson warned the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that the current government policy of propping up troubled financial giants could impede an economic recovery.

They each said spending taxpayer dollars freely on behalf of struggling big banks risks drowning U.S. productive capacity in debt -- while handing what amounts to an enormously costly subsidy to politically powerful financial sector insiders.

If the Obama administration fails to hold troubled banks accountable for their problems, the U.S. could face a lost decade of economic growth like Japan's in the 1990s, they said.

The third skeptic, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig, said policymakers must allow troubled firms to fail rather than propping them up, a la AIG (AIG, Fortune 500). He said banks must be treated consistently, regardless of their size or connections, for the sake of restoring confidence to markets and normal function to the economy.

Will Aneesh Chopra (New CTO) Teach Obama A Thing or Two

From a speech Aneesh Chopara gave in 2006

To make health care and other core services more readily available to people in need, management efficiencies will never go far enough, he said, speaking Sept. 10 at the Commonwealth of Virginia Innovative Technology Symposium.

During the group’s travels, they visited a hospital dedicated to heart care. More than 6,000 patients have open heart surgery at the hospital each year, with surgeons performing an average of 14 a day at a cost of $1,500 each. In contrast, the average doctor in the United States performs at most four a day, at a cost of $35,000 or more, Chopra said. Yet the doctors in India do not make dramatically less money than their U.S. counterparts, he said.

Electronic medical records are another example of where the debate must change. EMRs have the potential to improve care for everyone, but such systems can cost $30,000. Many people are wondering how physicians will pay for that, Chopra said, when they really should be asking how to lower that price to $1,000

Obama & Liberals Blowing Smoke on Uninsured Americans

From Keith Hennessey:

The traditional Beltway logic on health care reform goes like this:

• The problem is that 46 million Americans lack health insurance.
  
• Government should provide health insurance to those 46 million people, or at least pay for it.
• Let’s expand a taxpayer-subsidized health insurance program to cover the 46 million, or maybe create a new program.
  • (Alternately: Let’s mandate that everyone has to buy/have health insurance.)
• This means everyone will have health insurance. We have solved the problem.

Much of the health policy debate centers on how to solve this problem. Liberals want to expand government programs: