Washington Post (November 3)
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare, is beginning its third year “amid fierce criticism from the law’s detractors.” The ACA has, in some regards, performed better than expected, though weaknesses remain. “Instead of wasting more time on repealing the law or important individual components, such as the ‘Cadillac tax,’ Congress should be looking at changes that would help the ACA finish the phasing in process.”
Tags: ACA, Cadillac tax, Congress, Criticism, Detractors, Obamacare, Phase in, Repeal
New York Times (September 3)
“A disaster has been averted. The nuclear deal concluded by six major powers with Iran is now unstoppable in Congress.” Had the deal “unraveled in Congress, so would America’s standing as a global power. Russia, China and the European Union would have concluded that the United States is unserious.”
USA Today (July 24)
“America has a transportation problem. Its highways and bridges are in desperate need of repairs. Its major population centers are in desperate need of road and rail capacity to get people and products out of traffic jams. And the Highway Trust Fund—used to build and maintain those roads, bridges and transit systems—is running short of cash.” Congress needs to take action and increase the “federal gasoline tax which hasn’t been raised since 1993.” This “simple and fair” solution “hits people who use the roads the most and drive the least fuel-efficient vehicles. Just raise it already.”
Tags: Bridges, Congress, Gasoline tax, Highway Trust Fund, Highways, Rail, Repairs, Road, Traffic jams, Transportation, U.S.
New York Times (June 19)
“The timing of ‘Laudato Si’ could not have been better.” Nor could the compelling content on global warming. “Echoing the virtually unanimous findings of mainstream scientists, Pope Francis fixes the blame squarely on humans and their burning of fossil fuels.” But some U.S. politicians may remain too stubborn to change. “A pope in Rome worries about how we can shepherd the planet safely into the future. If only the senator from Kentucky and others in Congress could join him in thinking bigger.”
Tags: Congress, Fossil fuels, Global warming, Laudato Si, Pope Francis, U.S.
New York Times (May 6)
“In recent years, the number of patent-infringement lawsuits has increased sharply, by 25 percent just in 2013.” This explosion of frivolous lawsuits has “made a mockery of the protections the government grants to inventors.” Fortunately, Congress looks poised to pass legislation that could reduce some of the worst abuses.
Tags: Abuses, Congress, Frivolous, Government, Infringement, Inventors, Lawsuits, Legislation, Patents
Washington Post (April 25)
“The government should eliminate energy subsidies of all kinds — for fossil fuels as well as renewable energy. Then Congress should put a significant tax on carbon-dioxide emissions and set it to rise over time. The resulting market forces would decide how the economy would move to a greener state.”
Tags: CO2, Congress, Economy, Emissions, Energy subsidies, Fossil fuels, Government, Market forces, Renewables, Tax, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (March 24)
The Obama administration announced plans “to give up U.S. control of the Internet to a still-to-be-determined collection of governments and international groups.” It’s hard to imagine this creating a better governing body. “It’s easy to imagine a new Internet oversight body operating like the United Nations, with repressive governments taking turns silencing critics. China could get its wish to remove FreeTibet.org from the Internet as an affront to its sovereignty. Russia could force Twitter to remove posts by Ukrainian-Americans criticizing Vladimir Putin.” Congress should override President Obama’s decision.
Tags: China, Congress, Critics, Governing body, Icann, Internet, Obama, Putin, Russia, Sovereignty, Tibet, Twitter, U.S., Ukraine, UN
New York Times (January 29, 2014)
President Obama delivered his sixth annual State of the Union address to Congress. It “acknowledged the obvious: Congress has become a dead end for most of the big, muscular uses of government to redress income inequality and improve the economy for all, because of implacable Republican opposition.” The President’s determination to bypass Congress and do whatever he can to get things done without legislation is realistic: “Mr. Obama should employ every tool in his box to bypass those barriers.”
Tags: Barriers, Bypass, Congress, Determination, Economy, Government, Inequality, Legislation, Obama, Opposition, President, Republicans, State of the Union
Los Angeles Times (December 22, 2013)
Following previous battles, one of which recently shut down the U.S. Government, many were encouraged that both parties cooperated in Congress to smoothly pass a budget before the New Year. It would, however, be naive to assume this heralds a new spirit of bipartisan cooperation. “Next year is unlikely to get better, for one simple reason: It’s a congressional election year…. Getting Democrats and Republicans to agree on anything will be harder than ever.”
Tags: Bipartisan, Budget, Congress, Cooperation, Democrats, Election, Government, Republicans, U.S.
The New York Times (December 1, 2013)
Theoretically “patents provide an incentive for inventors to generate new products and services by giving them a temporary monopoly on their creations.” Over little more than a decade, however, patent applications have more than tripled to 576,000 in 2012 and “the Patent and Trademark Office appears to have granted many that are overly broad or vague.” The result has been frivolous lawsuits filed by patent trolls. Currently proposed legislation in Congress will help reduce the frivolous lawsuits, but it doesn’t “directly address the underlying problem of vague and overbroad patents.”
Tags: Applications, Congress, Frivolous, Inventors, Lawsuits, Legislation, Overbroad, Patent and Trademark Office, Patent trolls, Patents, Vague
