SHORTER HHS MANDATE: VIOLATE YOUR CONSCIENCE OR PAY CRIPPLING FINES
The Administration has argued that they simply want to provide woman coverage for “preventative care.” But there are many ways for women to access contraceptives without the federal government forcing business owners to violate their conscience.
As Robert P. George and Hamza Yusuf point out in the Wall Street Journal (sub. req’d), the Green family is seeking a religious exemption from Obamacare’s contraception and abortion drug mandate because their “Christian faith forbids them from paying for insurance coverage for the provision of four drugs and devices that may act to terminate newly conceived human lives.”
School Choice and Freedom Go Hand in Hand
This week, the Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey M. Burke deftly dismantled an argument by Politicoreporter Stephanie Simon that since some private schools teach that God created the world, everyone should oppose vouchers.
Simon takes issue specifically with schools teaching Creationism or intelligent design. She states:
Decades of litigation have established that public schools cannot teach creationism or intelligent design. But private schools receiving public subsidies can — and do.
How Conservatives Win
This week on the Foundry, I explain how conservatives win key legislative battles:
It should come as no surprise The New York Times would bury news of a conservative victory over President Obama on page eight. The lead paragraph said it all:
Senate Democrats, bowing to united House Republican opposition, dropped reforms of International Monetary Fund governance from a Ukraine aid package on Tuesday.
Australia’s Richest Person and America’s Export-Import Bank
Australian press is buzzing over the strange nexus between the country’s richest person and American taxpayers. The headline in The Australian Financial Review even invokes the phrase “welfare queen.”
How Australia’s richest person, mining heiress Gina Rinehart, secured a $US694 million ($764 million) loan from American taxpayers is surely one of the great ironies of the capitalist system.
The case is the latest example of a flaw in the United States political economy: what some see as crony capitalism.
Obama Approves of Johnson-Crapo Housing Finance Reform Bill. What Could Go Wrong?
Alarm bells sounded when Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD)Heritage ActionScorecard
Sen. Tim Johnson
Senate Democrat AverageSee Full Scorecard2% and Sen. Michael Crapo (R-ID)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Michael CrapoSenate Republican AverageSee Full Scorecard81% released their new housing finance reform bill. That this legislation is being hailed as bipartisan was the first sign taxpayers should be worried. The Obama administration has also signaled its tacit approval. Watch out.
Late last week, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Sean Donovan and the National Economic Council Director Jeff Zients met to discuss housing finance reform with all the major housing advocates. All of these groups – such as the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders and the Independent Community Bankers of America – have a vested interest in maintaining some version of the old government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) system.