 | Editorial Board: Counting up the profits, losses in bailouts Dec 21st 2012, 00:51 THE 2009 federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler was a major theme of the 2012 presidential campaign. According to President Obama, the $61.5 billion commitment to the two automakers was pure upside: an industry rejuvenated, a million jobs saved nationwide. Certainly it helped the president make his case that the precise total cost of the rescue, which include the cost of not using the money for some other purpose, could never be known. And the knowable cost had not yet fully materialized. Specifically, the government still owned 500 million shares of GM, or about 26 percent of the total; until it sold, any loss to taxpayers would remain hypothetical. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: The Va. speaker's late awakening Dec 21st 2012, 00:51 FOR NEARLY A DECADE, officials in Richmond have warned that funding for the state's transportation system is drying up, a victim of inflation, aging roads and rails, the improving fuel efficiency of vehicles and a per-gallon gasoline tax that has remained unchanged since 1986, its purchasing power shriveling to nothingness. Twice in the past decade, in 2006 and 2008, lawmakers held special sessions of the General Assembly to tackle the growing crisis, without success. Meanwhile, officials project that not one cent of state funding will be left for road construction starting in 2017. Read full article >>   | | The roots of mass murder Dec 21st 2012, 00:49 Every mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea. Names are hurled, scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere. Read full article >> | | Valery Yarynich, the man who told of the Soviets' doomsday machine Dec 21st 2012, 00:49 In November 1983, during an autumn of Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, a skilled Soviet military communications specialist struggled in secret for 10 days to send a radio signal from a waterlogged tunnel deep inside a mountain in the Urals. The code name of the redoubt was "Grot," or grotto. Around him, construction crews blasted away at the rock, building a hardened command post for the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. The specialist's goal was to find out if a radio signal could penetrate the mountain and reach the outside. If so, it would be from there that Soviet rocket commanders might manage a nuclear war. Read full article >> | | Rules for compounding pharmacies need to change Dec 21st 2012, 00:48 The tragedy caused by the fungal meningitis outbreak in Massachusetts this fall has made clear that the legal framework around compounding pharmacies needs to change. When it comes to federal oversight of prescription medicine, the law tries to draw a line between typical drug manufacturers and traditional compounding pharmacies. But some compounding pharmacies have evolved beyond small-scale community operations to become large-volume facilities that operate in many states. These pharmacies have outgrown the law. Congress needs to act. Read full article >> | | Still here? Happy New Bak'tun Dec 21st 2012, 00:47 If you're reading this, the Maya were wrong. Rather, they would have been wrong if they'd actually predicted the end of the world, which scholars are pretty sure they didn't. On the other hand, if there's nobody around to thumb through the morning newspaper — if, indeed, there are no more scholars, newspapers, mornings or thumbs — then I guess it was a poor decision to spend Earth's final day in my office. I'd have regrets, except I'm pretty sure that no more world means no more second-guessing. Read full article >> | | Gun-control fights won't solve the real issue Dec 21st 2012, 00:17 When I was about to start eighth grade, my father almost shot my mother. It was another of their many ugly fights. I got between them — literally — and tried to grab the gun. I will never forget that night. The shouting. The fear. The raw terror that we would all die, my brother and sisters along with my parents. My calling for help but the police not coming; my parents were important people in town. My mother running out of the house. I locked my brother and sisters in a bedroom and pushed a bed against the door. My father broke in, took the door off the hinges and pulled the phone from the wall. He took the knobs off all the doors, so we could not get out and no one could get in. Read full article >> | | Rescind the Second Amendment Dec 20th 2012, 23:23 All the talk about gun reform that we are beginning to hear will result, at best, only in Band-Aid treatment. Let's get to the root of the gun problem: the Second Amendment. The Prohibition amendment did not work, so we rescinded it. Gun control as we know it today does not work within the framework of the Second Amendment; the situation in 2012 is hardly comparable to the circumstances of 1789. Let's start anew: Rescind the Second Amendment and pass meaningful gun legislation unbridled by constitutional restraints. Read full article >>   | | Arm school personnel Dec 20th 2012, 23:19 We should have learned by now. Two multiple-murder tragedies in one week, in Oregon and Connecticut, have been followed by hand-wringing calls for gun control. It's time to blame inanimate objects again. Read full article >>   | | Who's afraid of the NRA? Dec 20th 2012, 23:18 Regarding the Dec. 18 front-page article "President calls for proposals on guns": Don't get sad, get mad. Midnight vigils for the dead in Newtown, Conn., are comforting, and surely we all need that. But too many people have taken a throw-up-your-hands conviction that nothing can be done, that the gun lobby is too strong and Congress too fearful for meaningful change in our gun laws. Read full article >>   | | Jennifer Rubin: Is Chuck Hagel toast? Dec 20th 2012, 22:04 Let me get this right. The president wants as his secretary of defense a Republican, not just any Republican but the unusual one who has been out of the mainstream on Israel and dabbled in anti-Semitic lingo. Oh, and he is opposed to gays serving openly in government. And for this the Democratic base turned out in droves in November? Read full article >> | | Greg Sargent: AFL-CIO to White House: Time to rescind your offer to Boehner Dec 20th 2012, 21:57 I'm not sure it's widely understood just how angry some of the major stakeholders on the left are about the latest turns in the fiscal cliff talks. The sight of the White House offering more concessions to John Boehner, only to be met with more GOP intransigence in the form of his absurd Plan B, is stirring bad memories of 2011 and has some on the left insisting that the only proper response is for Obama to rescind his most recent offer. Read full article >> | | Making a 'B' line to the cliff Dec 20th 2012, 21:41 Blame John Boehner. Feel sorry for Boehner, sure — he is a decent man, a willing dealmaker overseeing an unruly caucus, and I'm being kind with that adjective. But blame him, too. If — and, as is looking increasingly likely, when — the country hurtles over the "fiscal cliff," it will be in part because the House speaker abruptly decided to upend negotiations with the White House. Read full article >> | | Greg Sargent: Boehner’s 'plan B’ would redistribute wealth upwards Dec 20th 2012, 18:24 As Greg noted this morning, John Boehner is scrambling to secure Republican votes for "Plan B," his alternative to the fiscal cliff compromise which would only raise taxes on income over $1 million. Boehner wants to be able to present himself as willing to compromise, but unwilling to go as far as President Obama wanted, which probably won't work, because most Americans see GOP policies as too extreme, and have far more faith in Obama's ability to handle economic problems than they do the GOP's. Read full article >>   | | Jennifer Rubin: Show some independence, GOP politicians Dec 20th 2012, 16:47 As House Republicans prepare to take a vote on "Plan B," the screeching from the far right grows louder. Heritage Action Network sends out a breathless e-mail complaining that Plan B is not a tax cut (in budget-ese because of baseline budgeting it could be seen as a $4 trillion cut over time) since all that is happening is that most Americans' tax rates will stay the same. Straw man alert! If anyone is using that argument, it's a dim one, and the hysterics over it is even dimmer. The Heritage solution? " Americans deserve an honest debate.  They also deserve at least one political party that stands steadfast in its opposition to taking any more money from the private sector to give to the government sector." Well, gosh why didn't they think of that? Read full article >>   | |
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