Saturday, August 01, 2009
Weekend 107.0
August Recess Reading
(1) Our Angry Aristocracy by Victor Davis Hanson
Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists...Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture.
Do the wealthy and the powerful lecture us about our wrongs because they know their own insider status ensures that they are exempt from the harsh medicine they advocate for others? Or does the hypocrisy grow out of a sort of class snobbery?
Do elites hector the crass middle class because it lacks their own taste, rare insight, and privileged style? Or is the new hypocrisy an eerie sort of psychological compensation at work?
(2) ObamaCare in Trouble by Karl Rove
Polls are turning against President Barack Obama’s health-care plan...The polls are crumbling because of a flood of bad news about Mr. Obama’s health-care proposals.
But the most damaging news came from Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf, who said last week that the White House’s health-care proposals would not “reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”
Democratic leaders, including the president, are now backing away from a vote on health care before August. But that’s not likely to decrease voter angst. Americans for Prosperity and others are already organizing voters to attend public meetings with members of Congress this summer. My guess is that members of Congress are about to hear a lot from their voters on the government takeover of health care, new energy taxes, the failed stimulus, record deficits, and growing joblessness.
(1) Our Angry Aristocracy by Victor Davis Hanson
Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists...Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture.
Do the wealthy and the powerful lecture us about our wrongs because they know their own insider status ensures that they are exempt from the harsh medicine they advocate for others? Or does the hypocrisy grow out of a sort of class snobbery?
Do elites hector the crass middle class because it lacks their own taste, rare insight, and privileged style? Or is the new hypocrisy an eerie sort of psychological compensation at work?
(2) ObamaCare in Trouble by Karl Rove
Polls are turning against President Barack Obama’s health-care plan...The polls are crumbling because of a flood of bad news about Mr. Obama’s health-care proposals.
But the most damaging news came from Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf, who said last week that the White House’s health-care proposals would not “reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”
Democratic leaders, including the president, are now backing away from a vote on health care before August. But that’s not likely to decrease voter angst. Americans for Prosperity and others are already organizing voters to attend public meetings with members of Congress this summer. My guess is that members of Congress are about to hear a lot from their voters on the government takeover of health care, new energy taxes, the failed stimulus, record deficits, and growing joblessness.
Labels: dodd, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid, weekend
