National News

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Americans perceive Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul as closest to themselves ideologically, and Michele Bachmann and Barack Obama as furthest away.

Your ACT221 Tax Dollars at Work building the clean energy future, Hawaii ....

The news release is the usual HART fluff. The real information is found in the FTA's letter to HART....

The Strait of Hormuz lies between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, providing passage for some 15.5 million barrels of crude oil per day, amounting to one third of the world's seaborne oil shipments.

By shifting away from failed policies of central planning toward a consumer-driven program, the program has been successful on a number of levels.

The average buyer in Hawaii, based on the average loan of $677,299 and an APR of 4%, would have a monthly payment for a 30 year mortgage (1 point) of $3,234 before taxes and insurance. The average payment for Mississippi would be $655 based on the closed loan amount ....

In Cardiology, for example, a left heart catheterization costs about $2,200 in Alaska and only $400 in Washington. In orthopedics, a knee surgery costs $6,400 in Alaska and only $1,700 in Washington....

...now comes the lapse of several federal supports or incentives which allowed people/companies/governments to install the charging stations necessary to keep these care running. No chargers, no driving....

...by relying on a technical system of price controls and complicated payout formulas, Congress is continuing to play the same game that it has for years in which it drives down direct costs in one area only to see them spring up elsewhere....

 Just in time for the opening of the Hawaii Legislature, a US DoJ memo released December 23 overturns decades of legal interpretation and effectively legalizes intra-state online gambling....

Question: Does Hawaii want to be saddled with a partisan hack like Hirono when Democrats are in the minority?

For President Barack Obama, 2011 began with a bang -- a bold pronouncement that his green dream for America would bring forth a jobs explosion and a new economy fueled by alternative energy, a vision he likened to President John F. Kennedy's "moon shot" in the 1960s....

Would you be outraged if the Department of Justice shut down The Foundry without any warning and blocked access for more than a year?  That's exactly what happened to a hip-hop blog called Dajaz1.com, which was falsely accused of criminal copyright infringement....

A terrorist wanna-be from Staten Island ratted out dozens of people he called pro-jihadists in New York and Hawaii after he was arrested by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force, it was revealed Tuesday....

Nona’s father had installed cameras all around the home so he could watch the family’s comings and goings. Others said he nailed her bedroom window shut so she could not sneak out at night and see her boyfriend....

Medicine is undergoing industrialization where doctors who previously operated in small offices with relative autonomy are becoming owned commodities of large hospitals and health plans.... 

Instead of waging a war on the rich, a virtuous war should be waged on society's predators, pirates and parasites....

There was no lack of education news in 2011. From an explosion in school choice options to the Obama Administration's executive overreach, the top stories included the high and low lights when it came to issues affecting America's schools....

Psychology, economics and organizational science suggest that too many regulations may make society less safe .... 

Faced with mounting budget deficits, more states are expanding gambling options and loosening restrictions in a grab for revenue....

With Medicare's hospital trust fund set to be exhausted by 2024 according to the latest report from the program's trustees, federal officials are understandably looking for easy ways to cut spending ....

... we are often told that religion is divisive and ought to kept away from politics for the sake of liberty. Religion somehow is opposed to liberty, and so liberty requires a diminution of religion in the public square ....

The day-by-day, bank-by-bank numbers...formed the basis of a series of Bloomberg News articles this year about the largest financial bailout in history....

With this vote, the House rejected the Senate's two-month extension of the Social Security payroll tax reduction and requested a conference to consider a yearlong extension....

The politics of resentment has characterized much of 2011. It's been fueled by an entitlement mentality that "threatens not only the spirit of Christmas but the very fabric of a just and prosperous society," Messmore says....

After determining that 9,000 of the eligible 24,000 school-age students in military families were not attending public schools, top military leaders commissioned Johns Hopkins University researchers to focus on attitudes and opinions about the Hawaii education system.

One of the most important intellectual and policy battles, which remains relevant today, is over how to defend both civil liberties and security in time of war....

Pity the much-maligned plastic bag....

Lingle's fundraising report is going to scare Democrats when it comes out in January....

... one thing here that might give Ms. Lingle hope, short of a meltdown in the Democratic primary, would be the governor. “How Abercrombie does will matter,” he said, “and affect the Senate race. And affect the future of the party.”....

...without a revised contract, the State cannot fully implement many initiatives in its approved Race to the Top plans.... (Now you know why the HSTA has been stalling.)

...the U.S. Senate is home for the holidays already, celebrating with family while Washington sits in a stalemate....

...most people on the left who use the word “progressive” are actually reactionaries....

Low Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements are a key cause of HMC’s financial difficulties. Now it appears that Prime’s solution to the low reimbursement problem is simple—just cheat.

"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests."

PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.  Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year….

Upcoming Congressional Bills

• House: Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2011

...the surprise development raises concerns about its impact on Pyongyang's ongoing leadership transition, regime stability, and North Korean security and foreign policies....

It is a hopeful vision of the future of broad prosperity.’ But it's hard to see how voters are going to see any hope at all.” (John Dickerson, “Obama’s Victory Plan,” Slate, 12/13/11)

Unfortunately, it was opposed by members of the House, who wanted a variety of devastating anti-environmental riders which, if the Senate accepted, would have set back our nation’s air and water protections for many years to come. 

Rather than produce a timely budget by way of standard operating procedure, congressional leaders again butted up against the deadline and reached a deal on a trillion-dollar "mega-omnibus" nine-bill appropriations package that sadly is yet another disappointing failure to rein in government spending.

No matter how powerful or pervasive a regime is, it can still be overrun by the sheer superior numbers of the people it governs. However, this traditional political framework has been undermined by the development of the modern welfare state ....

Case said he just finished a six-week swing across the islands and spoke with 5,000 people. He said he’s using that as his poll guidance for now. “They will not vote for the status quo, period,” Case said ....

America's tax code needs reform, plain and simple. The current tax system discourages saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. It's a drag on productivity, job growth, international competitiveness, and wages. It's complicated beyond belief, and it needs to change.... 

Already, education policy experts who are watching progress in Race to the Top states are urging the Education Department to make an example out of Hawaii for its lack of progress—real or perceived—on its teacher-evaluation component.

In case you’re not keeping track, it has been nearly 1,000 days since the United States Senate passed a budget. Meanwhile, America’s fiscal nightmare keeps growing, and those on the left—including Members of the Senate—keep advocating for even more spending ....

Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity, says USA Today.

...media outlets and opposing politicians in other states have a tendency to start jumping up and down, hollering and pointing fingers when an incumbent’s contributor receives an earmark. Strange, but true....

Federal prosecutors Tuesday charged Ayman Joumaa, an accused Lebanese drug kingpin and Hezbollah financier, of smuggling tons of U.S.-bound cocaine and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars with the Zetas cartel of Mexico....