Gary Crooks

President Barack Obama has jolted the health care discussion back to life, but insurance companies also deserve credit because their recent premium increases serve as a useful reminder of the cost of doing nothing. A robust health care debate is taking place on the Opinion page blog, A Matter of Opinion, where a small-business owner in Pullman offered a report from the front lines of premium increases.

"Benedict Brown"

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Monday's Loose Thread

Note to commenters

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., voted against the $787 billion stimulus package passed last year and has called it a failure as recently as Feb. 9 on her blog. Eight days later, she issued a press release touting $35 million in stimulus for the North Spokane Corridor: “As we look to the future, investment in our transportation infrastructure helps to ensure successful economic growth, development and global competitiveness. This international connector will help create more than $140 million annually in revenue to our community.” U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, both Idaho Republicans, made sure $468 million was added to the stimulus bill for environmental cleanup at the Idaho National Laboratory. They voted against the bill.

Thursday's Loose Thread

Tea Party report

Monday's Loose Thread

The March edition of The Atlantic magazine has a long article on how this jobless era will transform America. The cold, hard facts about the depth of the economic freeze are mind-numbing. Politicians raising expectations about job creation risk becoming jobless themselves. There just aren’t enough levers they can pull to quickly restore economic stability. It’s not a liberal problem or a conservative problem. It’s a terrifying problem, especially for men. Here are six salient points to ponder:

Friday's Loose Thread

Wednesday's Loose Thread

Monday's Loose Thread

I keep hearing Democrats complain that Republicans don’t have a health care plan, but they do. It’s just that it doesn’t achieve the same goal of covering more Americans. House Republicans introduced a plan in November that called for allowing insurance to be sold across state lines, permitting small businesses to band together to seek lower insurance rates and adopting tort reform measures aimed at limiting malpractice lawsuits. Insurance companies would still be allowed to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, but the plan would encourage states to form high-risk pools to help such people gain coverage.

Wednesday's Loose Thread

A Balanced Budget Amendment has been the hobby horse of many politicians who want to pose as budget hawks. It got a lot of attention during the Contract With America campaign of congressional Republicans before the 1994 midterm elections. Because it would be a change to the U.S. Constitution, it would require the assent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and the ratification of three-fourths of the states. In 1995, the amendment passed the House and came within one vote of passing the Senate. It hasn’t been seriously considered ever since. However, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., is touting this as a solution to today’s deficit issue, though he opposes any tax increases to help achieve the goal. In fact, he calls for tax cuts. He is considered a possible presidential candidate in 2012.

Monday's Loose Thread

Obama's budget = plenty to hate/like

Oh no! Not the kitchen table analogy again! Here is White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett explaining to TV host Rachel Maddow how American families solve budget woes: “They’re sitting around the kitchen table, Rachel. You know this. They’re trying to figure out how to make ends meet.”

Thursday's Loose Thread

Try as I might, I can’t compress the point I’m about to make into a soundbite. Nonetheless, here it goes. The nation cannot seriously address the budget deficit without a bipartisan commitment to control ideological reflexes. Bipartisanship cannot be achieved unless voters demand it. People tell pollsters they want deficit reduction, and President Barack Obama has responded with a plan. But it isn’t a serious one, because the proposed spending freeze would affect only one-sixth of the federal budget. It is merely a message of concern.

Tuesday's Loose Thread

Monday's Loose Thread

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that limits on corporate and probably union speech are unconstitutional stems in part from the notion that corporations are “persons.” In September, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor challenged this assumption during arguments over whether corporations have the same constitutional protections as people. For more than 100 years, some courts have agreed that the 14th Amendment covers corporations, too. Never mind that the intent of the amendment was to extend equal protections to former slaves. Thus, some taxes and restrictions placed on corporations but not regular people have been struck down. This happened routinely as President Franklin Roosevelt attempted to enact sweeping changes during the Great Depression. However, the precedent for this notion that Boeing and Microsoft are just folks is dubious. A Wall Street Journal article traced the origin of this legal fiction: