Free Republic

New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records--that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year--must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity. The obesity-rating regulation states that every American's electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.” The law also requires that these electronic health records be available--with appropriate security measures--on a national...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. financial stocks ended near their session lows after President Obama Thursday blasted Wall Street bonuses revealed yesterday as "shameful" and Vice President Biden suggested the government may try to claw back some of the money. New York's Comptroller Joseph DiNapoli reported late Wednesday that despite huge losses, bank failures and layoffs, Wall Street firms still managed to pay out $18.4 billion in bonuses. "It's the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful," the President said. "There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses -- now...

Unelected Fed Vice-Chair tells Congress it's nobody's business who they give 1.4 trillion to, but admits that some of the money is going to other nations (China?) to to prop up the dollar. Of course, if China and Japan stop buying our treasuries our economy will go crazy bad.

It has become increasingly clear that the presumed agent of fundamental change in the way Washington does business is firmly committed to the oldest tool in the Washington toolbox: the notion that government, using our money, can spend its way to widespread prosperity. In his speech on the economy and his stimulus package Thursday - a speech still notably short on details - the president-elect declared that "only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe." The unspoken assumption behind such a statement is that government has a virtually inexhaustible supply...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Workers who are underpaid by discriminatory employers are one step closer to getting stronger legal recourse after a Friday vote by House lawmakers to amend civil rights legislation. U.S. representatives voted 247 to 171 in favor of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act to clarify that each discriminatory paycheck creates a new opportunity for workers to file charges against employers.

Barack Obama declared yesterday that only unprecedented and urgent government spending could prevent the deepening recession stretching for years into the future. Eleven days before taking office, the US President-elect said that he was entering his presidency “in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime”. The “day of reckoning” had arrived, he said, and the risks of “doing too little or nothing at all” were even greater than those of allowing a federal deficit – already projected to reach the record figure of $1.2 trillion – to spiral on into the years to come....

The words “economic stimulus” have a certain appeal to them because, after all, who wouldn’t want the U.S. economy to be stimulated? But, as the country is nearing his inauguration on Jan. 20 and the inevitability of President Barack Obama’s stimulus project looms, many in the news media have neglected to determine the who, what, when, where, why and how much aspects of the stimulus. Even before Obama is able to sign a economic stimulus package into law, as most are expecting, the Congressional Budget Office is reportedly expecting a $1 trillion deficit, more than double what it had forecasted...

“The road back to economic recovery and long-term prosperity will be built by an active, job-creating private-sector, paved by reliable, affordable energy, and financed by the revenues and royalties generated as a result of it. Expanding the government’s payroll in times of unemployment is no different than printing out more money in times of recession – both may change the short-term perception of the economy, but neither will improve the actual performance of it. “You can create all the new government jobs you want, but if those jobs can’t survive the night without the constant nourishment of subsidies, mandates and...

In Washington this week, President-elect Obama called on Congress to create 3 million jobs over the next two years – “more than 80 percent of them in the private sector.” Republicans on Capitol Hill did a little quick math: That means 20 percent, or some 600,000 new jobs, will be in the public sector. That would boost the ranks of federal employees by a third, they said, none too pleased about the prospect of a “big government” revival. “The federal government is bloated, inefficient, and spends too much of your hard-earned money,” said Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa, in...

An Arizona State University economics professor says our current economic nightmare is ‘hopefully' a once in a lifetime event. Anthony Sanders with the WP Carey School of Business says the United States is happy to put the year 2008 in the rear view mirror because the past few months have seen the worst economic times since the Great Depression. He says the repeated bailouts of everybody from banks to car makers to insurance companies went massively awry. "We have - the retail industry wants a bailout, everybody wants a bailout - in other words, I would call this in terms...