Consider This! | Conservative political commentary in 10 minutes or less

Episode 106: How One-Party Rule Has Affected Cities

Episode 105: What’s Your Opinion of Opinion Polling?

Episode 104: Gravity Payments CEO Weighs In On the Minimum Wage

Episode 103: The State of Journalism, and What RFRA Doesn’t Protect

Episide 102: Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Episode 101: Net Neutrality and Why the FCC Rules Don’t Create It

Episode 100: Listener Feedback, and Mark Twain on Economics

Episode 99: Call It “Islamic Extremism”, and Collegian Scott Walker

Beware of “free” stuff Seems like the more ObamaCare(tm) is implemented, the less the American people like it. First of all, a liberal, Ivy League university has sent its students into an uproar. They want to #FightTheFee that they’ll be charged for not buying the university’s health insurance. Welcome to the real word of socialism! Lesson 1: You won’t like it when it’s applied to you. And on a broader scale, the American people in general are souring on the idea. A majority oppose the law now, and I wonder how many of them just took Nancy Pelosi’s word for it when she said that they’d have to pass the law to find out what’s in it. The blue-sky promises have turned to thunderclouds. Maybe folks should understand a law before they support it. Mentioned links: Cornell students erupt over health care fee As Public Sours, ObamaCare Faces An Uncertain Future Getting some shopping done? If you're going to shop at Amazon, please consider clicking on my affiliate link. Thanks! You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. And please leave a comment letting them know how you like it. I really appreciate listener ratings on iTunes, which can also lead to having more listeners, and more ratings! Keep the ball rollin’! The Stitcher Network is another possibility. You can find podcasts, add them to your favorites, and then either listen to them on the web site, stream them to your smart phone, or to some snazzy GM, Ford, and BMW car. If you do download Stitcher to your phone, please use the promo code “ConsiderThis” to let them know where you heard about it. You can listen on the Blubrry Network if you like. You can find podcasts and save them to your MyCast list, and come back anytime and listen to the latest episodes. Similarly, Player.fm allows you to subscribe to podcasts and play all the latest episodes from your browser. And if you have some other podcatcher or RSS reader, click here to get the direct feed and paste it wherever you need it. I would love it if you would spread the word about the podcast! Click the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg or LinkedIn icons below (or all of them!) to recommend "Consider This!" to your social media audience. Show transcript Cornell University is an Ivy League school in the very liberal enclave of Ithaca, NY. Change comes slowly to the little town, centrally isolated in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. You’d think that would describe a conservative enclave, but no. The town of Ithaca is as reliably liberal as they are set in their ways, wishing to preserve their town as it is for all time. But economic pressures have pushed to the fore in recent decades, and the CAVE people, as they are affectionately called (Citizens Against Virtually Everything), have been overcome to bring Ithaca economic development. I say that to say this. Politically, Ithaca is left-leaning, to the point of falling over into Cayuga Lake. Barack Obama and his policies have loads of support there. But, as I mentioned a few episodes back regarding Harvard University, that support tends to dissolve when they are affected personally by those policies. Students are going to be charged a fee for not buyi...

Spending on nothing? In this episode, I talk about how the money spent on (literally) nothing will soon outpace defense spending, and not much later, non-defense spending as well. And no, it’s not some right-wing think tank making that prediction. Also, is it possible to have a moral disagreement with someone, and yet not hate them? The Left seems to think that impossible, and Dana Bash questioned Mike Huckabee about it specifically. He schools her in the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. (OK, normally I don’t like it when someone says, “Hey, X really schooled Y!” when all X did is say something the speaker agrees with. Usually there’s not actual educating going on. But this time, there certainly is.) Mentioned links: The Legacy of Debt: Interest Costs Poised to Surpass Defense and Nondefense Discretionary Spending CNN Confused: How Can Huckabee Oppose Gay Marriage AND Have Gay Friends? Getting some shopping done? If you're going to shop at Amazon, please consider clicking on my affiliate link. Thanks! You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. And please leave a comment letting them know how you like it. I really appreciate listener ratings on iTunes, which can also lead to having more listeners, and more ratings! Keep the ball rollin’! The Stitcher Network is another possibility. You can find podcasts, add them to your favorites, and then either listen to them on the web site, stream them to your smart phone, or to some snazzy GM, Ford, and BMW car. If you do download Stitcher to your phone, please use the promo code “ConsiderThis” to let them know where you heard about it. You can listen on the Blubrry Network if you like. You can find podcasts and save them to your MyCast list, and come back anytime and listen to the latest episodes. Similarly, Player.fm allows you to subscribe to podcasts and play all the latest episodes from your browser. And if you have some other podcatcher or RSS reader, click here to get the direct feed and paste it wherever you need it. I would love it if you would spread the word about the podcast! Click the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg or LinkedIn icons below (or all of them!) to recommend "Consider This!" to your social media audience. Show transcript By the year 2021, federal spending just on interest on the national debt will exceed defense spending. Think about that; as much as we spend on “the war machine”, as some refer to it, we’ll be spending more on…nothing, just interest. And the following year, 2022, the interest payment will also exceed the amount for all non-defense spending. This isn’t some right-wing think tank coming up with these numbers; it’s the White House and the Congressional Budget Office. By 2021, the government will be spending more on interest than on all national defense, according to White House forecasts. And one year later, interest costs will exceed nondefense discretionary spending–essentially every other domestic and international government program funded annually through congressional appropriations. (The largest part of the budget is, and will remain, the mandatory spending programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Extending the benefits actually cost jobs Who would have thought that extending unemployment benefits further and further out would actually cause people to stop looking for work altogether? Well, actually, those who know that incentives (and disincentives) actually work; you know, market economics. How many jobs were created after the 99 week benefit system was stopped, and how many folks went back into the labor force? Lots. Listen in. President Obama did not like the way Bush used executive orders to increase the power of the President. Yet he has used EOs and something just as powerful (but not as well known) to leave Bush, and all presidents for the last 70 years, in the dust. I’ll be discussing the Presidential Memoranda. And finally, where’s that $2500 per year we were supposed to save from enacting ObamaCare(tm). Numbers grounded in reality tell quite a different story. Mentioned links: How Obama has used executive powers compared to his predecessors Obama issues ‘executive orders by another name’ Extended Unemployment Benefits Hurt Jobs, New Report Finds OBAMACARE: $2 TRILLION IN SPENDING, $643M IN TAXES, INSURANCE FOR $50K A HEAD Getting some shopping done? If you're going to shop at Amazon, please consider clicking on my affiliate link. Thanks! You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. And please leave a comment letting them know how you like it. I really appreciate listener ratings on iTunes, which can also lead to having more listeners, and more ratings! Keep the ball rollin’! The Stitcher Network is another possibility. You can find podcasts, add them to your favorites, and then either listen to them on the web site, stream them to your smart phone, or to some snazzy GM, Ford, and BMW car. If you do download Stitcher to your phone, please use the promo code “ConsiderThis” to let them know where you heard about it. You can listen on the Blubrry Network if you like. You can find podcasts and save them to your MyCast list, and come back anytime and listen to the latest episodes. Similarly, Player.fm allows you to subscribe to podcasts and play all the latest episodes from your browser. And if you have some other podcatcher or RSS reader, click here to get the direct feed and paste it wherever you need it. I would love it if you would spread the word about the podcast! Click the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg or LinkedIn icons below (or all of them!) to recommend "Consider This!" to your social media audience. Show transcript President Obama had complained about how the office of the President had become too powerful under George W. Bush, what with all the executive orders he had issued. Since his election, Obama, as well as Harry Reid in the Senate, have made a note of the fact that he has issued fewer of them than Bush. But that’s not the whole story. A presidential “memoranda” is an instrument with the same effect as an executive order,

Another rerun More free stuff, and making the eeevil rich pay for it. The State of the Union Address was a rerun of so many other speeches by Democratic presidents. So then, what is the state of the State of the Union Address? There are some extreme medical circumstances that cause women to choose abortion. The latest is really pushing the envelope on the definition of “extreme”. Harvard professors advised the Obama campaign on many things, including health care. Now that they have Obamacare(tm), their reaction to it is notable. Episode 100 is coming up in a month or so. I’d like to get your thoughts on how this podcast has made a difference in your thoughts, or how you’ve made a difference in others, and celebrate 100 episodes with your voices. E-mail me at considerthis@ctpodcasting.com, or call 267-CALL-CT-0, 267-225-5280, and let’s hear how you have considered this. Mentioned links: Harvard Ideas on Health Care Hit Home, Hard Woman Aborts Baby at 28 Weeks Because of Baby’s Deformed Left Hand 5 Facts About the State of the Union Obama Neglected to Mention Obama calls for civility, then immediately taunts Republicans over his two presidential wins Obama Knocks ‘Constant Fundraising,’ Then Immediately Asks for Donations Obama sets record for veto threats in State of the Union address Getting some shopping done? If you're going to shop at Amazon, please consider clicking on my affiliate link. Thanks! You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. And please leave a comment letting them know how you like it. I really appreciate listener ratings on iTunes, which can also lead to having more listeners, and more ratings! Keep the ball rollin’! The Stitcher Network is another possibility. You can find podcasts, add them to your favorites, and then either listen to them on the web site, stream them to your smart phone, or to some snazzy GM, Ford, and BMW car. If you do download Stitcher to your phone, please use the promo code “ConsiderThis” to let them know where you heard about it. You can listen on the Blubrry Network if you like. You can find podcasts and save them to your MyCast list, and come back anytime and listen to the latest episodes. Similarly, Player.fm allows you to subscribe to podcasts and play all the latest episodes from your browser. And if you have some other podcatcher or RSS reader, click here to get the direct feed and paste it wherever you need it. I would love it if you would spread the word about the podcast! Click the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg or LinkedIn icons below (or all of them!) to recommend "Consider This!" to your social media audience. Show transcript For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have...

Episode 94: Those Low Gas Prices, and Catch-And-Release(-And-Catch-Again) Terrorist Policy

Episode 93: My Christmas Wishes for You

Episode 92: Another Peek Behind the Media Curtain, and Some Personal Reflections