Posts by Tom Patterson

Justice for peons

Thank God Obama watches television, not just basketball games either. Otherwise, he never would find out what the peons so many levels below him in the bureaucracy are up to. It’s amazing how much mischief has been churned out by Continue Reading

Brewer’s Medicaid proposal is conservative? Really?

Gov. Brewers Medicaid program is fiscally conservative. So say her commercials. The claim is underlined and italicized so it must be so. Well, let’s see. Her program draws down a substantial short-term subsidy from the federal government, so if your Continue Reading

Just for something different, follow the law

Did you hear that the Obama administration higher-ups have instructed border agents to make sure that incoming students have valid visas? It seems a couple of the students involved in the Boston marathon terrorist attack were–ahem– in the country illegally. Continue Reading

Shining light on public employee pensions

All the good stuff was there in the Republic’s series on the growing menace that is our government pensions. The outlandish pensions for Public Safety employees, the ominously growing expense lines for local government, the pitiable “I’m just following the Continue Reading

Who’s accountable for the Arias debacle?

Why couldn’t anybody do something about the Jodie Arias trial? It was an embarrassment to our local courts. The trial long since has degenerated into a media driven circus event, satisfying the needs of the tabloid press (a.k.a. the mainstream Continue Reading

Benghazi just won’t go away

The Obama administration has labored mightily to convince us that there’s “nothing to see here” about Benghazi and that we should just “move along folks”. Hillary Clinton arrogantly asks what difference it makes anyway and the ever pompous John Kerry Continue Reading

Pathetic responses to Bostom

I can’t help but laugh at some of the commentary on the Boston Marathon terrorist attack. “I don’t want to politicize an act of terrorism”, said David Remnick of the New Yorker. No, my no, mustn’t do that. Then he Continue Reading

Margaret Thatcher and her detractors

Margaret Thatcher was by any reckoning one of the towering figures of the second half of the 20th century. She came to power in a U.K. racked by labor strife, plagued with a failing currency and an economy in free-fall. Continue Reading

Sen. Flake just disagrees

The whole world seems to be on Jeff Flake’s case for his vote against the guns background check bill. From an “angry” Pres. Obama to pretty much all the media and gun-control folks, he’s getting it for selling out to Continue Reading

Why hospitals don’t want you to know their prices

You can see why hospitals particularly were panicked over Sen. Nancy Barto’s SB 1115, which would have forced them to (gasp!) publish the prices of their most common services. A lot of grime has accumulated in the world of medical Continue Reading

Curious arguments against testing

Eugene Robinson, the Washington Post columnist, wrote this week that we should dump our obsession with test scores in public schools. His argument was that relying on achievement tests engenders cheating, approvingly quoting a Post colleague who wrote that “what Continue Reading

Newspapers just another interest group

The issue of whether public notices must by law be printed in a newspaper is kind of a strange one. My take is that it’s only a debate because of the “power of the press” – in this case, to Continue Reading