1) Who's To Blame for Runaway Health Care Costs?

Well, Barack Obama, of course.

But, we mean, from within the health care industrial complex, who do voters blame?  

The recent McLaughlin & Associates poll for our partner group Unleash Prosperity Now asked that very question.

You can see from the chart below that voters are paying attention to us at UP. Three of four voters have an unfavorable opinion of United Health, Aetna, Blue Cross, etc. And that hostility is well deserved: the insurers are leading the lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill to expand Obamacare subsidies because the dollars flow right into their profit margins.

But the bad news is that hospitals - which keep driving up costs due to consolidation - are rated highly by voters. Drug companies are viewed unfavorably. That's a paradox because despite the high cost of prescription drugs, drugs save lives and are the cheapest way to treat illnesses and disease. Hospitalization is the most expensive option.  

2) Made In America

If the Atlanta Fed estimate for the fourth quarter is even close to correct, then real GDP growth has averaged a phenomenal 4% for three quarters in a row, as we mentioned last week. We would add to that the spurt in industrial production. It's now higher than at any time in the entire four-year Biden presidency.

We are making things again.

3) Remember When Everyone Was Unemployed Because Fossil Fuels Replaced Firewood?

No? Neither do we.

Keep in mind the chart below when doomsayers worry that the latest major technological change - artificial intelligence - will cause permanent mass unemployment. We survived when almost three of 10 workers were phased out of logging, when fossil fuels became the nation's energy source back in the 19th century.

Productivity creates new jobs and wealth, it doesn't destroy them.

4) Glenn Youngkin for President?

Virginia's Glenn Youngkin leaves office on Saturday, capping one of the most successful single terms of any governor in recent memory.

Virginia is a light blue state, whose poor-growth and pro-business tax and regulatory policies brought prosperity back to the Old Dominion state. In UP's "Vote With Your Feet" report, Virginia turned around a decline. Youngkin told a UP gathering last summer that "for the first time in 10 years, more people moved to Virginia than moved away to the other 49 states, Common sense works."

What is perhaps most remarkable is that Democrats controlled at least one house of the legislature during his term, blocking his boldest proposals. Nonetheless, he accomplished a lot. The state's unemployment rate is 3.5%, compared to 4.4% nationally. He cut taxes by $9 billion, including the state's hated grocery tax. He eliminated some 90,000 regulations.

That helps explain Virginia's No. 1 ranking on CNBC's list of "Top States for Business" in 2024. It dipped slightly last year, which left Democratic State Senate Leader Louise Lucas to complain that was only because the state's federal workers were "crushed by Trump's policies and reckless federal cuts."

On education, he ended COVID-era mandates, decreased chronic absenteeism and ended Critical Race Theory in schools. He won his election on the theme of letting parents have more control of the schools.  

On energy, he dropped out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and ended the Virginia Clean Economy Act. Virginia is now called the data center capital of the world.

On crime, Youngkin presided over a 59% reduction in fatal fentanyl overdoses and a 30% drop in murder.

Youngkin has proven he can win moderate Democratic voters - albeit a pool that is alas shrinking.

Conservatives could do a lot worse than Youngkin in 2028 - and sometimes we fear that they will.

We recommend this WSJ editorial on Youngkin.

5) Chicago Schools Even Worse Than We Thought

We took a shot at the poor performance of the Chicago schools last week in our item on how the Chicago Teachers Union can't spell. We may have been too kind when we said the majority of students in many Chicago schools lack basic reading proficiency. In fact, as many as 24 Chicago schools had literally zero students who met basic reading proficiency standards in 2024.  Zero. Only a few of them were special ed schools.

Even in 2025 - after the state watered down standards to artificially boost scores - the overall Chicago proficiency numbers were pretty miserable:

For this, the union is demanding more pay from the "governer"?

6) This Is a Job For NATO and U.S. Tax Dollars

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