With a steady stream of bad news stories about maimed soldiers, the Boston Marathon bombing and the house of horrors in Cleveland, it would be natural to despair for the human condition. What defect in the human character allows us to do such things?

But the survivors of these terrible ordeals tell a different story, one of courage, strength, determination and hope. It is the story of the indomitable human spirit.

Iraq war veteran Army Sgt. Brendan Marrocco lost his arms and legs to a roadside bomb in 2009. Not satisfied with his prosthetic arms, Marrocco took a major risk by opting to become the first soldier to receive an arm transplant. The 13-hour double transplant surgery was the first ever performed at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and only the seventh to be performed in the United States. read more »

Air travelers received a bit of good news recently: A bill to put air traffic controllers back to work whisked through the House and Senate and flew into the White House for President Obama’s signature.

Why the quick action?

Millions of constituents were outraged with how the FAA handled a 4 percent budget cut mandated by the sequester. Instead of focusing on non-essential personnel, the FAA furloughed 10 percent of its 15,000 air traffic controllers each day, causing more than 40,000 flight delays and 1,900 cancelled flights, according to FlightStats.com.

Interestingly, the D.C.-area airports that serve members of Congress were exempt from the service cuts — a pure coincidence, testified one FAA official. Nevertheless, Congress felt the heat from angry voters, and some experienced those delays firsthand when they traveled outside D.C. read more »

Even some of its strongest supporters now say that the federal Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, is going to be a train wreck. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, cost estimates for Obamacare’s new entitlements — the Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies — have doubled since it was signed into law in 2010.

The CBO originally estimated the cost at $898 billion from 2010 to 2019, but this estimate included only six years of spending, since most of the provisions didn’t take effect until 2014. read more »

There’s an old saying, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Well, what happens in Seattle should stay in Seattle.

Seattle officials had a bad idea a couple of years ago, and now some state lawmakers want to expand that bad idea statewide.

The bad idea is Seattle’s paid sick leave policy that applies to any business with five or more employees, even if that business isn’t located in Seattle.

Approved in 2011, the controversial ordinance says that, if one or more of your employees spends more than 240 hours a year — or about 10 percent of their time — in Seattle on business, you must pay them pro-rated benefits, even if your company is located in Everett, New York or Milan, Italy. read more »

There’s an ancient Chinese proverb that says, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

In other words, it is better to teach someone to take care of themselves than keep them dependent on others.

In our country today, the growing tendency is to let government provide for us. Almost lost is the notion that, if people are willing to take risks, work hard and pick themselves up when they fall, they will eventually succeed.

As government grows ever larger in an attempt to provide more benefits to more people, it saps trillions of dollars from the private economy and ultimately deters job creation. When investors and entrepreneurs become targets of derision and are wracked with uncertainty about what the government will do next, they hesitate to risk everything to start a business. read more »

Imagine that you see a swimmer floundering in the water. You call the rescue squad and then you toss the swimmer a concrete block. Does that make sense? Of course not, but that’s what’s happening in Washington, D.C.

President Obama recently proposed spending more than $20 billion on roads, bridges, highways and ports across the nation as a way to stimulate economic growth. Traditionally, the bulk of that money has come from federal fuel taxes.

But at the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new mileage standards and air quality rules that could add as much as 9 cents a gallon to the cost of gasoline.

While one program aims to save the floundering economy, the other tosses it a concrete block. It’s as if the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing — or worse, doesn’t care. read more »

When an errant SUV crashes through your picture window, you may not notice that your barbecue tipped over and caught your house on fire. So it is with the U.S. economy these days.

All the focus on our national debt, sequester cuts and federal tax increases is obscuring a smoldering problem in the states. Declining tax revenues, budget deficits and underfunded pensions have legislatures scrambling for revenue. Many states are taxing and borrowing more just to make ends meet.

The State Budget Crisis Task Force, led by former New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, studied fiscal conditions in six heavily populated states — California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Virginia — which together account for a third of the nation’s population and almost 40 cents of every dollar spent by state and local governments. read more »

The tributes to former Gov. Booth Gardner, who died March 15 at the age of 76, remind us of a better time. Throughout his political career, Booth was known for his respectful demeanor, good humor and dedication to consensus.

That is in stark contrast to today’s reality.

Now, partisan rancor is the norm in a high-stakes blood sport where the only goal is political advantage, and people who hold opposing views are assailed as enemies. This scorched earth mentality has become so pervasive, people assume it’s the nature of politics.

But that’s true only if we continue to allow it.

If the politicians and others who laud Booth Gardner genuinely want to honor him, we can do so by emulating him — by tempering our behavior and that of our colleagues. It is easy to praise a good man; it is much harder to be like him. read more »

During the 1992 presidential campaign, then-candidate Bill Clinton famously intoned, “I feel your pain,” an attempt to reassure voters he understood what they were going through. Since then, similar statements of empathy have become a staple for politicians.

But they don’t always ring true for every constituent. Take small business owners, for example.

Most elected officials have no idea what it’s like to risk everything you have or to struggle to meet payroll for your employees and their families as waves of new regulations threaten to drown you and your business.

One politician who got that firsthand experience was former U.S. senator and presidential candidate George McGovern (D). read more »