With Tax Increases Looming, CBO Does About-Face and Frets about Deficits and Debt

Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, the Congressional Budget Office follows a predictable pattern of endorsing policies that result in bigger government. During the debate about the so-called stimulus, for instance, CBO said more spending and higher deficits would be good for the economy. It then followed up that analysis by claiming that the faux [...]

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New Academic Study Shows Obamanomics Will Undermine Prosperity

These results won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has compared long-run growth rates in Hong Kong, the United States, France, and North Korea, but there’s a new study by three economists showing that nations with better tax policy grow faster and create more jobs. There are many other factors that also determine growth, [...]

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Not Just an Ordinary Limousine Liberal…

I don’t know whether he is a poster child for the dangers of inbreeding or a rich dolt who is seeking meaning in his life, but Prince Charles takes left-wing hypocrisy to an entirely new level. His “carbon footprint” almost surely is bigger than 99.9 percent of the world’s population, yet this pampered and clueless [...]

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Political Humor

These came in an email. I can’t vouch for their veracity, but a few of them were amusing enough to share.   The liberals are asking us to give Obama time. We agree . . . and wethink 25 to life would be appropriate. –Jay Leno   America needs Obamacare like Nancy Pelosi needs a [...]

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Peter Ferrara’s Too-Nice Attack on Phony Washington Budget Deals

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation explains that Washington budget deals don’t work because politicians never follow through on promised spending cuts. This is a very relevant argument since Obama’s so-called Deficit Reduction Commission supposedly is considering a deal featuring $3 of spending cuts for every $1 [...]

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Government Intervention, Favors for the Rich, and Economic Damage

Whether we’re looking at TARP bailouts, Obamacare, or tax loopholes, a common theme is that politicians implement a policy by arguing they want to help the less fortunate. When the dust settles, however, it is often the case that politically well-connected rich people are the big beneficiaries. The overall economy tends to be weaker, meanwhile, [...]

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The Filming of Atlas Shrugged

Reason TV gives us a taste of what to expect when the movie version of Ayn Rand’s classic is released. The two stars we see in this video are not how I pictured Dagny Taggart (wasn’t she a brunette) and Hank Reardon, but so what. I’m looking forward to the movie and I hope it [...]

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Are These Stories Examples of Washington Corruption? Well, if It Walks Like a Duck and Talks Like a Duck…

The “appearance of impropriety” is often considered the Washington standard for corruption and misbehavior. With that in mind, alarm bells began ringing in my head when I read this Washington Times report about Jacob Lew, Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. Why did Citigroup decide to hire a career DC political [...]

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Europe Is Royally %$(#&@, and America May Be Next

Jim Glassman has a thorough article in Commentary explaining that Europe is in deep trouble both because high tax rates discourage work and production and because excessive handouts encourage sloth and dependency. This should be a common-sense observation, but most politicians get votes by convincing voters they can have comfortable lives without producing. The inevitable [...]

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Great Moments in Government Waste

I’m sure if you read the Constitution with enough imagination, you’ll find (perhaps in invisible ink) the section stating that the federal government is supposed to provide subsidies to help specific companies market soap made out of goat milk. But my imagination isn’t that strong, so my reaction to this story is that the federal [...]

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Obamacare Complexity vs Free Market Simplicity

Free markets are characterized by voluntary exchange between buyers and sellers. Mapping that relationship is absurdly simply, as this image indicates. Indeed, the only reason I even bothered to include that image was for purposes of comparison. Here is a new flowchart prepared for the Joint Economic Committee showing the healthcare system under Obamacare.  It’s [...]

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Some R-Rated Political Humor to Brighten Your Day

Or maybe I should say darken your day, depending on how you interpret what’s on the t-shirt. Because the message is a tad bit risque, you have to click the icon for a full-size image.

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Blacks and the Collectivist Plantation

Republican is a dirty word for many African-Americans, often for good reason. But blacks should be equally hostile to Democrats – at least if actual results count for anything. This is the basic message of this video sent to me by a black friend. 

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America’s Long-Term Fiscal Crisis: Worse than Greece?

Professor Larry Kotlikoff has some very sobering analysis of America’s fiscal status. Instead of just looking at current deficits, he examines the “present value” of all future expenditures and revenues. Simply stated, America is in worse shape than Greece because of the long-term burden of entitlement programs. Kotlikoff’s conclusion that America is “one foot away [...]

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The Defense Department Is also Filled with Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

Advocates of limited government generally focus on domestic spending, pork-barrel projects, and entitlement programs. This is target-rich territory, to be sure, and especially inviting because most of the relevant programs and department shouldn’t exist. But just because national defense is a legitimate function of the federal government, that doesn’t mean that national security outlays are [...]

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Budget Deficits Force Local Governments to Do the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

There are legitimate reasons for local governments to own land, but surely it doesn’t make sense for them to hold on to surplus acreage. Better to get that land back in private hands, where it will be used for some productive purpose. This is why the downturn does have a silver lining. A handful of [...]

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Great Moments in Government Waste

Isn’t it nice to know that the federal government has about 100 separate programs to fund community activities that supposedly help fight crime? And isn’t it even nicer to know that there is no evidence that the money (which gets spent on things like pool parties and donut-eating contests) actually does any good? Senator Coburn [...]

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The White House Has Declared Class War on the Rich, but the Poor and Middle Class Will Suffer Collateral Damage

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, which means a big tax increase in 2011. Tax rates for all brackets will increase, the double tax on dividends will skyrocket from 15 percent to 39.6 percent, the child credit will shrink, the death tax will be reinstated [...]

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Another Sad Example of Mitchell’s Law

I’ve decided my one legacy to the world is the phrase, “Bad government policy begets more bad government policy.” This term, which I am modestly calling Mitchell’s Law, describes what happens when government intervention (Fannie and Freddie, for example, or Medicare and Medicaid) causes problems in a particular market (a housing bubble or a third-party [...]

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Driving Companies from the U.S. Market with too Much Regulation and Litigation

Almost every regulation presumably produces some benefit. The real issue is whether the benefits are significant and – even more important – whether they exceed the costs. Unfortunately, most regulations fail this common-sense test. A German magazine provides some good evidence, reporting that major companies from Germany are choosing to “de-list” from the New York [...]

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Great Moments in Government Waste, the European Version

It’s aggravating and maddening to send tax dollars to Washington and watch them get wasted on pork-barrel projects and inefficient programs. Imagine how much worse it would be, though, to send tax dollars to an international bureaucracy and be utterly helpless to stop the worst kinds of boondoggle spending. That’s how taxpayers from European nations [...]

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Bush, Pelosi, and Reid Deserve Scorn for Destroying Jobs for Teenagers

Anybody with an IQ above room temperature understands that companies only hire workers when they expect to generate net revenue (i.e., the total receipts associated with a new worker are expected to be higher than the total costs). That’s why it was so reprehensible for Congress to approve a 40-percent hike in the minimum wage [...]

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Europe’s Dishonest “Stress Test” for Banks

The Wall Street Journal correctly pulls aside the veil and exposes the dubious gimmick that European politicians used to declare that banks are reasonably health. To put it bluntly, they assumed no government would ever default, which really means that the stress test was a fraud or German taxpayers are now on the chopping block [...]

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The Founding Fathers Would Be Even More Horrified by Today’s Spending

The Washington Examiner explains that America’s Founders would be aghast to see how modern politicians have accumulated $trillions of debt. That may be true, but the editorial is nonetheless unsatisfactory because it’s quite likely that the founders would be even more horrified by the amount of spending. After all, the Constitution permitted debt, but Article [...]

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Time to Shut Down the TSA?

In his Chicago Tribune column, Steve Champman suggests that the TSA’s bureaucratic inefficiency does more harm than good, especially if we place any value of liberty. Get rid of the no-fly list entirely. For that matter, get rid of the requirement that passengers provide government-approved identification just to go from one place to another. Americans [...]

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Taxes Are for the Little People, not John Kerry

In the future, all dictionary publishers should get rid of their existing definitions for “hypocrisy” and replace them with a photo of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. He’s just been caught committing the horrible sin of saving his family more than $500,000 by domiciling his new yacht in Rhode Island (which is a tax haven for [...]

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Democrat Tax Cutters?

The Wall Street Journal ponders the mini-tax revolt among some Democrats, ranging from Kent Conrad in the Senate to Jerrold Nadler in the House, who are suddenly making arguments that it would be a bad idea to allow higher tax rates in 2011 (because the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts automatically expire).   I’m not [...]

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Great Moments in Government Waste and Taxpayer Ripoffs

Senator Coburn’s office circulates a “Pork Report” every day, which I probably shouldn’t read since my blood pressure spikes. Today’s collection of stories included this outrageous example of federal bureaucrats living the good life with our tax dollars. Federal investigators said Benjamin Clayton, a former U.S. Department of Energy employee is a crook who racked [...]

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Noncompliance Leads to a Victory for Liberty

I’m glad I read Instapundit, because my day has been made brighter by the news that Arizona’s statists have given up on their money-grubbing speed camera program. Here’s a cheerful story which explains that widespread noncompliance was the key. Dozens of photo-enforcement cameras on freeways throughout the state are coming down this week. A total [...]

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Obama’s Jobs Fantasy

In a column in today’s New York Post, I mock White House unemployment calculations and then explain why companies are not anxious to hire more workers. The White House last year released a supposedly scientific analysis that claimed to show that adopting the “stimulus” bill would cut unemployment. Indeed, the report specifically estimated that the [...]

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