Europe’s Riots, America’s Future

Riots and protests have swept across Europe, as populations lured into government dependency are upset that there’s no longer enough money to maintain the existing level of redistribution. Here’s an excerpt from a BBC report: Tens of thousands of people from around Europe have marched across Brussels in a protest against spending cuts by some EU [...]

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Overhauling CBO and JCT Is a Real Test of GOP Resolve, not the “Pledge to America”

While I’m glad Republicans are finally talking about smaller government, I’ve expressed some disappointment with the GOP Pledge to America. Why “reform” Fannie and Freddie, I asked, when the right approach is to get the government completely out of the housing sector. Jacob Sullum of Reason is similarly underwhelmed. He writes: In the “Pledge to [...]

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Talking Taxes on Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano

I’m not a big fan of multi-guest panels, but I think this interview went well.

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Halfway Around the World, Fighting for Freedom, Low Taxes, and Sovereignty

I’m in Singapore for two days to help fight the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a statist international bureaucracy based in Paris. The OECD has something called a global tax forum, the purpose of which is to harass so-called tax haven in hopes of coercing them into acting as tax collectors for Europe’s decrepit [...]

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Obama Tax Plan: Putting Demagoguery Before Jobs

I’ve already commented on the Democrats deciding to wait until after the election before figuring out what to do about the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. This was a remarkable development since failure to extend these pieces of legislation means a big tax increase next January. But this doesn’t mean the Democrats are sitting on [...]

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Are the Germans and French Really More Hostile to Big Government than Americans?!?

I always view polling data with a bit of skepticism, but I’m nonetheless embarrassed by new data from a 22-nation poll showing that German and French respondents are even more opposed to so-called stimulus spending than American respondents. If Americans are to the left of Europeans on size-of-government issues, that does not bode well for [...]

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Some Monday Humor

I don’t know if this is true, but it’s been circulating for so long that there’s probably some fire under all the smoke. Does anybody know if this is for real, or an urban legend?

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Why Are We Paying $100 Million to International Bureaucrats in Paris so They Can Endorse Obama’s Statist Agenda?

There’s a wise old saying about “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” But perhaps we need a new saying along the lines of “don’t subsidize the foot that kicks you.” Here’s a good example: American taxpayers finance the biggest share of the budget for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is an [...]

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Kids Are the First Victims of Obamacare

In the real world, rational people know that companies will stop selling products if they are forced to lose money. In the political world, though, common sense doesn’t matter. Or at least it ranks far below other considerations, such as power, polling, fundraising, and spite. If you think I’m being too harsh, just look at what’s [...]

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Every Patriotic American Should Support the President

I wish the title of this blog post referred to the President of the United States, but instead our praise is directed across the Atlantic, to the President of the Czech Republic, who wisely has warned against giving “global governance” powers to the international bureaucrats at the United Nations. President Vaclav Klaus is a great [...]

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Warren Buffett: Good Investor, Crummy Economist

Warren Buffett once said that it wasn’t right for his secretary to have a higher tax rate than he faced, leading me to point out that he didn’t understand tax policy. The 15 percent tax rates on dividends and capital gains to which he presumably was referring represents double taxation, and when added to the tax that already [...]

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Democrats Unfurl the White Flag on Taxes and Class Warfare

I’m dumbfounded and amazed. When Democrats and Republicans have a game of chicken, the GOP blinks 99 percent of the time. And I thought for sure this was going to happen in the fight about whether to extend all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (the GOP position), or whether to impose a big, class-warfare tax [...]

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A Contest: Which Story Is More Upsetting?

Here’s a change of pace. Instead of doing separate blog posts on the following two stories, I’m curious to see which one generates the most irritation/anger/disgust from you readers. The first option comes from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which is appropriately upset that Government Motors…oops, I mean General Motors…is back in the business [...]

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Wages Should Be Determined by Markets, not Quota-Driven Bureaucrats

Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute decimates the bean-counting feminist “paycheck fairness” legislation being considered by the Senate. Republicans presumably know this is a bad idea, but one can only wonder whether they will do the right thing and block this initiative that at best will be a boon for trial lawyers and [...]

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The GOP “Pledge” Doesn’t Go Far Enough: There Should Be No Federal Government Role in Housing

Considering they could have sat on their hands and relied on unhappy voters to give them big gains in November, I’m not too unhappy about the House GOP’s “Pledge to America.” Yes, it’s mostly filled with inoffensive motherhood-and-apple-pie language, but at least there’s some rhetoric about reining in excessive government. After eight years of fiscal [...]

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Bashing Bailouts and Inflexible Unions

No CAP bedwetter to debate in this segment.

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Strangling Entrepreneurship and Job Creation with $1.75 Trillion of Regulation and Red Tape

A new study from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy concludes that annual regulatory costs jumped by nearly $600 billion between 2005 and 2008. Thanks to the Obama Administration’s big-government agenda, the burden of red tape today doubtlessly is much higher, but the 2008 estimate is enough to generate some very sobering numbers. A $1.75 [...]

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It’s Simple to Balance the Budget without Higher Taxes

John Podesta of the Center for American Progress had a column in Politico yesterday asserting that “closing the budget gap entirely on the spending side would require draconian programmatic cuts.” He went on to complain that there are some people who “refuse to look at the revenue side of the ledger – while insisting that [...]

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New Orwellian Tax Scheme in England Would Require all Paychecks Go Directly to the Tax Authority

Our tax system in America is an absurd nightmare, but at least we have some ability to monitor what is happening. We can’t get too aggressive (nobody wants the ogres at the IRS breathing down their necks), but at least we can adjust our withholding levels and control what gets put on our annual tax returns. [...]

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Russian Government Announces 20 Percent Reduction in Number of Bureaucrats

I’ve already commented on Cuba’s surprising announcement to slash the number of government workers. And I’ve complained about the federal workforce expanding in the United States. This is not what one would expect when comparing policy developments in a communist nation and a (supposedly) capitalist nation. Well, Russia wisely is following the Cuban approach on [...]

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Obama’s Wants a 23.9% Capital Gains Tax, but the Rate Actually Will Be Much Higher Because of Inflation

Thanks to the Obamacare legislation, we already know there will be a new 3.9 percent payroll tax on all investment income earned by so-called rich taxpayers beginning in 2013. And the capital gains tax rate will jump to 20 percent next year if the President gets his way. This sounds bad (and it is), but the news [...]

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Giving Cops Bad Incentives to Harass Victimless Behavior

The Washington Post has an interesting report about the huge amount of money that Fairfax County spends to go after gambling. The story cites critics who ask “why law enforcement spends valuable time and money on combating sports gambling. The answer is obvious – and explicit in the story: “…police in Virginia are allowed to [...]

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The Recycling Scam

Jeff Jacoby analyzes the absurd tendency of local governments to coerce residents into costly – and inefficient – recycling programs. As a resident of Fairfascist…oops, I mean Fairfax…County in Virginia, I already am painfully aware of this bureaucratic impulse. ….recyclables will all go into 64-gallon “toters,’’ which will be emptied at curbside on trash day. [...]

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The Environmentalist Death Toll

National Review has a column reviewing a new book, 3 Billion and Counting, that dissects the harsh human cost of banning DDT. There are things that should be banned, of course, but such decisions should be based on sound science and cost-benefit analysis. Sadly, that’s not what happened with the politically-motivated decision to ban this [...]

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Worse than Government-Run Healthcare

After coming for 14 points down in the 4th quarter, Georgia allowed a touchdown with 15 seconds to go and lost to Arkansas 31-24.

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Protecting Good Cops with Oversight to Deter Bad Cops

Here’s a great video on the issue of whether police can and should be videotaped. Put together by my Cato colleagues, the answer is yes, of course. The only thing I’ll add is that this actually is a great way to protect the reputation of the vast majority of cops who do their jobs honorably.

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The “Tea Party’s Already Won”

That’s the tile of an insightful column at Thehill.com, which points out that Tea Party activism has succeeded in shifting the debate from making government bigger to making government smaller. The columnist also is correct in explaining how the Tea Party, by dethroning some entrenched incumbents, is forcing the GOP to at least pretend to [...]

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Idiotic Moments in Political Correctness

Imagine having your child suspended for two years because he took a toy gun to school. Sounds absurd, right? Well, it’s real life in Broward County, Florida. Samuel Burgos has fond memories of his friends at school, but he only gets to see them in pictures now. The 8-year-old boy hasn’t been in school for [...]

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More Evidence of the Failed Stimulus

Not that we need more evidence, but here are two new items confirming the absurdity of thinking that bigger government is stimulus. First, we have a story from Los Angeles revealing that the city only created 55 jobs with $111 million of stimulus funds. This translates to a per-job cost of $2 million, which is [...]

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The Cato Institute – America’s Best Think Tank

Okay, I’m biased, but Cato stood up against the so-called stimulus when others were quiet. Cato was against Obamacare, even back when it was called Romneycare. Now, we’re leading the fight on restraining Leviathan. The image below is our new full-page ad on cutting wasteful programs, agencies, and departments – and asking Obama to fulfill [...]

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