September 2010 Blog Posts (33)

Red Tape Rises Again: Cost of Regulation Reaches $1.75 Trillion

While the revenues and expenditures of the government are budgeted and accounted for each year, the costs of regulation are largely hidden from view, paid for indirectly via higher prices, fewer choices and less innovation. The best estimates of the total cost, however, have come from a series of reports commissioned by the Small Business Administration (SBA). The latest such report was released…

Christine O'Donnell, U.S. Senate candidate from Delaware, has faced considerable criticism and news media attention about her youthful association with witchcraft. Have we seen similar news media attention given to other politicians who have made bizarre remarks that border on gross stupidity -- possibly lunacy?

During a congressional Armed Services hearing in March, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., expressed concern that…

The Service Employees International Union plans to send 25,000 rank-and-file workers on 500 buses to Washington this weekend to protest the tea party movement, Republicans and Fox News. If SEIU members had any sense, they'd be demonstrating at their own bosses' D.C. headquarters. It's the Big Labor Left, not the Tea Party Right, that is flushing rank-and-file union workers' hard-earned dues down the collective toilet in these hard times.…

One of the many slick tricks of the Obama administration was to insert a provision in the massive Obamacare legislation regulating people who sell gold. This had nothing to do with medical care but everything to do with sneaking in an extension of the government's power over gold, in a bill too big for most people to read.

Gold has long been a source of frustration for politicians who want to extend their power over…

ObamaCare Will Dramatically Reduce Choice in Private Insurance

One of the ways in which ObamaCare will reduce individuals' and businesses' choices of health insurance is through regulating the medical loss ratio (MLR) -- the amount of dollars an insurer spends on medical care divided by the total premiums. For example, if an insurer earns $10 million in premiums and spends $8.5 million on medical claims, its MLR would be 85 percent. Under ObamaCare, policies…

More Proof We Can't Stop Poverty by Making It More Comfortable

On Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a State of the Union address to Congress in which he declared an "unconditional war on poverty in America." Then, the poverty rate in America was around 19 percent and falling rapidly. Last week, it was reported that the poverty rate this year is expected to be roughly 15 percent, and is climbing, says Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow with the…

How Seniors Will Pay for ObamaCare

The cost of ObamaCare will be quite high for some people, says John C. Goodman, president, CEO and Kellye Wright Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

• By 2017, thousands of people in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio will be paying more than $5,000 a year in lost health care benefits to make ObamaCare possible, according to a study published this month by Robert…

Mayor Adrian Fenty, under whom the murder rate has gone down and the school children's test scores have gone up, was resoundingly defeated for re-election.

Nor was Mayor Fenty simply a passive beneficiary of the…

States Can Seek Constitutional Amendment to End Federal Debt Binge

During the 1980s, 33 state legislatures invoked their power to apply for a convention to draft a balanced budget amendment. The effort fell short by just one state of the two-thirds majority needed to force Congress' hand to call the convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution. Why did the effort fail? Some legislators worried that a convention would not be limited to a specific subject…

Principles for Economic Revival

America's financial crisis, deep recession and anemic recovery have largely been driven by economic policies that have deviated from proven fact-based principles, say George P. Shultz, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, and his colleagues. Here are the priorities that should guide policymakers as they seek to restore more rapid growth.

First, take tax increases off the…

Cheating Charter Schools

The new $10 billion federal teacher bailout will be dispensed in a way that discriminates against charter school, says the Wall Street Journal.

The Department of Education initially said money from the Education Jobs Fund could go only to teachers and others employed by a local education agency or school district, but following complaints, the administration said it will allow charters with employees not hired by…

Austerity Agonistes: Why Left Wing Economists' Warnings against Austerity Programs are Wrong

One of the key signaling devices for international investors is how a government behaves under financial duress -- how it balances the demands of its debtors with those of its welfare recipients. Announcements of lower spending and higher taxes tell investors a country is willing to go to great lengths not to default on its debt obligations. If the government instead…

Among the many words that don't mean what they say, but which too many of us accept as if they did, are those staples of political discussion, "liberals" and "conservatives."

Most liberals are not liberal and most conservatives are not conservative. We might be better off just calling them X and Y, instead of imagining that we are really describing their philosophies. Moreover, like most confusion, it has consequences.…

Part II :

Words are supposed to convey thoughts, but they can also obliterate thoughts and shut down thinking. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, a catchword can "delay further analysis for fifty years." Holmes also said, "think things, not words."

When you are satisfied to accept words, without thinking beyond those words to the things-- the tangible realities of the world-- you are confirming what philosopher Thomas Hobbes said in the…