I haven’t paid too much attention to the Solyndra scandal, except to note that waste, corruption and job losses are the inevitable consequences of big government and crony capitalism. But if you want a withering indictment of the sleaziness of the whole enterprise, a…
Dan Mitchell
Daniel J. Mitchell is the President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Dr. Mitchell advocates limited government and fundamental tax reform, and is the nation’s leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations.
In addition to fiscal policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security reform – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts.
New Rankings from Economic Freedom of the World Reveal Dismal Impact of Bush-Obama Statism
The 2011 edition of Economic Freedom of the World, published by Canada’s Fraser Institute (with help from groups like Cato), has been released. Covering data through 2009, the new report provides damning evidence of the negative impact of the Bush-Obama policies of…
One Simple Reason (and Two Easy Steps) to Show Why Obama’s Soak-the-Rich Tax Hikes Won’t Work
It’s hard to keep track of all the tax hikes that President Obama is proposing, but it’s very simple to recognize his main target – the evil, nasty, awful people known as the rich. Or, as Obama identifies them, the “millionaires and billionaires” who happen to have…
CPAs Celebrate as Obama Proposes to Create a Turbo-Charged Alternative Minimum Tax
Wow, this is remarkable. The alternative minimum tax (AMT) is one of the most-hated features of the tax code. It is such a nightmare of complexity that even Democrats routinely have supported “patches” and “band-aids” to protect millions of additional households from…
Europeans Mock Treasury Secretary Geithner, Showing Spend-aholics Shouldn’t Give Advice to Spend-aholics
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner may be most famous in the United States for cheating on his taxes (you can even buy a t-shirt to acknowledge his tax dodging), but he’s becoming a punch line in the rest of the world for different reasons. I wrote two years ago about…
Thomas Sowell Exposes the Historical and Economic Illiteracy of the Political Class
Thomas Sowell just completed a three-part “Back to the Future” series, looking at a couple of fiscal policy issues. His unifying theme is how the political class fails (perhaps deliberately) to learn from mistakes. In Part I, he decimates President Obama’s new…
Washington’s Revolving Door of Legal Corruption
If you want to know why Washington is a cesspool of corruption and graft, you should read this story from the Washington Post about how Capitol Hill staffers use their positions as stepping stones to jobs in the lobbying community. Nearly 5,400 former congressional…
Obama and Geithner Advising the Europeans on Fiscal Crisis?!? This Is a Case of the Blind Leading the Blind…on Steroids
This is either frightening or hilarious. The people in Washington who are trying to make America more like Europe are advising the Europeans to double-down on the awful policies that have pushed the continent’s welfare states to insolvency. Here are some of the…
Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, Which State Has the Biggest Welfare Benefits of All?
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities is a left-wing group in Washington that advocates for bigger government and higher taxes. In an effort to promote more redistribution, they recently put together a map showing how welfare benefits varied by state. We’re…
If You Count the Seen and the Unseen, Obama’s Corrupt Green-Energy Program is a Job Destroyer
The President’s “green energy” loan program has turned into an embarrassment for the White House, in part because of the sordid corruption associated with the bankruptcy of Solyndra. But the subsidy program also has attracted some negative attention for its failure to…