I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I write about insanely stupid government policies. But I know I get more motivated to fight big government. How can anyone want to give more money and power to politicians, for instance, after reading these comparisons of dumb…
Daily Analysis
If You Liked Bush’s Big-Government Policies, You’ll Love Santorum’s Statism
I’m a big believer in fairness. And since I’ve written about the shortcomings of Newt Gingrich, Mitch Daniels, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Mitt Romney, I need to say something about Rick Santorum. Actually, I don’t need to say anything, because other…
Austan Goolsbee’s Budget Math Is Wrong – More than 100 Percent of Long-Term Fiscal Challenge Is Government Spending
Austan Goolsbee, the former Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has a column in the Wall Street Journal that argues government spending isn’t too high. That’s obviously a silly assertion, as I explain here, here, and here, but I want to focus…
Illinois Politicians Meet the Challenge in the U.S. vs. U.K. Government Stupidity Contest
When I read the story from England about needing photo ID to buy teaspoons, I thought British bureaucrats built an insurmountable lead in the U.S. vs. U.K. contest for stupidest government action. But I should have had more faith in the hare-brained politicians of…
The Complete Failure of Bush’s No-Bureaucrat-Left-Behind Education Scheme
The education people at Cato do remarkable work. They put together one of the best charts I’ve ever seen, and they are leading the fight for school choice and against any federal government role in education. This new video, showing the failure of Bush’s main…
A Video on the Cradle-to-Grave Welfare State from the folks at Government Gone Wild
As I explained in this set of videos, we desperately need to reform entitlement programs. But not in the wrong way, with price fixing and means testing. Good reform means personal retirement accounts for Social Security. It means vouchers for Medicare. And it…
Mitt Romney, the Value-Added Tax, and America’s European Future
My Iowa caucus predictions from yesterday were hopelessly wrong, probably because I was picking with my heart rather than my head. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s openness to a value-added tax makes him a dangerously flawed candidate, and I hoped Iowa…
Spain’s New Government Has Already Betrayed Taxpayers
Late last year, Spanish voters kicked out a socialist government and elected a new government led by the supposedly conservative People’s Party. Is that translating into smaller government and more freedom? Doesn’t look that way. It seems that Spanish right-of-center…
The Never-Ending Battle Between the U.S. and U.K. for Stupidest Government Policy
In June of last year, I posted several examples of idiotic government policy from both the United States and United Kingdom and asked which nation had the dumbest bureaucrats and politicians. Since then, we have found new examples of brain-dead government and…
Obama Has United the World…in Opposition to Bad U.S. Tax Policy
Last year, I came up with a saying that “Bad Government Policy Begets More Bad Government Policy” and labeled it “Mitchell’s Law” during a bout of narcissism. There are lots of examples of this phenomenon, such as the misguided War on Drugs being a precursor to…