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…
Daily Analysis
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…
Using a Cartoon Video to Explain Government in Less than 3 Minutes
Sometimes during speeches, when explaining why politicians shouldn’t double tax income that is saved and invested, I ask the audience whether it would make sense to harvest apples by cutting the branches off of trees filled with ripe fruit. In every audience (at least…
Dramatic Increase in Poverty Rate: One Small Step for Obama, One Giant Step for the So-Called War on Poverty
The Census Bureau has just released the 2010 poverty numbers, and the new data is terrible. There are now a record number of poor people in America, and the poverty rate has jumped to 15.1 percent. But I don’t really blame President Obama for these grim numbers. Yes,…
Super Committee Must Focus on Spending
The so-called Super Committee has been tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next ten years. Though with the President’s recent call for another half-trillion in stimulus that he claims would be payed for, they would need to find $2…
Social Security Demagoguery from Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann: Economically Wrong, Politically Wrong
Governor Rick Perry of Texas is being attacked by two rivals in the GOP presidential race. His sin, if you can believe it, is that he told the truth (as acknowledged by everyone from Paul Krugman to Milton Friedman) about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme. Here’s…
Cheney: Wrong on TARP
Last year, after seeing former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson trying to defend the TARP bailout he designed, I wrote that he should go away in shame. After all, even former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker recognized there was a much better, non-corrupt, way of…
Kudos to Sarah Palin for Exposing the Sleazy Bipartisan Corruption Problem in Washington
I don’t have strong feelings about Sarah Palin, but I like her anti-establishment attitude. And, in a case of strange bedfellows, so does the New York Times. Or at least one columnist is honest enough to admit when she makes a compelling argument. Here’s an excerpt…
The Obama Presidency: From Tragedy to Farce
Herman Cain probably had the best reaction to the President’s speech: “We waited 30 months for this?” My reaction yesterday was mixed. In some sense, I was almost embarrassed for the President. He demanded a speech to a joint session of Congress and then produced a…
Government and Job Creation: Help or Hindrance?
I recently posted four charts eviscerating Obama’s record on jobs. My Cato colleague, Caleb Brown, has a good complement to those charts. He’s put together a short video looking at how government spending and regulation undermine job creation. Caleb says he will be…