As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Obama Administration will propose a three-year freeze for a portion of the budget known as “non-defense discretionary” spending. Many critics will correctly note that this is like going on a drunken binge in…
Daily Analysis
The Pampered and Insulated Life of Unionized Government Workers.
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that only 7.2 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions, which makes sense since unions behave in a myopic fashion and undermine competitiveness (and thus reduce jobs in the long run). On the other had,…
Good Advice for Republicans from Tom Sowell.
I’ve always been mystified by GOP politicians, pollsters, and consultants who argue that the GOP needs to support big government in order to win votes. The biggest victories for Republicans in living memory, after all, are the 1980 and 1994 landslides, when the…
Replace TSA Incompetence with Market Efficiency.
Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz have a great column in USA Today explaining why we should let private companies be in charge of airline security. As a frequent traveler, I wish this would happen, but governments rarely give up power once they have expanded into a new…
Statism Update from Brussels.
It seems that the European Union’s governing entities, the European Commission and the semi-ceremonial European Parliament, combine the worst features of statism and collectivism from the entire continent. The Euro-crats make lots of noises about subsidiarity…
The American People Reject Big Government.
According to a Washington Post story, Obama wants to be the anti-Reagan, a President who permanently changes the American people’s attitude about big government. Obama’s efforts to make statism popular, however, are not exactly working out as he hoped….
Sounds Like the School Bureaucrats Need Counseling, not the Student.
This story from San Diego seems like a typical case of bureaucratic over-reaction. A school vice principal decided that a student’s science project may have been a bomb, so he set in motion events leading to a school evacuation. Without knowing further details,…
Four Lessons from Massachusetts.
While there is always a tendency in Washington to over-analyze the meaning of elections, I think that we can draw the following conclusions from Scott Brown’s victory: 1. Obamacare is an albatross for the Democrats. The White House wants to blame Coakley for…
ObamaCare's Unintended Consequences.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Steve Moore notes that the Senate health care bill creates incentives for dual income couples to avoid marriage: Marriage is a revered institution in America but not apparently under the Congressional health care legislation,…
The First Shot of the Second American Revolution.
I must confess that I didn’t think Scott Brown was going to win the election in Massachusetts, even though I predicted a 50-48 GOP victory. This is a monumental development. It doesn’t necessarily mean Obamacare can be stopped. And it may be that Brown…