There are a handful of issues that expose hypocrites on both sides of the philosophical spectrum. Republicans and conservatives love to talk about free markets, for instance, but you often find them voting for completely sleazy and corrupt forms of corporate welfare such as the ethanol subsidy for big agri-business. For Democrats and leftists, a […]

I continue to be amazed at the creative ways that politicians buy votes with other people’s money. Here’s an article from the LA Times discussing the warnings of an Israeli economist about the long-term fiscal crisis his country faces because – at least in part – the government gives people welfare payments to pray and […]

I”m not even sure what to say about this story about new legislation being proposed that would have the federal government track the “Body Mass Index” of American children and spend lots of money and impose lots of rules to reduce childhood obesity. I certainly don’t want to be in favor of chubby kids, but […]

I feel like a broken record when I write about European fiscal policy. In almost all cases, I cite OECD data showing that countries are in fiscal trouble because of excessive spending rather than inadequate tax revenue. I then show that the politicians are using the spending-caused crisis as an excuse to raise taxes even […]

It’s probably just a insincere negotiating ploy, but Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed to eliminate a major welfare program in California. This article from the Sacramento Bee notes that the Governator also wants to cut bureaucrat pay and impose other reforms. Given Schwarzenegger’s failure to consistently fight against special interests in previous years, and given the […]

Here’s some grim news I saw linked to on NRO. Obama wants to lower the bar and reduce the competency of people working in the federal bureaucracy. To be sure, I doubt the “knowledge skills and ability essays” actually produced quality bureaucrats, but I nonetheless suspect this new step will make the bureaucracy an even bigger burden […]

Here’s a very disturbing report from FoxNews.com about a scheme at the United Nations to impose global taxes. This has been a long-time dream of the bureaucrats, who (naturally) are exempt from paying tax themselves. Here’s a link to a report I wrote on a separate UN tax threat nearly 10 years ago, and here’s […]

Very rarely does one find a politician with the moral clarity to provide the blunt and necessary truth about a controversial issue, but that has finally happened. But this is a good news/bad news situation for American taxpayers. The good news is that a politician has proposed to slash both bureaucrat pay and public pensions and […]

Kudos to the Detroit News for a great story revealing that people are refusing to accept jobs because of government unemployment benefits. In a perverse way, I admire the one guy who admits that he doesn’t plan to find work until the government stops sending him checks: In a state with the nation’s highest jobless […]

Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but I had to paraphrase her famous line after reading this Bill McGurn column in the Wall Street Journal about how Republican poliitcal hacks in the Illinois state legislature voted to kill a voucher bill that would have rescued inner-city children trapped in terrible government monopoly schools. If you don’t […]