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…
Daily Analysis
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…
Sometimes the French Oppose Harmonization
The French government is relentlessly awful in its support for tax harmonization, regulatory harmonization, and other policies to drag other nations into the cesspool of statism. But France’s desire for a one-size-fits-all approach miraculously vanishes when it…
Attacks on Wall Street Hurt American Global Competitiveness.
In a National Review Online article, Kevin Williamson notes that a proposed federal banking tax seems purely inspired by vilification politics, but will none-the-less put American banks at a very real competitive disadvantage in the global market: The new proposed tax…
Oregonians Contemplate Digging Their Hole Deeper.
Oregon voters are currently deciding on personal and business income tax increases. Should the tax hikes pass, look for Oregonian businesses to avail themselves of the advantages of tax competition and move to other states, such as nearby Washington: A great beauty…
Germany Opposes EU-Wide Tax
German politicians are notoriously bad on European issues, almost always pushing for more centralization, harmonization, and bureaucracy. So it is surprising to see that the German government is rejecting a Luxembourg proposal to give the EU a direct source of tax…
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….
An Omen for America?
This has a similar title to an earlier blog post, but the topic is completely different. The U.K.-based Times has a fascinating story about how tax rates are driving business out of London, thus showing the insanity of class-warfare tax policy. Two excerpts are must…
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,…