President Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2012 budget today, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s no major initiative such as the so-called stimulus scheme or the government-run healthcare proposal. The bad news, though, is that government is far too big and Obama’s budget does nothing to address this […]

Chalk up another victory – at least on the rhetorical level – for the Tea Party. President Obama will release his fiscal year 2012 budget tomorrow and he’s apparently become a born-again fiscal conservative. Here are some excerpts from a Washington Post story. President Obama will respond to a Republican push for a drastic reduction […]

I’m in Milan, at the office of the Institute Bruno Leoni, which overlooks the famous Castle Sforza and is almost within shouting distance of the remarkable cathedral. This evening, I’ll be talking about how Italy should balance its budget by limiting the size of government, and my message will be identical to the one I […]

I’m disappointed, but not surprised, to read in the Washington Post that President Obama has decided against any changes to restrain Social Security spending. He’ll still probably subject us to pious and insincere rhetoric about fighting red ink in tonight’s State-of-the-Union address, but it is very revealing that the President is rejecting even the recommendations […]

I’m not a big fan of central banks, and I definitely don’t like multilateral bureaucracies, so I almost feel guilty about publicizing two recent studies published by the European Central Bank. But when such an institution puts out research that unambiguously makes the case for smaller government, it’s time to sit up and take notice. […]

I’ve already poked fun at Herman Van Rompuy, the nondescript über-bureaucrat who has risen to the non-elected post of European Council President. I’ve mocked Rompuy’s attempts to compete with other European politicians, and I encourage everyone to have a good laugh at this video of Van Rompuy getting eviscerated by a British MEP. We now […]

There is a very bizarre race happening in Illinois. The Governor and the leaders of the State Senate and General Assembly are trying to figure out how to ram through a massive tax increase, but they’re trying to make it happen before new state lawmakers take office tomorrow. The Democrats will still control the state […]

Thanks to decades of reckless spending by European welfare states, the newspapers are filled with headlines about debt, default, contagion, and bankruptcy. We know that Greece and Ireland already have received direct bailouts, and other European welfare states are getting indirect bailouts from the European Central Bank, which is vying with the Federal Reserve in […]