Last year, I reported on a study from the Small Business Administration that estimated that federal regulation costs the economy a staggering $1.75 trillion every year. But that number is so large that it’s hard to understand what it actually means, so let’s look at some new research to better understand the impact of red […]

Over and over again, I tell people to ignore whether politicians have a D or an R after their names. That’s because Democrats sometimes do the right thing and Republicans often do the wrong thing. My latest example of Republicans doing the wrong thing come from Florida, where GOP politicians decided that free markets should […]

I have no idea whether George Santayana was a good philosopher, but he certainly was right when he wrote, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Consider the fools in the U.S. Senate. They just voted to expand Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac subsidies, apparently thinking that re-inflating the housing […]

The folks from the Koch Institute put together a great video a couple of months ago looking at why some nations are rich and others are poor. That video looked at the relationship between economic freedom and various indices that measure quality of life. Not surprisingly, free markets and small government lead to better results. […]

Over the years, Obama has said some really disturbing things. In my video on class warfare, I noted that Obama in 2008 said he wanted to raise the capital gains tax even if the government lost revenue. It was necessary to punish success, he said, to promote “fairness.” This was an utterly malevolent statement. It meant […]

I’ll start with an important caveat and state that Ford is far from a perfect company. It has its snout in the trough for boondoggles such as green energy programs. And it happily benefits from protectionist restrictions on foreign pickup trucks and SUVs. That having been said, there is an enormous difference between Ford, which […]

This is getting surreal. We now have layers of bailouts around the world. Different nations are doing their own bailouts. On top of that, the Europeans have set up something called the European Financial Stability Facility, which does bailouts across the continent. And then there’s the International Monetary Fund, doing bailouts on a global basis. […]

Have you ever tried to run in waist-high water? It’s not easy, but it’s a useful exercise if you want to experience what it’s like to comply with government rules, regulation, paperwork, and red tape. Especially if you want to understand why it’s getting harder for American companies to compete against firms from other nations. […]

When asked to pick my most frustrating issue, I could list things from my policy field such as class warfare or income redistribution. But based on all the speeches and media interviews I do, which  periodically venture into other areas, I suspect protectionism vs. free trade is the biggest challenge. So I want to ask […]

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 create jobs – even from media outlets that normally are sympathetic to big […]