Reason TV has a new video in their great Nanny-of-the-Month series. The winner is a San Francisco politician who pushed through legislation to ban restaurants like McDonald’s from including toys in happy meals. Here’s a great idea: How about banning politicians from trying to tell us how to live our lives? Our Founding Fathers surely […]

AARP’s support was instrumental in getting Obamacare passed. Now they’re raising the price of insurance for their employees because of the massive tax on so-called “Cadillac” plans that it included. In an e-mail to employees, AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8 percent to 13 percent next year because of rapidly rising medical […]

I’m finally back in Washington after a week in Australia for the Mont Pelerin Society general meeting. Aussies are great people, but their government is just as misguided as the one we’re burdened with here in America. A friend took this pic of me on a visit to Manly Beach. You may notice a similarity […]

I’m not a big fan of multi-guest panels, but I think this interview went well.

Here’s a change of pace. Instead of doing separate blog posts on the following two stories, I’m curious to see which one generates the most irritation/anger/disgust from you readers. The first option comes from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which is appropriately upset that Government Motors…oops, I mean General Motors…is back in the business […]

The Washington Post has an interesting report about the huge amount of money that Fairfax County spends to go after gambling. The story cites critics who ask “why law enforcement spends valuable time and money on combating sports gambling. The answer is obvious – and explicit in the story: “…police in Virginia are allowed to […]

Even though I’ve been in Washington for 25 years, I still get nauseated by the predatory behavior of the looters and moochers. The latest example of disgusting behavior is from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who is engaging in Hugo Chavez-style threats to block insurance companies from raising rates in response to the […]

Hugo Chavez is a palpably evil thug, and he confirms this status with a new proposal to issue cards that almost certainly will be used to ration food. Left-wing despots claim that their policies put “people above profits,” but they never can explain why people (especially the masses) have much higher living standards in countries […]

Here’s a Reuters story about the Australian Tax Office harassing Paul Hogan, better known to Americans as Crocodile Dundee, because of a tax dispute. The grinches at the tax office took advantage of Hogan’s return for his mother’s funeral to hold him hostage, refusing to let him leave the country until he coughs up some cash. […]

This story from St. Louis, which my Cato colleague Walter Olson cites in a post about OSHA, is a typical example of bureaucratic stupidity and absurd “safety” laws. My favorite part is that the bureaucrat actually thought it would be reasonable to rent a lift for $750 per day just to attach a harness for […]