I’ve been against the auto bailout from the very beginning because it was a corrupt payoff to lazy corporate fat-cats and an ossified union. And when folks on the left say the bailout is a success, I explain that any industry can be propped up with a sufficiently large injection of other people’s money. Now […]
read more...Centuries from now, I’m sure historians won’t bother teaching about the Magna Carta, the Constitution, the end of slavery, or the collapse of communism. Instead, people who want to know about human rights will learn about these great European developments. In France, it is against the law to say your husband is under-endowed or that […]
read more...I wrote last week about David Gauke, a simpering and unctuous statist who said it was “morally wrong” for people to pay cash for services because that made it harder for the state to seize a share of the proceeds. And last month I condemned the country’s CINO (Conservative in Name Only) Prime Minister for […]
read more...As part of his campaign to expand the size and scope of the federal government (and to justify his advocacy of class-warfare taxation), President Obama has been asserting that all of us benefit from government spending. It’s why he now echoes Elizabeth Warren’s claim that entrepreneurs owe their success to government programs and activities. It’s […]
read more...Being a libertarian, I’m used to disappointment. So when something actually goes according to plan, I get very happy. On that basis, I should be utterly and deliriously overjoyed about my endorsement of Francois Hollande to be President of France. I wanted him to win, in part because he would engage in statist experiments that […]
read more...For the most part, international summits like the recently concluded G-20 meeting in Mexico are pointless – but expensive – publicity stunts for incumbent politicians. They pose for photo-ops, have boring meeting, and draft up empty communiques, always at some posh location so that everybody – from bureaucrat flunkies to servile reporters – can have […]
read more...To answer the question in the title, it means you need to read the fine print. This is because we have a president who thinks the government shouldn’t confiscate more than 20 percent of a company’s income, but he only gives that advice when he’s in Ghana. And the same president says it’s time to […]
read more...Back in 2010, I cited the superb work of Christina Hoff Summers as she explained that we should let markets determine wages rather than giving that power to a bunch of bean-counting bureaucrats. She wrote that article because leftists at the time were pushing a so-called Paycheck Fairness Act that would have given the government […]
read more...Over the years, I’ve strenuously objected to schemes that would enable international bureaucracies to levy taxes. That’s why I’ve criticized “direct funding” proposals, most of which seem to emanate from the United Nations. A scheme to let the United Nations tax services such as air travel. A proposal, pushed by George Soros and other statists, […]
read more...Back in 2010, I declared that Olga Stefou was a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the Greek welfare state. She was one of the protesters and – if the story captured her thoughts accurately – she displayed an unlimited entitlement mentality. Sort of helps one understand why this cartoon is so accurate. Now we […]
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