Notwithstanding the title of this post, perhaps nobody deserves blame. Sometimes, a good or service rises in price solely as a result of changes in supply and demand. And if the price of something climbs because of market forces, then it’s merely a reflection of unfettered exchanges between buyers and sellers. But politicians and bureaucrats […]

Republicans are telling voters that they’ve learned the hard lessons from the 2006 and 2008 elections and that they are back on the side of taxpayers. I’m not convinced, which is why I’ve outlined some key tests that will demonstrate whether the GOP genuinely supports limited government. o No tax increases, since more money for […]

Remember my post from a week ago when I said I was not a Republican even though Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge are two of my heroes? Well, now I have another reason to despise the GOP. Those reprehensible statists just voted to expand federal housing subsidies. Here are some excerpts from an excellent National Review column […]

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 […]

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 […]

During his 1976 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan popularized the notion of “welfare queens” who bilked redistribution programs for thousands of dollars. It has since become non-PC to use such a term, but that’s never stopped me. Here’s a report of a wretched welfare queen who is mooching off taxpayers and should […]

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities is a left-wing group in Washington that advocates for bigger government and higher taxes. In an effort to promote more redistribution, they recently put together a map showing how welfare benefits varied by state. We’re supposed to look at the map and conclude that welfare benefits are too […]

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 […]

I’ve already explained why the Department of Housing and Urban Development should be eliminated, but a superb column in the Wall Street Journal by my old friend Jim Bovard has my blood boiling. After reading Jim’s piece, I no longer want to merely abolish HUD. I want to bulldoze the building, cover the ground with […]