…that folks who thought we should abolish the IRS and simplify the tax code were wacko. Now they make a lot of sense to me, particularly Ted Cruz: Now that Republicans control Congress, Cruz said the party must seize on … Continue reading →
Tomorrow evening we have the State of the Union speech. Ugh! I won’t be watching; I almost never watch those speeches, so why would I watch this one? But preliminary reports are all about Obama’s “Robin Hood” tax proposal, a … Continue reading →
More non-free lunch from Obama: The White House proposal would waive tuition for students who attend community college at least half-time and maintain a 2.5 GPA (that’s a C+). You have to work hard not to get that grade. Washington … Continue reading →
[Part I here.] Some more gems from von Mises: Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but … Continue reading →
I read a tremendously relevant quotation from the philosopher and economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) the other day and decided I’d have to learn more about him: Mises’s greatest contribution [was] his demonstration that socialism cannot function as a rational … Continue reading →
This is the sort of thing you get: An unemployed Upper West Side woman using Airbnb to rent out rooms in her huge Central Park West apartment has been ordered to stop doing it by a Manhattan judge. Supreme Court … Continue reading →
Well, at least Jessica Pressler and New York Magazine appear to have done a bit more fact-checking on this story than Erdely and Rolling Stone did on theirs. And yet, duped again: In the most recent edition of New York, … Continue reading →
Elizabeth Warren made a speech condemning a provision in the new CRomnibus bill that gives banks more leeway about a rather small class of risky derivatives, and the media and the left have anointed her the new Democratic frontrunner, the … Continue reading →
The US and China have signed an emissions agreement that, as far as I can tell, is a lot of hot air. It’s about what each would really like to do—actually, what they’d like their successors to do: Today, the … Continue reading →
Don’t buy a house unless you can afford one. I’m old enough to remember when that wasn’t a novel idea. She makes the point that low-down-payment loans only work in a rising housing market, and then when there’s an economic … Continue reading →
Those of you who follow this blog know that I’ve said from the start that I don’t think Bernie Madoff’s sons were guilty, and that they were among Madoff’s biggest victims because he stole their good name from them as … Continue reading →
…was not a legacy of slavery, although it is often claimed that it is. It happened much, much more recently, as this article by Walter E. Williams points out. The article is a very short version of points that Thomas … Continue reading →