Monday Links
- Alan Reynolds: The truth about health insurance premiums and profits.
- An overview of the many hurdles the health care bill still faces in the House.
- Study: Public schools dishonest about the true cost of education. This video explains it all in less than three minutes.
- Will conservatives ultimately oppose the war in Afghanistan? Join us for a lively discussion this Thursday at Cato featuring Joe Scarborough, Grover Norquist, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) and more. Registration free. Will be broadcast online live Thursday at the link.
- Podcast: “Documenting Human Rights Abuses in Venezuela” featuring Ian Vásquez. (Don’t tell Sean Penn.)
Tuesday Links
- Price controls have failed in the past and there is no reason to think they will work now. So why is the president proposing price controls on health care? Michael Tanner: “Attempts to control prices by government fiat ignore basic economic laws — and the result could be disastrous for the American health-care system.”
- Does this federal government policy make me look fat? Be honest. (Yes).
- So, President Obama wants a presidential commission on the budget deficit. Isn’t that a little bit like W.C. Fields asking for a commission on sobriety?
- Podcast: “POTUS and Price Controls in Health Care” featuring Michael F. Cannon.
• February 23, 2010 @ 1:56 pm
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; Health Care; Regulatory Studies
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; Health Care; Regulatory Studies
Thursday Links
- A few things you might not know about rail travel: “Automobiles in intercity travel are as energy efficient as Amtrak. Cars are getting more energy efficient, while boosting Amtrak trains to higher speeds will make them less energy efficient.” The list goes on…
- Quiz Time! Which was the only country in the 27-nation European Union to register economic growth without going through a recession last year? The answer might surprise you.
- Unionized teachers refuse to work 25 minutes more a day, so Rhode Island town fires all of them.
- Arnold Kling on Haiti, poverty, and capitalism.
- Podcast: This is what happens to American jobs when you have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.
Wednesday Links
- David Boaz on Obama’s first year: “From this libertarian, Obama’s first year looks grim. …He may well end up like Lyndon Johnson, with an ambitious domestic agenda eventually bogged down by endless war. But I don’t think his wished-for FDR model — a transformative agenda that is both popular and long-lasting — is in the cards.”
- The message from Massachusetts: “There can be no denying that this election was a clear cut rejection of the Democratic health care bills.”
- Attacks from all sides: See what happens when the Right takes on free enterprise.
- A new dictator in Iraq?
- Podcast: Daniel Ikenson discusses Obama’s trade policy.
Weekend Links
- How to manufacture a climate consensus: “The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg.”
- Forecast for Copenhagen: “Cloudy with a chance of nothing.”
- A tale of how far modern “constitutional law” has taken us toward the executive state.
- How the president’s policies are holding back the economy: “Right now, the best thing Washington can do for our economy is to simply stop what it has been doing.”
- Podcast: “Liberty, Tradition and Values“
Thursday Links
- Helping out the “Wall Street fat cats:” Bankers are responding to the incentives generated by the economic policies of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
- How charter schools can save states big education dollars.
- Doug Bandow: “Congress has spent the country blind, inflated a disastrous housing bubble, subsidized every special interest with a letterhead and lobbyist, and created a wasteful, incompetent bureaucracy that fills Washington. But now, legislators want to take a break from all their good work and save college football.”
- In case you missed it last week, watch Cato’s Jerry Taylor on the premier episode of Stossel.
- Podcast: “Urban Planners Romanticize Immobility“
Wednesday Links
- The top five most unbelievable lines from the health care reform debate this year.
- Alan Reynolds: Hey, leave Lieberman alone. “Human interest stories are sure to get readers’ sympathy. But emotion is no substitute for common sense.”
- The money behind climate science.
- Podcast: “Trouble for the Race to the Top Fund.”
- Cato Weekly Video: Is there a contradiction between Christianity and capitalism?
Wednesday Links
- Chris Preble on Afghanistan: It’s time to leave. “We don’t need 100,000 soldiers in Afghanistan chasing down 100 al-Qaeda fighters.”
- Malou Innocent on Obama’s West Point speech.
- A few possible outcomes of U.S. military engagement in the Middle East.
- More updates on ClimateGate.
- An overview of all the hidden taxes in the health care overhaul.
- Podcast: “Obama’s Afghanistan Contradiction“
Tuesday Links
- A glimmer of hope for libertarian public policy in the age of Obama: The War on Drugs may be slowly winding down. “The prospects for reform are better than they’ve been in decades.”
- An overview of religious liberty around the world. Doug Bandow: “Martyrdom did not disappear with imperial Rome.”
- All eyes on India: Party crashers aside, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the U.S. was an important event.
- Patrick J. Michaels on “ClimateGate.” More, here.
- The insanity of housing subsidies: “If you’re thinking to yourself that this is the sort of government-induced behavior that helped create the housing bubble, go to the head of the class.”
- Podcast: “Judicial Takings at SCOTUS“
Monday Links
- Nancy Pelosi: “The power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.”
- Since August 2008 the monetary base (bills in circulation plus bank credits at Federal Reserve banks) has increased by 137%. If not defused, this bomb will eventually explode into inflation.
- Federal spending just pushed the government’s debt over $12 trillion. Spending has soared so high that 40 percent of this year’s budget will be funded by borrowing.
- What the NFL can teach us about the War on Terror.
- Podcast: “The Rule of Law and the Fed“
Monday Links
- Three decades of politics and failed policies at HUD.
- Michael D. Tanner on the Senate Sell-Outs: “At a time of 10.2 percent unemployment, they voted to make it more expensive to hire workers, especially low-wage workers. With the economy struggling, they voted for $485 billion in tax hikes. They voted to raise the payroll tax, limit your flexible spending account, and tax your health insurance plan. This is moderation?”
- The limits of U.S. power in Afghanistan: “Even if more troops were better deployed, the odds of reasonable success in reasonable time at reasonable cost are long.”
- Republican and Democratic senators pushing for subsidizing prayer.
- In Washington next week? Tom Palmer will be here Tuesday, Dec. 1 to discuss his new book, Realizing Freedom. Can’t make it? Watch live online.
- Podcast: “Money, Greed and God“

