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.)
Chris Moody • March 15, 2010 @ 1:41 pm
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; General; International Economics and Development
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; General; International Economics and Development
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.
Chris Moody • February 23, 2010 @ 1:56 pm
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; Health, Welfare & Entitlements; Regulatory Studies
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; Health, Welfare & Entitlements; 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.
Thursday Links
- Nat Hentoff: If you’re looking for reform in Cuba, don’t rest your hopes on Raul Castro.
- Tim Carney, author of Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses gives the inside scoop on why big government is good for big business.
- The Patriot Act: What should go, and what should stay?
- Dear Poor People- “Please remain poor.” Sincerely, Obamacare.
- Podcast: “Obamanomics in Health Care” featuring Tim Carney.
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“
Weekend Links
- Just in time for Thanksgiving, the turkey has arrived: How Harry Reid’s health care “reform” bill is stuffed with extra costs.
- A few things you might not know about the Chrysler bankruptcy.
- Why you should not blame Obama for Bush’s 2009 deficit.
- Standing against the storm: Nien Chang, 1915-2009.
- Podcast: Think the Federal Reserve is independent? Think again.
Tuesday Links
- In the past eight months, the unemployment rate has jumped from 7.2 percent to 10.2 percent. Here’s why.
- Three trillion reasons to hope the Senate is not as fiscally reckless as their counterparts in the House on health care reform.
- Obama a federalist? Not quite: “Not yet a year into his administration, Obama’s record on 10th Amendment issues is already clear: He’ll let the states have their way when their policies please blue team sensibilities and he’ll call in the feds when they don’t.” More here.
- It’s time to get immigration reform right: “Republican leaders need to liberate themselves from the Lou Dobbs minority within their own ranks that will oppose any legalization. Democratic leaders need to face down their labor-union constituency that opposes any workable temporary-visa program. Working together, President Obama and a bipartisan majority in Congress can seize the current opportunity to reform the immigration system and finally fix the problem of illegal immigration.”
- Podcast: “Preventing the Next Fort Hood Shooting“
Monday Links
- Report: New threats to free speech.
- The politics behind the health care overhaul.
- Mass corruption in Afghanistan. Malou Innocent: “Washington has already surged into Afghanistan once this year. The United States should not spend more American blood and more of its ever-diminishing financial resources to prop up Karzai’s ineffectual regime.”
- A government takeover of health care is not pro-choice — for anyone: “Whatever your views on abortion, the fight over abortion in the Obama health plan illustrates perfectly why government should stay out of health care. When the government subsidizes health care, anything you do with that money becomes the voters’ business. And rather than allow for choice between different ways of doing things, the government typically imposes the preferences of the majority — or sometimes, a vocal minority — on everybody.”
- Podcast: “A Proposed Beat Down for Banks“
Wednesday Links
- Things you might not want to know: Have you ever thought about how dirty the money in your wallet might be?
- The case for dropping out of NATO.
- Gene Healy on the “arrogance of power” involved in running for president these days: “What sort of person wants the job badly enough to spend years living out of a suitcase, begging for cash, glad-handing through primary states, and saying things that no intelligent person could possibly believe?”
- Doug Bandow: “The fall of the Wall, and the evil system behind it, deserves to be celebrated. Not just on Nov. 9. But every day.”
- Podcast: “A Looming Decision on Afghanistan“
Monday Links
- Today marks 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Full round-up of commentary on that historic day, here.
- The heroes who helped bring down the Wall.
- One size does not fit all: How the federal health care overhaul will disrupt progress in states that are already addressing problems at home.
- Move over Fox News: The Obama administration takes aim at climate scientists.
- Podcast: “ObamaCare: A Bad Deal for Young Adults“
Wednesday Links
- Drop the neocons: “Republicans should take this opportunity to return to their traditional noninterventionist roots and throw their neoconservative wing under the bus.”
- John Samples on the national impact of this week’s elections: “The evidence suggests the Obama administration might be on the same path that led the Clinton presidency to the election of 1994. But there is an important difference: In 1994, the public had some faith in the alternative to Clinton and the Democrats in Congress.”
- Podcast: “Independents and the GOP Victories“
Tuesday Links
- Three cheers for divided government: “Since the start of the Cold War, we’ve had only a dozen years of real fiscal restraint” …And all of them occurred when the White House and Congress were held by opposite parties.
- Well here’s an idea: Only pay for health care that works.
- The case against tort reform in health care.
- Video: The authors of two new Ayn Rand biographies discuss their work and research.
- Podcast: “Ayn Rand and the World She Made“
Weekend Links
- “Government should not subsidize health insurance — for the uninsured, the poor, the elderly or anyone else — or regulate health insurance markets.” Here’s why.
- This is what happens to health care when you are not the customer.
- An update on the EU Lisbon Treaty.
- Why Fannie and Freddie mustn’t be left out of reform efforts.
- Skepticism over nuclear diplomacy with Iran. (PDF) Subscribe to the Nuclear Proliferation Update here.
- Podcast: “Obama: Kinder Bud to Federalism?” featuring Aaron Houston of the Marijuana Policy Project.
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