Thoughts, essays, and writings on Liberty. Written by the heirs of Patrick Henry.

November 6, 2009

Good News On Health Care Reform: They Don’t Have The Votes Yet

This is a good sign:
WASHINGTON – A House leader says Democrats haven’t yet lined up enough votes to pass their health care overhaul bill.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland says the vote that House Democrats had scheduled for Saturday could slip to Sunday or early next week.
Hoyer acknowledged to reporters Friday that Democratic leaders don’t [...]

Posted By: Doug Mataconis @ 9:43 am || Permalink || Comments (4) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Activism, Constitution, Democracy, Economics, Healthcare
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November 4, 2009

Is the End of Government Reefer Madness Near?

Referring back to my post I wrote last week about the “perfect storm” the Obama Administration has created regarding medical marijuana, Colorado in many ways seems to be in the eye of this storm. It seems that more and more people are starting to understand the insanity of declaring war on a substance which has [...]

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October 27, 2009

Obama Creates Perfect Storm with Marijuana Policy Change

Last week’s announcement from the Obama Administration that the Justice Department would call off the dogs with regard to medical marijuana in states where legal has created a perfect storm regarding state and local regulations. Colorado Attorney General lamented that with this announcement, a “legal vacuum” has been created and was quoted in [...]

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October 22, 2009

Government v. Prosperity

Leslie Carbone, local Virginia blogger and author of Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform spoke at an Accuracy in Media sponsored even in D.C. last week.
Here’s the video:

And, here’s my review of Leslie’s book, which I highly recommend.

Posted By: Doug Mataconis @ 11:33 am || Permalink || Comments (1) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Constitution, Economics, Liberty, Taxation, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas
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October 7, 2009

Quote of the Day: Unlearned Lessons of Failed Experiments Edition

Peter Suderman writing for The Wall Street Journal has written an excellent article about the (apparent) unlearned lessons of government run healthcare. But unlike many others who use Canada and the UK as examples, Suderman insists that we only need to look at states like New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and Tennessee for their respective failed [...]

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October 6, 2009

Babs Boxer Will Do Anything For Re-Election: Even Cosponsor S.604!

Back in July, I sent letters to Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein urging them to support or even cosponsor S.604, the Audit-The-Fed bill. I received the typical mealy-mouthed responses (posted below after the fold), and like a bad blogger I never actually mentioned the responses here. How mealy-mouthed was Boxer’s response? Well, [...]

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October 2, 2009

Quote Of The Day

From the WSJ:
The bottom line is this: The available empirical evidence does not support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase in government spending. Defense-spending multipliers exceeding one likely apply only at very high unemployment rates, and nondefense multipliers are [...]

Posted By: Brad Warbiany @ 1:23 pm || Permalink || Comments (3) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Economics, Fiscal Policy, Government Waste, Quote of the Day
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October 1, 2009

End The Fed, Save America

It seems improbable that monetary policy could become a “sexy” political topic, but Ron Paul has done it. It started during his 2008 Presidential campaign when he continually talked about the Federal Reserve when asked about the economy, continued through his oft-entertaining interrogations of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and most recently has culminated his sponsorship [...]

Posted By: Doug Mataconis @ 5:00 pm || Permalink || Comments (2) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Book Reviews, Currency and Monetary Policy, Economics, Theory and Ideas
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September 29, 2009

The Daily Show Illustrates the Shortsightedness of Government

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Arizona State Capitol Building for Sale

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes
Political Humor
Ron Paul Interview

The above video clip from The Daily Show, while very humorous, illustrates a fundamental problem of government: shortsightedness.
In this example, the State of Arizona is offering to sell the state capitol for $735 million [...]

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September 28, 2009

Why You Should Support Auditing The Fed

The Fed is tasked with the dual goals of price stability and restraining inflation. Folks like myself would suggest it hasn’t done a very good job of either, but that’s not crucial to the question of whether we should be able to determine how they’re attempting to fulfill their mission.
Particularly irksome when we’re talking [...]

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September 16, 2009

Chinese Worried Obamacare Is Too Expensive For Them To Pay For

Obama says that he won’t sign a healthcare bill that adds one dime to the deficit. I hope he’s right about that, because the people who are financing that deficit are a tad bit worried about the prospect:
And yet, there was budget director Peter Orszag rushing to a lunch with Chinese bureaucrats on a [...]

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September 15, 2009

Ron Paul Talks About His New Book On The Federal Reserve

Posted By: Doug Mataconis @ 1:33 pm || Permalink || Comments (6) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Constitution, Currency and Monetary Policy, Economics
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Quote Of The Day

From The Economist, Buttonwood (their financial op-ed analyst):
This only adds to my worries about the Weekend at Bernie’s aspects of this recovery (and kudos to “Hedge fund guy” who first used the analogy). The Japanese spent much of the 1990s propping up their economy and sticking sunglasses on its face; every time they let go, [...]

Posted By: Brad Warbiany @ 9:24 am || Permalink || Comments Off || TrackBack URI || Categories: Credit Crisis, Quote of the Day
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September 14, 2009

Obama Makes Highways More Dangerous

Barack Obama’s recent dictatorial decision to once again break his campaign promise on raising taxes byraising tariffs on Chinese made tires in order to payback political allies in organized labor is already having some consequences.
First of all, Obama has probably ignited a new trade tensions that may cause a trade war between the US and [...]

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Newspapers Report Green Shoots — In Sep 2008?

Want a laugh? Well go back one year to this column, and ruminate on whether it could be possible for the author to be any more wrong…
There have been 11 recessions since the Great Depression. And we’re nowhere close to being in the 12th one now. This isn’t just a matter of opinion. Words [...]

Posted By: Brad Warbiany @ 8:54 am || Permalink || Comments (1) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Credit Crisis, Economics, Look About, Media
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September 12, 2009

Obama Raises Taxes Without Vote of Congress

“I can make a firm pledge….no family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase…..not any of your taxes”-Barack Obama, September 12, 2008
Once again, President Obama has lied to the country. After raising cigarette taxes earlier this year, Obama just ordered another tax increase. This time, he raised every American’s taxes [...]

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September 11, 2009

Two More Perspectives on Obama’s Speech

In addition to my own take, there are two other takes on the speech I’d like to highlight as being dead on. The first is from Cato@Liberty, which offers us a look at Obama’s speech in plain English:
Translation: I, Barack Obama, ignoring thousands of years of failed price-control schemes, will impose price controls on [...]

Posted By: Quincy @ 10:00 am || Permalink || Comments Off || TrackBack URI || Categories: Economics, Healthcare
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September 9, 2009

Barack Obama’s Newspeak on Health Care

Tonight’s speech on health care was a doubling down on the part of the administration. All the bad policy, all the economic voodoo, and all the flat out repression remain in the President’s platform. So does all the newspeak:
Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to [...]

Posted By: Quincy @ 6:22 pm || Permalink || Comments (13) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Constitution, Economics, Healthcare
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September 8, 2009

Quote Of The Day

“Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren, America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.”
— Senator Barack Obama (Ill), 2006
We need to raised the debt ceiling above $ 12 Trillion.
— President Barack Obama, 2009.

Posted By: Doug Mataconis @ 10:52 am || Permalink || Comments (3) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Credit Crisis, Currency and Monetary Policy, Economics, Quote of the Day
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September 4, 2009

Chart Of The Day

Does this look to you like we’re headed out of a recession yet?

Posted By: Brad Warbiany @ 12:20 pm || Permalink || Comments (1) || TrackBack URI || Categories: Credit Crisis, Economics
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