Following along the lines of Glenn Reynolds’ proposal of a 50% surtax on the earnings of former government officials, here’s my modest proposal for our elected officials: For 10 years after leaving office, each elected official shall pay the highest income tax rate for which he cast a “yes” vote. Same goes for a president [...]

Share this with the Michael Moore fans in your life. If we eat the rich, expect a case of deadly economic indigestion.

In making the case for open and obvious centralized rationing, advocates claim that “we” must ration with “our” eyes open. From Beth Haynes at PJM: That’s why Medicare needs the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Setting a cap on spending is the first step of rationing. The next is deciding who gets what medical care. “Limited [...]

I posted yesterday about Bernard von Nothaus of the Liberty Dollar being convicted. I definitely think the fact support a guilty verdict on the charge of “issuing and passing Liberty Dollar coins intended for use as current money”, but some of the others seem quite a bit ridiculous, such as “conspiracy against the United States”. [...]

Hard to believe it was over three years ago, but may of us in the libertarian movement will remember the seizure of the Liberty Dollar holdings/equipment/etc. For those new to the movement, the Liberty Dollar was a metal-backed currency presented as an alternative to traditional fiat currencies, but unlike Gold/Silver Eagles, or Krugerrands, or gold/silver [...]

For the bargain conscious out there, a couple books recently became available for the Kindle at dramatically reduced prices, and I wanted to pass them along. As an aside, if nothing else this is a great sales pitch for the Kindle — at $139 for the wi-fi only version [which is all you *really* need], [...]

Just about this time a month ago, Tea Partiers and those of us who support things like cutting spending were accused of using “overheated rhetoric” in the immediate aftermath of the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords among others. Sarah Palin was blamed by Leftwing pundits for inspiring the gunman because she had “crosshairs” on [...]

What’s at stake in most unions? Promises. Laborers in non-union workplaces are offered very few promises. Typically employment is by contract for a specified (and individual) wage that can be severed at any time by either party for [mostly] any reason. Unions negotiate additional layers of promises. Those promises may be specific regimented work rules, [...]

Re: “Don’t Forget Your Homework…or Your Miranda Card” Liberalism in the United States has, over the past forty years, been usurped by the socialist agenda. Our public schools are little more than indoctrination camps for the pacification of future generations. At the same time, conservatism in the United States has been usurped by war-hawks and [...]

Apparently, a member of the Denver teachers union thinks she knows what work is: That’s your problem. You’re an entrepreneur, so you don’t work. You don’t know what work is until you get into an educational area. Warren over at Coyote Blog replies: Yep, some day I will have to stop loafing around and take [...]

In all the coverage I’ve read, listened to, and watched concerning the public sector unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere, there is one term that is usually very much present in the political debate that seems to be conspicuously absent: special interests. Special interests, we are so often told, have a very corrupting influence on our [...]

Executive Director of the Libertarian Party Wes Benedict: President Obama says he wants a freeze in non-security, discretionary spending. In the unlikely event that happens, it won’t really matter, because to make a real dent in the deficit, it’s necessary to cut spending on the military and entitlements. The president promised big government in the [...]

Even with all the crowing from the authoritarian left about violent rhetoric, I have yet to see a call to violence as clear as this one from leftist Sociologist Frances Fox Piven: So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? [...] Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have [...]

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has set up a website called YouCut to solicit ideas from regular people for suggestions on specific programs and policies that should be cut or eliminated. From the website: YouCut – a first-of-its-kind project – is designed to defeat the permissive culture of runaway spending in Congress. It allows you [...]

Kevin Drum, as usual, gets it wrong on public sector unions: Public sector unions are a lot like that: conservatives don’t like them in the first place, and crippling them would also seriously cut into a major funding source for the Democratic Party. It’s another twofer. And as Surowiecki notes, they’re a ripe target right [...]

Was 2010 a good year or bad year for liberty and why? Like most of you will likely respond, 2010 was very much a mixed bag IMHO. On the positive side, the mandate section of ObamaCare was found unconstitutional, the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was repealed, Wikileaks exposed the federal government for the [...]

This girl really, really, really likes Frederich Hayek:

Up until about Monday of this week, such a question would have made me laugh. As I have increasingly involved myself in criminal justice issues, I have found the Democrats to be slightly more willing to take on the Prison Industrial Complex, mandatory minimum sentences, and decriminalization (if not outright legalization) of marijuana. These Democrats [...]

Want to inject liquidity into the market, support American jobs, and do so without raiding the US Treasury or overheating the printing press? The answer is simple: get out of the way. Now, some may say that’s a libertarian’s answer for everything. And they’d usually be right. But I’m not signing you up for a [...]