If there is one positive thing Herman Cain has contributed to the national debate it would be this renewed discussion about tax reform. While I am skeptical of some of the specifics of his 9-9-9 plan, if nothing else, Cain has forced the other candidates to come out with proposals of their own. Gov. Rick [...]

LAS VEGAS – Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul unveiled his economic “Plan to Restore America” in Las Vegas Monday afternoon, calling for a lower corporate tax rate, a cut in spending by $1 trillion during his first year in office and the elimination of five cabinet-level agencies.” […] Paul does get specific when he [...]

From Anarchists Against Collectivism

Just when I was starting to give Herman Cain another look, he lies to Rep. Paul’s face in last night’s debate concerning comments he made concerning the need to audit the Federal Reserve. Yeah, there goes crazy Uncle Ron again with these crazy misquotes he picked up off the internet! I’m not sure if the [...]

Wow. It’s one thing to carry the necessary delusion that comes with most people in a startup… That self-delusion, the belief that you can’t fail (despite the high proportions of startups that fail), is what is required to overcome the often monumental odds most startups face. But is it merely delusion to submit THIS* to [...]

The 2012 G.O.P. candidates each gave speeches at CPAC following the debates. Below are the speeches from Gary Johnson and Ron Paul. The first video is Johnson’s presentation before perhaps the largest audience he has had in awhile. Johnson spends a good part of his presentation introducing himself before giving an overview of his proposals. [...]

The title of this post ought to be a red flag no matter who the president is or what your political persuasion. President Obama is demanding that congress pass his “American Jobs Act” in front of supportive crowds of people who I am sure have taken the time to read the whole bill and understand [...]

The Standards and Poor rating service has downgraded the U.S. Federal Government’s bonds to AA+ status. This action long overdue does not go far enough. To understand the meaning of this, we should first understand the meaning of the S&P ratings. The ratings indicate several things: 1) The likelihood of a default – the debtor [...]

So I’ve had a tiny bit of time to reflect on the budget deal. Here are the key points: $900B in immediate cuts [1/3 to defense], coupled to a $900B immediate debt ceiling increase. Additional $1.2T-1.5T debt ceiling increase IF Congress either passes a balanced budget amendment or a bipartisan commission creates a debt reduction [...]

The looming government debt ceiling crisis has cause Obama to threaten inability to pay Social Security checks. It’s renewed the debate, which I’ve hashed out many times (here, here, here and here, for posterity’s sake), whether the Social Security “Trust Fund” is a veritable asset or merely a convenient accounting fiction used to hide deficits. [...]

President Obama and his sycophant Keynesian friends in the MSM can’t quite figure out why his policies haven’t improved the economy. Maybe President Obama should listen to an actual job creator, Steve Wynn to get some clue about why businesses aren’t expanding. Here is an excerpt from Wynn from a recent conference call where he [...]

Kevin Drum don’t grok numbers. I think we all knew that. But occasionally he goes so far over the edge that it calls for correction, and today’s one of those days. Kevin has taken a handy chart (originally here), and drawn some trendlines onto it to proclaim that we don’t have a spending problem at [...]

United States Constitution Article 1, Section 7 All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. The issuance of debt is a revenue raising measure. The “debt ceiling” is, in fact, legislation initiated in the House of Representatives, which [...]

I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time reading 74 pages of forum posts on an pilot’s message board discussing the crash of Air France flight 447 several years ago. Fascinating stuff. It’s the tale of pilots faced with a situation of mechanical failure, but even worse, a situation which they misdiagnosed and thus took [...]

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary “Veto” Johnson made a recent appearance on Hannity last week (see video below). I have to say I was pleasantly surprised both with how Sean Hannity conducted the interview and how Gov. Johnson responded. I haven’t really watched Hannity since before the “& Colmes” was dropped a few years ago; [...]

Everyone knows the Fed is pushing Quantitative Easing. By that, it means that when America is having trouble selling T-bills at advantageous interest rates, the Fed prints up some money to keep demand. It buys the bonds with newly-printed money. The recent run was $600B or so, and the Fed’s current balance sheet holds about [...]

I got into it a bit over at Drum’s place, where commenters are arguing that the S&P is a bunch of GOP plants because of the negative outlook report. Given that I spent some time analyzing historical revenue & spending tables with a calculator to generate one of my comments, I wanted to expand on [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]