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side, the mandate section of ObamaCare was found unconstitutional, the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was repealed, Wikileaks exposed the federal government for the [...]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 [...]

I’m a bit late to the party, but significant discussion has been made about a potential “repeal amendment” to the Constitution. Advocated by Randy Barnett, he suggests that it is a necessary counterpunch to the 16th and 17th Amendments, which together increased the Federal government’s ability to raise revenue to do what it likes while [...]

In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, some incredible quotes came from the aging Cuban dictator: (Reuters) – Fidel Castro said Cuba’s economic model no longer works, a U.S.-based journalist reported on Wednesday following interviews with the former president last week. Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, wrote in a blog [...]

Everyone expected 2009 to be a budget-busting year for Obama. With the country mired in recession, tax revenues were plummeting just as his stimulus spending was spiking. We ended up with a bit $1.4T deficit for the year. But his 2010 budget promised a light at the end of the tunnel. His stimulus spending was [...]

I saw a chart today that took me aback. At the Cato @ Liberty blog, a look at aggregate state debt over the last decade: I had well expected that state governments were growing their budget in accordance with the boom economies of the past decade (especially rising property tax collections through the boom), but [...]

As Chris pointed out last week, Republicans might be able to get us to at least a divided Congress in November. One expects that if they do, they’ll stand athwart the tracks as the big-government train approaches, yelling STOP! But their bark is worse than their bite: Yeah! Go Red team! Go Democracy! via TJIC, [...]

Okay, that’s not true. But it’s no different than this: Prosecutors Ask if 8 Banks Duped Rating Agencies Wall Street played a crucial role in the mortgage market’s path to collapse. Investment banks bundled mortgage loans into securities and then often rebundled those securities one or two more times. Those securities were given high ratings [...]

Bruce at QandO is ruminating on the VAT, which is likely the next step on paying for Leviathan. But it doesn’t make sense. If Congress is working so hard to make their new programs deficit neutral, why are they looking for big new hidden revenue sources?

Yesterday I had $10 in my right pocket. I loaned that money to my left pocket, which I like to call my “Right Pocket Trust Fund”. I put an IOU from my left pocket into my right pocket to document the loan. I then spent that $10 on lunch. Today my right pocket wants to [...]

Those of us who predicted lenders would avoid US Treasuries during the financial meltdown we initially somewhat surprised to see investors flocking to them. It’s the result of a supposed “flight to quality”, and nothing at the time seemed less risky than buying US Treasury bonds, since the Treasury sells its bonds in a currency [...]

The Senate passed Porkulus III by a vote of 70-28 with 13 Republicans demonstrating their party’s new found fiscal conservatism by crossing over to vote with every Democrat present for the bill. Like the first Porkulus signed by George W. Bush in 2008 and the Porkulus II passed last year, Porkulus III forks over billions [...]

It seems that a town in Northern California, Tracy, is having some budget problems. So what do they suggest? Charge for 911* calls! And it has aroused the ire of Thomas Friedman: A small news item from Tracy, Calif., caught my eye last week. Local station CBS 13 reported: “Tracy residents will now have to [...]

Those of us who truly believe in limited government* tend to be simultaneously amused and irritated hearing the folks at CPAC speak of limited government as though it’s a principle they truly support. Yesterday, the Libertarian Party’s Executive Director Wes Benedict, monitoring the CPAC festivities from afar, said some of the things that many of [...]