Via CBSNEWS.com: A House ethics committee subpanel today found Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel guilty of 11 of the 13 charges of ethics violations against him. The panel, composed of four Democrats and four Republicans, emerged after private deliberation to announce their findings. […] The subpanel will now submit its findings to the full ethics committee, [...]

A great story that’s a testament to the endurance of freedom, from Portugal: In 2001, Portugal legalized all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs—including cocaine, heroin, and meth—and replaced drug sentences with offers of therapy. If that sounds a bit bleeding heart, well, it worked: In the five years following decriminalization, drug use among [...]

Here’s the outrage of the day, coming straight out of the UK: The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer. The proposal by Her [...]

After Cuban leader Fidel Castro excoriated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his anti-Semitism, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez appeared to get the message: During a visit to the International Tourism Fair in Caracas yesterday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced he would meet with leaders of Venezuela’s Jewish community. “We respect and love the Jewish people,” said [...]

Some things you just cannot make up: A device designed to control unruly inmates by blasting them with a beam of intense energy that causes a burning sensation is drawing heat from civil rights groups who fear it could cause serious injury and is “tantamount to torture.” The mechanism, known as an “Assault Intervention Device,” [...]

Karl Smith on taxes vs. regulation: On the other hand barrels of ink and the fates of political parties are determined over debates about the taxation of labor. Its a generally accepted principle of Public Economics that taxes are less damaging than regulation and in either case the broader and more uniform the restriction the [...]

…but on the right side of the supply-side argument growth curve. I’ve posted about this several times, but I think the Laffer Curve is presented in such a way that it becomes highly misunderstood. Today that was made perfectly clear by Ezra Klein, who asked economists, political leftists and political rightists what tax rates would [...]

Nancy Folbre, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, opens her article “The Art of Tax War” (via the Tax Lawyer’s Blog via Instapundit) with a truism: As Sun Tzu observed about 2,500 years ago, “All warfare is based on deception.” Then, the deception begins.

On taxes in Boston: The business of the Town is still decaying, the taxes are not at all lessened, but continue very high — A great many of our industrious inhabitants are gone into the country, the burden now falls on a small number; and they less able to bear it than ever — This [...]

Ezra Klein: For those of you who don’t click on the link, the conclusions, based off a raft of numbers that the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget worked up for me, are that you’ll never get deficits under control if you don’t get growth back on track; you’ll never get deficits under control if [...]

Saw this (original comic by Wuerker of Politico) at The Big Picture: My question… In what world is it fair that any entity stakes a forcible claim to 40% of your income? It doesn’t matter that the number was higher in the past, the number is simply too high. Again, that number is 40%! You [...]

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue is currently running an ad – a friendly reminder to encourage PA residents who owe back taxes to pay up because the PDR knows where you live. Creepy huh? But don’t be alarmed PA residents who owe back taxes, go to the website (PAtaxPayup.com) and you will find that the [...]

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, President Obama announced a new plan that supposedly announced new drilling off the nation’s East Coast, Alaskan Coast, and Gulf of Mexico. State run media proclaimed it as Obama moving to the center and striking a balance between environmentalists and the “drill, baby, drill” crowd. However, once you look at Obama’s actual proposal the [...]

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 [...]

So, the CBO says this bill lowers the deficit. And thus, says Ezra Klein, it’ll be tougher for the Republicans to repeal, should they win control of Congress: And as a reader reminds me, people should also remember that “now that the reform bill is the law of the land, [repeal] would increase the budget [...]

As we all know, most of ObamaCare is pushed out to 2014 or so. But Ezra Klein, ever helpful, points out this nice PDF which explains what will occur nearly immediately. Ezra is always celebrating the cost-control measures of ObamaCare, so let’s see how these provisions stack up: 1. SMALL BUSINESS TAX CREDITS—Offers tax credits [...]

It’s very simple… Just require federal employees to follow the law, and they’ll make themselves ineligible for service: `SUBCHAPTER VIII–INELIGIBILITY OF PERSONS HAVING SERIOUSLY DELINQUENT TAX DEBTS FOR FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT `Sec. 7381. Ineligibility of persons having seriously delinquent tax debts for Federal employment `(a) Definition- For purposes of this section– `(1) the term `seriously delinquent [...]

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 [...]

Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptics Position (studio version) from Warren Meyer on Vimeo. Warren is local to me (he lives about three miles away actually), and runs both the excellent libertarian small business and economics blog CoyoteBlog, and the absolutely essential climate blog Climate Skeptic.