Ezra Klein links an interesting story by econoblogger Ryan Avent about declining cities. His post is a fairly interesting read about how (or whether to) try to save dying manufacturing cities. But one of his passages discusses a greatly different topic. As a California resident, I’m stuck with a very high-tax, heavy-regulating, dysfunctional state government [...]

Ezra Klein quotes approvingly from Bruce Bartlett’s new book, The New American Economy: The Failure Of Reaganomics And A New Way Forward: The reality is that even before spending exploded to deal with the economic crisis, the government was set to grow by about 50 percent of GDP over the next generation just to pay [...]

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.

The Federal Trade Commission has taken a solid step towards regulation of bloggers, first by declaring that any “in-kind” contribution for a product review must be considered an official endorsement and requires disclosure. Despite the fact that I — of my own volition — did so on the one occasion I was actually given something [...]

“You heard the mantra, ‘Tax the rich, tax the rich… We’ve done that. We’ve probably lost jobs and driven people out of the state.” – Gov. David Paterson (D-NY) H/T: United Liberty

The Senate Finance Committee is finishing up work this week on a “compromise” Obamacare bill that’s being billed as better than pure Obamacare because it doesn’t include “death panels”, a public option, and free healthcare for illegal aliens. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said Monday that he will propose an overhaul of the [...]

“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 [...]

There have been plenty of books and policy papers written, plenty of speeches and television and radio interviews, about the economic reasons that high progressive taxation is a bad idea. We’ve heard many times about how it restricts innovation by discouraging investments, or how higher tax rates actually have the seemingly perverse impact of decreasing [...]

The news out of Sacramento appears good for the California middle class: The good news, Schwarzenegger glowed, is no new taxes. Digging a little deeper, of course, reveals the truth: REVENUES * Accelerate income tax withholding — $1.7 billion * Increase estimated tax payments for businesses and the self-employed — $610 million Between now and [...]

Kevin Drum sees this and weeps. My god! The rich aren’t paying any taxes any more! Look at how steep those lines are! Those greedy rich bastards are getting off easy! Or, maybe if you rescale the image, you make a different point (my apologies for an inability to make a chart, this in Excel [...]

While I’ve not had enough time to take a comprehensive look at Tea Parties held around the nation on or around Independence Day, here are some quick observations from this full-time Tea Party enthusiast and part-time skeptic. First of all, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) was booed when he spoke in Austin, Texas.  The key reason [...]

Instapundit links to a NYT Magazine propaganda piece about governing California, and the part about taxation reads as if it were written by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, right down to euphemistically renaming taxes “revenue”: In the view of many, the origins of the mud slog began with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the [...]

Politicians are usually most revealing when speaking off-the-cuff, and so it was with Karen Bass: Q: How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature’s work? A: The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue [...]

I happen to live in Arizonas 5th congressional district; and am currently represented in the house by Harry Mitchell. Congressman Mitchell and I disagree about a lot of things. Abortion, social security and government health care, school choice and education policy, many economic issues, government intervention and regulations in general, and the overall wisdom of [...]

The California Department Of Real Estate oversees and administers the state’s real estate agent and broker licensing program. During the big housing boom, the fees generated by the high level of real estate activity (and the agents/brokers who were licensed to enable that activity) has caused them to build up some a nice Trust Fund. [...]

Now it’s personal: Consumers in the United States may have to hand over nearly $2 more for a case of beer to help provide health insurance for all. Details of the proposed beer tax are described in a Senate Finance Committee document that will be used to brief lawmakers Wednesday at a closed-door meeting. Taxes [...]

Comedy is hard. Really, really hard. Funny requires stepping outside the box — saying something a bit unexpected. There are a lot of ways to screw it up, and often what sounds funny in your head is not so funny when a listener hears it. There’s a reason why many actors say that comedy acting [...]

Just who is he trying to fool? President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries. “We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. [...]

As I’ve thoroughly explained here and here, the whole Social Security “trust fund” issue is a joke. It’s an accounting gimmick designed to push the supposed date of concern out into the future. When does Social Security become “insolvent”? Well, let’s look at what the word means: adjective not solvent; unable to satisfy creditors or [...]

Coming from Ezra Klein – Via Dave Weigel and Matt Yglesias comes the depressing news that the vast majority of the public doesn’t know what cap and trade” is. And I don’t mean in the sense that they don’t understand the auctions. They have no idea what problem the policy actually refers to. “Given a [...]