As we approach the new year and incidentally, Old Christmas (January 6), I thought I would leave you with a few “gifts.” These come from Federal, state and even local actions over the past year. I don’t really wish these on anyone, but they are current reality. Release of five more Guantanamo detainees, whose threat […]
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Politico‘s James Hohman has a nice piece up this morning on Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) and his quest for a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution. Kasich has formed a non-profit organization, Balanced Budget Forever, to promote the effort. Though the article is ostensibly about the legislative quest, the sub-theme is Kasich’s possible presidential bid […]
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What Would Brave Voters Do?
03 Nov 2014
You may think this is piling on, but I am okay with that. Some things need to be jumped on. Our national anthem ends with the following line, “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?” I am seeing precious little freedom or […]
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Bastiat is rolling over in his grave, and shredding whatever remains of his attire on the shards of all the broken windows, because Mr. Obama’s former Treasury Secretary and the former President of Harvard, Larry Summers, says there is a free lunch with intelligent spending in infrastructure by the government. He cites the recent report […]
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A Very Long Review of a Very Intellectually Deficient, but Very Big, Book by Thomas Piketty
09 Jun 2014
Before I begin this blog, I beg the reader’s indulgence for such a long book review. However I considered this book worthy of such a detailed examination, due to its popularity and influence, barely three months after its appearance. I do hope the length will be justified by the service it may provide. I promise […]
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The “Point One” Percent
01 May 2014
We are all collectively the “point one percent” now. That is, we live in an economy that measured ,1% (you read that right) growth in GDP in the first quarter of 2014. Are we in for a “double dip” recession–have we really emerged from the previous one, despite fine economic definitions (and let’s be clear, […]
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Fiscal Follies and International Trade
06 Feb 2014
William Galston published an opinion piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal titled: Obama’s Moment of Truth on Trade. In the editorial Galston compares Obama’s trade statement in his recent State of the Union address to Bill Clinton’s battle to pass NAFTA in 1993. Clinton faced significant political opposition within his own party, but stood tall […]
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Common Sense Economics
05 Nov 2013
Alan Greenspan was being interviewed about his new book The Map and the Territory in Time magazine recently and responded to the question, “Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently during your time as chairman of the Fed?” His response was in part, “I always knew debt was important. If I […]
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Quinnipiac University’s most recent polling results suggest Republicans will struggle to convince the American people the government shutdown is a good idea. Key findings include: Americans oppose, 72-22%, the government shutdown in order to de-fund or delay Obamacare Republican voters support the shutdown narrowly (49-44%), while Democrats (90-6%) and Independents (74-19%) oppose it overwhelmingly In a […]
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There is something viscerally satisfying about the possibility of a government shut down. Consider the stated and implied conservative motivations: We need to show people they can survive without their daily suckling from the federal teat We need to inculcate a new sense of independence, a re-emergence of the homesteading spirit that once defined our […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach