Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
Image of the Day
Déjà vu
Choose Life: He Just Lost His Wife and is Singing to His Dying Newborn Son
Facebook Corner
(National Review). Were we right to take out Saddam?
No, we weren't. There is no constitutional mandate to rid the world of war criminals or to be the world's policeman. It certainly wasn't worth thousands of American casualies and adding a trillion to the national debt.
(Reason). No, but government safety mandates can have tragic and unintended consequences.
This magazine never ceases to be sexist in the least bit. Every piece happens to blame females who have more competence in their pinky finger than any of these male chauvinists. Also, the Amtrak crash is the cause of Republicans refusing to give ANY money to sustain Amtrak properly.
The OP is just a knee-jerk feminist ideologue hypocrite. Imagine that: a female senator is being held responsible for her own irresponsible "progressive" policy views; Reason repeatedly criticizes male politicians over their Statist views; apparently, the OP prefers an unconsionable double standard where any and all criticisms of female politicians are considered "sexist"; is that the real standard of gender equality?
(Jeffrey Tucker). To decline to tax is not the same as a direct subsidy. A tax credit, for example, amounts to letting people keep their own money. A subsidy is a forced transfer of wealth from one party to another. These are very different. Why is this so difficult to understand? How is it that even libertarians are constantly and perpetually confused on this point?
Yes, I'm talking to all those who protested my celebration of the Tesla car. So far as I can tell, these cars are only "subsidized" in the sense that the government permits buyers to keep more of their own money than would otherwise be possible. This is not a wealth transfer.
In the best possible world, everyone and everything would be free from taxation. That some products and services gain some freedom from plunder is not something to decry but to celebrate and extend.
This is little more than a disingenuous, legalistic dodge. The issue has to do with INDUSTRIAL POLICY, which is NOT the free market, and I know when I criticized you a week ago, it was precisely on that ground, not the nature of the tax incentive. There is zero substantive difference between a subsidy and the government taxing you and mailing you a refund. The issue is unless the government accordingly cuts spending, the state plunders the rest of us even more to make up the difference.
The fact is that the federal tax credit effectively lowers the cost of a Tesla, and we have the law of supply and demand. Little wonder Tesla openly markets the fact of the $7500 tax credit.
(IPI). BREAKING: Court allows state workers to challenge mandatory union fees http://illin.is/1S9unza
Here's the deal! I'm a union employee. Number one getting sick n tired of this mess being the employees fault! Number 2 yes we need to make some changes. But not at the lower level. Start with the people retiring making 80,000 plus on their pensions and quit giving them 3 percent colas! Legislatures, judges, police and firefighters make more after a few years of retirement than when they were working. Number 3 remember their isn't a quick fix to this problem. Employees who have invested several years should get what was promised to them. The lawmakers not only agreed to all of this. But then stole a large portion of the pension fund.
Nobody is entitled to more than what he/his employer kicked in (plus a prorated gain from investments, if any). The system has not been funded for million-dollar plus disbursements per retiree. That's a matter of cold hard math, not all this bitching about crooked politicians, pension contribution holidays, etc., however ethically repugnant they may be...
What the OP may be referring to are clear abuses, e.g., applying full-time union work towards public pension, people being eligible after a single day of substitute teaching, and similar corrupt loopholes. Besides the only viable solution being conversion to a 401K/defined contribution system, in the meanwhile, you have to get a grip on unsustainable distributions--you need to defer pension eligibility, cap distributions, reform COLA's, eliminate various spiking gimmicks, etc. You need to demand private sector reforms, including a more realistic investment basis (the private sector assumes more smaller gains, requiring a larger employer contribution).
(Cato Institute). "Unfortunately, the expansion of government pre-K programs generally seems to be based much more on good intentions than evidence."
Head start, generally, does work. Look at it this way. The head start kids in many cities are ahead of their similar cohorts at the beginning of first grade, but by 6th grade no difference can be found! the problem is cramming all the ahead kids in with the behind kids and expecting a Super teacher to be all things to all kids at different levels, but that is counter to communism.
Excusing the lack of objective evidence of long-term education gains? A pathetic response by yet another statist trying to excuse the abysmal failure of the public school monopoly. Federal involvement violates the principle of Subsidiarity, and relevant funding is little more than throwing more corrupt money away at the crony teacher unions. We need to stop throwing money at illusory solutions and foster the real solution: educational choice/privatization.
Political Cartoon
 |
| Courtesy of Ben Garrison via the Independent Institute |
 |
| Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall |
 |
| Courtesy of Eric Allie via IPI |
Cat Stevens, "Here Comes My Baby"
