A rather heated debate seems to ensuing — in fact, it ensues about every 90 days, merely growing louder at each iteration — about whether the Congress should again “extend unemployment benefits” for the unemployed. The question that draws the most attention, understandably, is whether this is a good idea. As usual, the main question […]
“Constitutional amendments we’d like to see” is usually an ineffective game. But this one keeps occurring to me. It’s about 600 words, but I still believe it passes the basic test of comprehensibility, despite being in three parts. It also gives us a litmus test to determine who — if anyone — in the political […]
Back in 1996, Congress swore it was finally going to wean American farmers off taxpayer subsidies with the “Freedom to Farm” law. The law “allowed” farmers greater flexibility in their planting decisions and moved toward greater reliance on market supply and demand, further offering farmers big one-time payments in exchange for their promise to accept […]
And the Clueless Ones in Washington just can’t figure out why struggling American small business owners, uncertain about how the rules will be changed next, are reluctant to hire new employees. “Fresh off passage of a sweeping health care overhaul, the Obama administration is supporting legislation to provide mandatory paid sick leave for more than […]
(No, unfortunately, this one is not an “April Fools” joke.) Some 35 years ago, Americans first became generally aware that there could be a “gasoline crisis” — that our dependence on imported oil could combine with taxation, price controls, and other “well-meaning” government interventions to create fuel shortages, lines, all kinds of chaos.
For decades, according to deathbed testimony, the IRS made engineer Andrew Stack’s life a living hell, repeatedly seizing so much of his accrued assets as to leave him with virtually nothing for his retirement. On Feb. 18, Stack, 53, set fire to his own house and then flew his single-engine plane into an office building […]
Back in 2007, Washington state voters approved Initiative 960, which barred any state tax increase from being OK’d without a two-thirds vote of their state Legislature. Liberal lawmakers, who refuse to set any maximum limit on the taxes working stiffs should be required to pay, complained that was a hard standard to meet.
The observation was repeated often enough before Barack Obama’s 2008 election that few can claim not to have been warned: When Democrats including Mr. Obama promise an open, centrist, “bi-partisan” administration where Republicans, free-marketers, Constitutionalists and their ideas will be “welcome at the table,” what they really mean is: “Those guys are welcome to prove […]
Here in Las Vegas, Star Nurseries had a problem. Last fall, customers began complaining about the “day workers” — mostly illegal aliens who have snuck across our borders from Mexico and points south — who would gather by the dozens in and near the nurseries’ parking lots, trampling the landscaping, relieving themselves in the bushes, […]
City health departments do some useful work, on balance. They were mostly born of the “sanitary” and “hygienic” movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Appalled by the squalor and disease in the nation’s crowded tenements, volunteers — at first — set about informing people about how diseases were transmitted, stressing the importance of […]