National Politics
As America awaits the big May 1 protest parades, with their likely demands for an unconditional amnesty for illegal immigrants, it is worth noting that many protestors so far reject any requirement for assimilation to historical American principles. This is a non-trivial issue for which the trends in Europe offer a perspective on what the…
Senator Tom Coburn has identified 19 items (see the table below) that he believes to be wasteful pork spending in the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery bill currently being debated in the United States Senate . The Senator has introduced amendments that would rescind the 19…
Among the weighty phrases thrown around in our public discourse, few are as provocative or poorly understood as “social justice” and “inequality.” A perspective on social justice was previously offered here. With a H/T to Cafe Hayek, David Schmidtz’s article When Inequality Matters offers a philosophical perspective on the issue of inequality. (Note: His definition…
Ed Achorn’s latest editorial A cap won’t solve R.I.’s tax troubles states: It is encouraging that Rhode Island politicians — in an election year, anyway — are awakening to the public’s agonized cries over sky-high property taxes. Senate President Joseph Montalbano (D.-North Providence), Majority Leader Teresa Paiva-Weed (D.-Newport), and Minority Leader Dennis Algiere (R.-Westerly) last…
David Boaz, the Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, recently wrote these words about why lobbyist reform initiatives will fail: When you spread food out on a picnic table, you can expect ants. When you put $3 trillion on the table, you can expect special interests, lobbyists and pork-barrel politicians. That’s the real lesson…
In an earlier posting, I introduced a book entitled The New New Left: How American Politics Works Today by Steven Malanga and a review of the book in the Claremont Review of Books. The core theme of the book was described by one reviewer as “American politics is not about [political] parties, it is about…
Cafe Hayek has a very good posting entitled Government Ain’t Us, which says: The idea is prevalent that little or nothing beneficial happens for people generally unless it is done by government. Things people do individually — for their own purposes, using their own gumption, own wits, and own resources, neither incited by nor directed…
From the February 17 edition of the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary (available for a fee): Remember that three-day mass transit strike that paralyzed New York City over the Christmas holidays? Apparently the drama isn’t over. Since then, transit workers have narrowly rejected the contract their leadership accepted to end the strike. The union is…
D. W. MacKenzie wrote in the October 2002 issue of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, the monthly publication of the Foundation for Economic Education, about the coercive role of government: I am government… Coercion is both my vocation and my avocation; it is in my very nature to compel others to do that which they…
Thinking aloud over at The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru asks, “What do conservatives gain if Chafee wins?” But first he makes a case for conservative retribution against Sen. Chafee: The more I think about it, the more important it seems to me that Steve Laffey beat him in the Rhode Island Senate primary. None of the…