Thursday’s lecture in Wichita by economist Walter Williams featured a section covering how greed, or what some call enlightened self-interest, is the best way to produce good acts. This lecture was presented by the Bill of Rights Institute and underwritten by the Fred and Mary Koch Foundation. When government is used in an attempt to do good, it requires either elimination or attenuation of private | Read More »
Walter E.Williams At two events in Wichita, economist Walter E. Williams spoke on the legitimate role of government in a free society, touching on the role of government as defined in the Constitution, the benefits of capitalism and private property, and the recent attacks on individual freedom and limited government. The evening lecture was held in the Mary Jane Teall Theater at Century II, and | Read More »
In order to help the economy President Barack Obama promises to soon reveal a plan to create jobs. Today’s preview before a union audience in Detroit didn’t provide many details, but based on the president’s past actions and guesses as to what the plan is likely to contain, it’s unlikely the plan will work. Various news reports and commentary have mentioned these as possible elements | Read More »
Recently wealthy investor Warren Buffet has been in the news for his advocacy of higher taxes. But is government — politics, in other words — the best way to allocate resources? In a statement on the KochFacts website, Charles Koch disagrees with Buffet: As part of the public discourse on government overspending and fiscal irresponsibility, Charles Koch offered the following public response to media queries | Read More »
While the U.S. Supreme Court has attempted to limit the application of vague “honest services” statutes, the Obama Administration is working to restore what the Wall Street Journal describes as “essentially unlimited prosecutorial discretion to bring white-collar cases.” David Rittgers of the Cato Institute explains the meaning of this law: “The ‘honest services’ statute criminalizes ‘a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible | Read More »
On the C-SPAN television program Washington Journal (Sunday August 14, 2011) Democratic strategist Mark Mellman appeared and gave viewers a lesson on how the political left lies and distorts in order to score political points against what it sees as easy targets. Mellman said: “The tea party comes out, and has really done real damage to this country. Most people in this country think it’s | Read More »
The proliferation of criminal laws and regulations with criminal penalties mean that the freedoms of Americans are increasingly at risk as prosecutors take advantage of expanded authority and reach of the federal justice system. Sometimes prosecutors don’t even need to show criminal intent in order to gain a conviction. As reported in the recent Wall Street Journal article As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared: | Read More »
Despite claims made in a Wichita Eagle op-ed by its former editor Davis Merritt, we desperately need a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution. (Balanced-budget amendment is unworkable, August 2, 2001) Merritt calls the promise of a balanced budget amendment a “cruel deception” that “limits imagination and progress.” He gives three reasons as to why we should not adopt such an amendment: First: | Read More »
A recent op-ed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Wall Street Journal (Why Americans Are So Angry: Republicans want the entire burden of deficit reduction to be carried by the elderly, the sick, children and working families), besides holding faulty reasoning in every paragraph, hold a few factual errors that deserve discussion. Raise tax rates to raise revenue For example, Sanders writes regarding | Read More »
While most critics of government spending focus on entitlements, regular appropriations, and earmarks, there is a category of spending that not many have paid much attention. This spending is called “tax expenditures.” This year as part of the debate or controversy over raising the federal debt ceiling, attention is being paid to the cost of these tax expenditures, although the term commonly used is “loophole.” | Read More »
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