By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  April 15th at 09:19 AM  | 

The United States, like most nations in the developed world, maintain a progressive federal income tax system, meaning people not only pay a given percentage of their income in taxes but that percentage increases for high income earners, from 10 percent for individuals making a little more than $8,000 a year to 35 percent on incomes over $370,000. As a result, in 2008, the top | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  March 31st at 03:33 PM  | 

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned in the Financial Times of the hugely market distorting effects of the Dodd-Frank financial bill this week. A day later, the chairman of the Congressional Budget Office testified before the House financial oversight committee about the fiscal impact of the reform act that was hammered out by lawmakers this summer. Dodd-Frank, for starters, creates many new federal bureaucracies, | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  March 15th at 10:22 AM  | 

Global warming has given rise to an eerily religious campaign in which Christians and nonbelievers join hand in hand to make the rest of humanity repent for its environmental sins. Climate change should not become another tool in the hands of anti-capitalists. Instead it is with industry and scientific progress that man can best combat his changing natural world. Writing for The Huffington Post, Reverend | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  March 14th at 02:10 PM  | 

A nuclear catastrophe is potentially unfolding in Japan after the country’s eastern seaboard was devastated by its biggest earthquake on record. A tsunami with waves of up to thirty feet high swept away entire villages and damaged major industries, including oil refineries and at least two nuclear power plants. Two explosions occurred at a nuclear facility in Fukushima Prefecture over the weekend. At least one | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  March 13th at 02:24 PM  | 

President Barack Obama on Friday rejected criticism from Republicans that his administration was hurting the American oil industry. Indeed, he pointed out that oil production last year rose to its highest level in seven years and added that his government was prepared to encourage new drilling in the face of rising gas prices. After imposing a de facto moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  March 8th at 08:16 AM  | 

While a temporary spending measure has averted a government shutdown in the United States, the two major political parties are still tens of billions apart in how much they’re willing to cut. Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to cut $61 billion from this fiscal year’s budget but the Democratic majority in the Senate rejected the measure. Senior Democratic Dick Durbin of Illinois told | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  March 3rd at 09:08 AM  | 

The brothers Charles and David Koch, owners of energy conglomerate Koch Industries, have come under assault from the left in recent days for supposedly playing a shadowy role in the budget battle that is wrecking havoc in the state of Wisconsin. The Republican governor of Wisconsin has taken on public sector unions in his state, seeking to deprive them, in part, of their collective bargaining | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  March 2nd at 12:31 PM  | 

Canadian legislators recently ruled against repealing a decade old law that prevents broadcasters from supplying “false or misleading” information. According to The Huffington Post, it’s a victory for “fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice” who can take comfort knowing that “Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all!” According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who, in the past, has alleged that the United States | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  February 24th at 11:22 AM  | 

With its latest report (PDF) on the budgetary projections of the president’s health care reform law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provides an enhanced view of what ObamaCare is likely to cost. The full spending provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not come into effect until 2014. So far, the CBO has projected expenditures of the law until 2019. Its | Read More »

By: Nick Ottens (Diary)  |  February 23rd at 05:13 PM  | 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported on the economic impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus package, in the fourth quarter of 2010 today. The CBO now estimates that the stimulus will increase budget deficits over the 2009–2019 period by $821 billion. Close to half of the total impact occurred in fiscal year 2010 and about 70 percent of | Read More »