At least Esau got a bowl of lentil soup for selling out his birthright. What will Republicans get? It’s amazing how events in politics seem to repeat themselves more often than Charlie Brown and the football. It seems like it was yesterday that we were advocating against Boehner’s trial balloon vote to raise the debt ceiling at the end of July. Back in 2011, it | Read More »
An old joke, long attributed to Winston Churchill goes like this. Churchill asked a famous British socialite, “Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?” “My goodness, Mr. Churchill. Well, I suppose we would have to discuss terms, of course,” the socialite replied. Churchill then asked, “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?” at which the socialite angrily responded, “Mr. Churchill, what | Read More »
While The Nation uses WalMart as its anti-gun piñata in both articles—even invoking the Aurora, Colorado theater movie shooting—it does not explicitly claim that any mass murderers actually obtained their guns from WalMart. Rather, The Nation’s writers merely imply that the retailer is responsible for the deaths committed by mass murderers.
Read More »In the old days, economic crises were organic events that reflected popular greed, economic instability and tangible fear. Speculative bubbles burst, bank depositors panicked and stock markets (and stockbrokers) plunged. No more. We have grown too sophisticated for all that.
Our economy has reached a degree of complexity that its crises must be planned, packaged and marketed just like Cocoa Puffs.
Read More »The Washington Post‘s editorial board is the latest group to jump on the God, please, not Chuck Hagel bandwagon: FORMER SENATOR Chuck Hagel, whom President Obama is reportedly considering for defense secretary, is a Republican who would offer a veneer of bipartisanship to the national security team. He would not, however, move it toward the center, which is the usual role of such opposite-party nominees. | Read More »
This morning I made a dumb and careless mistake. Yesterday, at 11:20 a.m., about 40 minutes before the official announcement, Governor Haley and Congressmen Scott called me to give me an advanced notice of the announcement and let me ask questions. We chatted, according to my iPhone, for 8 minutes. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know two things — since | Read More »
It’s time for John Boehner and the House and Senate Republicans now engaged in the fiscal cliff negotiations to learn a lesson from George Washington: when faced with fighting a losing battle, the wisest course is to retreat rather than surrender. Washington’s Retreats George Washington didn’t get to be the Father of His Country by leading his often outnumbered and outgunned troops on suicide missions. | Read More »
So Boehner plans to introduce a bill on the House floor that increases the top marginal tax rate on those earning more than $1 million per year. Most likely, Boehner and Obama will ultimately agree on a deal that splits the difference between $400,000 and $500,000. Many Republicans will shrug their shoulders: “Who cares about a few rich liberals?” However, this rationale represents a shortsighted | Read More »
Take a close look at this AR-15. It was completely legal under the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Conn Carroll to discuss the latest proposal in the never-ending Fiscal Cliff negotiations, whether Republicans would except a tax hike as part of a deal and if Boehner may lose his speakership.
Read More »One of the biggest ironies lost in the tax debate is that the very same Democrats who worked assiduously to block the Bush tax cuts have now embraced 98% of the cuts. In fact, they are running around the country propping up working class Americans as examples of the calamity that is set to befall the middle class if the tax cuts expire. Amazingly, if | Read More »
Here’s a true story to ponder. A gentleman, one of my clients, recently sold his entire business that he founded. Having worked at it and worked hard for it his entire life (he is in his late 70′s), the company sold for around $600 million dollars. This is a classic example of the American Dream. From the sale of the company, his cut was around | Read More »
Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina leaves the Senate on December 31st. Replacing him will be Congressman Tim Scott. Yesterday, Governor Nikki Haley made the announcement that she would choose Congressman Scott for the replacement. Governor Haley and the future Senator called me Friday Monday* morning before the announcement was made. Governor Haley emphasized that Senator Scott would be as independent as Senator DeMint. In | Read More »
Hello again. Having been traveling from Wednesday to Friday for my employer, I did my best to get this out Friday night, but I crashed about a third of the way into my backlog of links. Then over the weekend my email server died. So, we catch up with Tech at Night on Monday!
We’ll start with the International Telecommunications Union. Reports came out that ITU anti-liberty proposals were backing off, but the effort is going in the wrong direction. A big chunk of the Anglosphere is against it, including the Obama administration.
The President is getting credit for this position from industry and House Republicans, but consider this: if the ITU’s secretary general didn’t see the Obama opposition coming then just how muted were Obama’s efforts to fix the treaty to begin with? This is a failure of the President to lead internationally.
Read More »This is very sad news: “Democrat Daniel Inouye, the U.S. Senate’s most senior member and a Medal of Honor recipient for his bravery during World War II, has died. He was 88.” …yes, the Medal of Honor thing wasn’t ever really brought up, much. Here’s the citation: Second Lieutenant Daniel K. Inouye distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 21 April 1945, in the | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}