Government power is exercised only in the absence of liberty. If you are legally compelled to do something, you are not free to refuse. The government does spend a good deal of time making “suggestions” and offering optional “benefits” these days, but all of this activity is funded by the compulsory seizure of wealth. Power takes many forms. Money is power. Everything the government does | Read More »
President Obama took a break from the scandals swirling around his Administration on Wednesday by jetting off to Chicago, where the sort of politics practiced by Obama’s IRS are standard procedure. There he held a few fundraisers, including a posh reception with fat-cat donors where tickets ran from $10,000 to over $32,000 apiece. “We’ve got a politics that’s stuck right now,” this great Man of | Read More »
A few weeks ago, Apple executives were called on the Congressional carpet for… well, it’s not really clear, actually. Congress was very angry at them for failing to haul international profits back to the United States so they could be taxed at confiscatory anti-growth American rates. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) countered by pointing out that everyone tries to legally minimize their tax liability. Accountants who failed to | Read More »
The proper attitude of government towards its citizens is humility. The State kneels before the people who invest it with terrible authority. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are full of language that illustrates this relationship, but you don’t have to look back that far, because American politicians constantly cloak themselves in the language of humility. They always talk about how honored they are to receive | Read More »
Obama’s favorite henchman, David Axelrod, deployed the famed Incompetence Defense on behalf of the embattled President during an MSNBC appearance on Wednesday. That’s the hot new line from Obama apologists: he’s so incredibly inept that he can’t be held responsible for anything his Administration does. He golfs, he raises money, he takes a lot of vacations… there’s not much time left over for management. He learns | Read More »
As we watch a string of scandals detonate across the Obama Administration, we should all be able to agree that the abuse of government power to punish political opposition is hideously wrong. Sometimes we struggle to define the precise boundaries of “corruption,” as a growing government extends its power into the private sector, and the daily conduct of its business becomes inherently corrupt. Special interests swarm around | Read More »
John Adams sized up the Constitution as suitable “only for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” To some extent, this is true of every body of law. People can change the law, after all, or rebel against it entirely. The Constitution can be altered by amendment, so even if America had remained utterly faithful to the | Read More »
CNN Marketwatch offers a glimpse of our paper-pushing future under ObamaCare: If you thought nothing could be more tedious than filling out your tax forms, just wait until you try to apply for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s new exchanges. The draft of the paper application is 15 to 21 pages, depending on whether someone is applying individually or for their family. And | Read More »
Wow, hey, whaddya know? Starting in 2014, your employer (and, by extension, you) will begin paying a fresh new $63 annual ObamaCare fee, to cover the extra cost of insuring other people’s pre-existing conditions. The Associated Press describes how this little “unexpected expense” popped out of recently unearthed regulations: The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the | Read More »
I’m rather tired of all the people who don’t like Romney trying to claim Rick Santorum is not a big government conservative, or not a pro-life statist. I would support him before I would support Romney too, but I have no intention of giving up ideological and intellectual consistency in the name of beating Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum is a pro-life statist. He is. You | Read More »
“We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.” – President Barack H. Obama fires up the troops. (Ht: Brietbart.com)
Watching Governor Rick Perry’s speech at the Red State Gathering, I was struck by the degree to which conservatism has grown at the highest levels of electoral politics, including presidential elections, over the past decade. Twelve years ago, another Texan, George W. Bush, announced his presidential bid by ushering in a new era of conservatism. At the time, following the longest Republican exile from the | Read More »
They just don’t get it here in Washington, DC. The Senate voted today for business as usual — against an amendment by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) to ban earmarking by Senators. The vote was conducted under a suspension of the Senate’s rules, yet it garnered only 39 votes in favor of an earmark ban for the whole Senate. They love pork on Capitol Hill. | Read More »
I’ve obtained a few documents and one link which really tell us where we are in California right now. Per the polling, which has remarkably projected in California little or no TEA party/Republican/Independent/conservative backlash at all, I still see Carly having a one third shot to win this, and if we saw polling which actually demonstrated a partisan enthusiasm gap, that number would have been | Read More »
During the year long ObamaCare debate, there was a spirited debate of the proposition that ObamaCare would cause rationing by the federal government of services and drugs. Government rationed health care services and drugs have evolved from rhetoric to reality. On July 28th, Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) raised drug rationing concerns, because of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pending decision to take the cancer drug Avastin off the list of approved drugs for breast cancer. This example | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}