There have been various incidents over the past few years of anonymous flyers being sent to voters giving them the wrong date of an upcoming election. These cause great concern (as they should), but as Soren Dayton at RedState points out, usually Republicans are accused of engaging in these types of tactics with no evidence whatsoever that any Republican candidate had anything to do with it. There is now actual video of a new Virginia Democratic Congressman, Gerry Connolly, recommending that Republicans be given the wrong date of the special …
Guess who lampooned Soviet economics this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost [the Soviet Union] dearly. Newt Gingrich? Rush Limbaugh? Try Vladimir Putin. Apparently, the power-hungry, former KGB Putin understands the value of globally competitive corporations better than the U.S. Congress. This should come as no surprise. As this chart shows, the lessons of the rise of the American economy in …
Politicians and consumers learned valuable lessons this summer when national gasoline prices peaked at over four dollars per gallon. Simply put, energy supply must be expanded in the United States. Last October Congress took the right first steps by allowing the restrictions on energy leasing in 85 percent of America’s territorial waters to lapse. An estimated 30 years of imports from Saudi Arabia and enough natural gas to power American homes for 17 years could be found in these waters. With a new president and a new Congress, we could be facing …
The “cash for clunkers” plan recently proposed in Congress would provide a subsidy for a new car purchase to anyone willing to have their current car destroyed. But the economic rationale is eerily similar to the New Deal program most widely agreed to be a catastrophic failure: FDR’s agriculture plan that slaughtered pigs. The reasoning goes like this: Crushing the old car has two benefits. First, it ensures that the consumer’s purchase of a more efficient vehicle actually has a net environmental benefit. Second, it prevents a glut of used …
While the Obama Administration waffles on openness and transparency (see here and here), private citizens are stepping in to fill the void. The Heritage Foundation and other groups launched ReadtheStimulus.org to give citizens a chance to work their way through the massive spending proposal, flag suspicious language, and make suggestions. In other words, it’s a way for average citizens to do the work that too many of their elected officials are unwilling to do: actually reading and analyzing pending legislation. If the media buzz has been any indication, ReadtheStimulus.org has …
The amount of money the U.S. is spending in its vain effort to stimulate the economy is hard to grasp. As we’ve pointed out, $819 billion is equivalent to borrowing $10,520 from every family in America. That’s $819 billion that individual Americans will no longer be able to spend freely, as they see fit, and used instead to expand the power of the state. If that number still boggles the mind, here’s one to contemplate from our friends in Britain. We like to think of Britain as being true to …
The mainstream media refuses to mention it, but the only bi-partisanship in President Obama’s brief reign has produced has been against his Trillion Dollar Debt Plan. Eleven Democrats joined all of the House Republicans to vote against the bill. Now it is looking like this well deserved skepticism is spreading to the Senate. Watch Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) on Fox News last night: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkfNFd5Qzkc[/youtube]
Strike Two: Not only did President Obama fail to open the Ledbetter Act for public comment before he signed it, a violation of his pledge to boost transparency, but now his administration is refusing to release information on billion-dollar loan guarantees made to some of America’s largest banks. Bloomberg News, which is suing the government to obtain a variety of bailout-related information, reports: Bloomberg News asked the Treasury Department Jan. 26 to disclose what securities it backed over the past two months in a second round of actions to prop …
Jay Van Andel Senior Trade Policy Analyst at Heritage Daniella Markheim comments on why the recently discovered “Buy American” provisions in the ‘stimulus’ bill will only hurt the American economy in the long run. Advocates of Buy American rules claim that limiting competition for U.S. government contracts to domestic firms will protect U.S. jobs and help prop up firms in troubled industries. Regrettably, the cost of such protectionism will be inflicted on the American public, who will fail to get the best value for their hard-earned taxpayer dollars; the U.S. workers who lose their jobs …
Vincent de Rivaz, CEO of the UK arm EDF energy, made an interesting but frightening comparison when talking about trading carbon credits under the European Union’s cap-and-trade program: We like certainty about a carbon price. [But] the carbon price has to become simple and not become a new type of sub-prime tool which will be diverted from what is its initial purpose: to encourage real investment in real low-carbon technology. We are at the tipping point where we … should wonder if we have in place the right balance between …
