In his State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized, “We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it.” That may be the case if you make iPods, iPads, and iPhones, but when it is “big oil” (i.e., stockholders, pension funds, and IRAs investing in oil companies) that has a successful quarter, let the public onslaught commence. The most recent attack has been legislatively, when Representative Dennis Kucinich (D–OH) introduced “the Gas Price Spike Act.” The provisions in the bill threaten the entrepreneurial spirit and our system of …
The House Appropriations Committee’s newest member, Rep. Jo Bonner (R-AL), visited The Heritage Foundation’s weekly blogger lunch today to pitch his new “Commitment to Reforming a Broken Process.” Bonner faced a hostile crowd of conservative bloggers who did not see why Bonner was willing to support a one-year moratorium on earmarks but refused to back an all out ban. Bonner responded with a number of points, including: 1) there is no good definition of what an earmark is; 2) the system can be fixed with transparency; 3) a one-year moratorium …
