What a difference a year makes.
Last year at about this time, I reported on the twin revelations that former California Governor Jerry Brown’s vaunted “budget surplus” had become a deficit, and his boondoggle “high speed rail” line from LA to San Francisco was even more over-budget than previously suspected. Then there were the revelations by State Assembly member Melissa Melendez that the…
It's a totalitarian proposal.
Today is the day Congressional Democrats see their wolf in sheep’s clothing come up for a vote. Limbed in rhetorical armor, the “Gender Equality” bill is ready to ride. It’s likely to pass the House, and unlikely to pass the Senate, but it’s eventual demise is not a reason to dismiss its provisions and the poisonous thinking behind it.
Writing for Reason, Elizabeth…
Last fall, I suffered through a conversation with a teacher who wanted me to include a dose of drivel from “federal education standards” in my syllabus.
The "suggestion" was to “have the students cite an example of market failure where government intervention would be required.” I refused, and explained that I wouldn’t adopt federal standards because the feds had no constitutional power to…
Remember that outlandish idea called private property?
Evidently, the mighty mucky-mucks in the “Code Enforcement Board" of Dunedin, Florida, don’t.
According to Kirby Wilson, writing for the Tampa Bay Times, the attack by the city stems from a period in 2018 when 69 year-old resident Jim Ficken let his lawn grow higher than what the city politicians allow in their “code”.
So, on Tuesday,…
Here’s some grist for the mental mill. In the course of two days, two state governors signed into law statutes intended to insure free speech on publicly funded college campuses.
They’re positive signs, yet indicative of how little respect many people have for free speech. And they present an opportunity to learn lessons about what happens when free people toss their rights into the “public…
Recently Released Labor Department data shows that the unemployment rate fell from 3.8% to 3.6% at the close of the first quarter of 2019 (the lowest rate since 1969), that the US economy added 263,000 new jobs, and that Gross Domestic Product grew 3.2%. But some politically minded people seem disinclined to talk about the freeing of the productive capacity of American civilians that…
Conservative actor James Woods has been sent to the Twitter “wood shed” for, according to Twitter, violating its rules, when it appears he has not.
In fact, what this appears to be is yet another case of Twitter antipathy for conservatives, for Trump supporters, for libertarians, and for anti-war activists. It also exhibits all the hallmarks of Twitter’s previous pattern of banning members of…
Most of us are familiar with that business expression, “the customer is always right.” But in the day-to-day tumult of political disputation, some might forget that one of the important distinctions between freedom and statism is that the state never has to please any customer. In fact, it's not possible to know if a customer is pleased, because the state doesn't have customers. It has subjects…
One of the key points about collectivism I stress to students is the fact that every form of collectivism, be it “socialism”, “communism”, or “fascism” -- in fact, any form of “statism” – cannot work economically because it runs into what is known as the “calculation problem”. That’s the ever-present reality that by removing private property ownership, to whatever degree, and replacing it…
In a world where politicians come and go, it sure is reassuring to know that one thing about them is perennial: their capacity to engage in the fine “art” of grandstanding.
And among the many doing yeoman’s work in that area, California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, appears to be quite adept. As Christian Britschgi reports for Reason, on Tuesday, April 23, Newsom made a public spectacle of his “…
