Minor Thoughts

Greg Mankiw explains the spending problems with the healthcare bill through a short, imagined dialog between two friends. Here’s the kicker:

Even if you believe that the spending cuts and tax increases in the bill make it deficit-neutral, the legislation will still make solving the problem of the fiscal imbalance harder, because it will …

The Myth of the Recovery

The gains on Wall Street have been goosed largely by government spending and guarantees, not the usual private sector–funded growth. And federal spending cannot continue indefinitely without deficits and debt service spiraling out of control. John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo, says, “We have seen a recovery, but …

Insurer’s Gone Wild

”We allow the insurance industry to run wild in this country,” President Obama declared on Monday. ”We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people.”

Yet Obama’s plan to tame health insurers would boost their business, protect them …

Question for the President | Cato @ Liberty

The rationale for your proposed tax on high-cost health insurance plans is that it would encourage people to purchase less-comprehensive coverage and thereby reduce health care spending.

If that’s a good idea, then why is it bad when insurers raise premiums?

Obviously, it’s because …

Sending a Message with the Census – Mark Krikorian – The Corner on National Review Online

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year's form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business (despite the New York Times' assurances to the contrary on …

Off-duty O.C. sheriff’s deputy is arrested on DUI charge after crashing twice within 30 minutes | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times.

An off-duty Orange County sheriff’s deputy, who allegedly was intoxicated when he crashed his Mercedes-Benz into another vehicle and injured a passenger, had crashed 30 minutes earlier and was allowed to drive …

Power Line – Geert Wilders speaks

Geert Wilders, possibly the next Prime Minister of the Netherlands, finally gets his chance to speak to the British House of Lords about the threat posed to Western Civilization by radical Islam. (Great Britain refused to allow him into the country last year, claiming that he was too bigoted to …

I believe this post finishes our site’s libertarian conversion. We now occupy the same portion of the libertarian spectrum that LewRockwell.com occupies.

I don’t like America’s wars of aggression. The problem, as I see it, is that it can be hard to tell the difference between a war of aggression and a good preemptive defense. For …

While I don’t like it when anyone gets hurt, on the other hand I find it difficult to work up sympathy for a bunch of people who are dead now because they promised an organization that in return for a minimum of $350 a week (as an enlisted) or $664 per week (as an officer), …

It turns out that my two-car lifestyle with no pets is just as ”sustainable” as the no-car plus pets lifestyle. Cool.

From The Dominion Post of New Zealand:

The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, ...