Should Americans have a right to garden in their own yards? If you looked at this question, shook your head, and answered, “Of course! Why would we not?” then it would seem there is still some common sense left in the world. Unfortunately, that common sense doesn’t always extend to the powers that be, and … Continue reading In This City, Anything Not Expressly Allowed Is Prohibited
Category: Liberty
It’s clear that many big government policies are creating winners and losers in America. The story has been the same for decades. Government makes friends with a company or an industry, blocks out the competition with regulation, and in some cases gives the company subsidies. Such cronyism is bad for innovators and for consumers. But … Continue reading 8 Big-Government Policies That Hurt the Poor
If you were to believe the mainstream media, you may think President Trump just proposed slashing federal spending and decreasing the size of government. Bless your heart. Here are the actual numbers: Trump's proposed budget plan: FY2018 outlays: $4.094 trillion FY2027 outlays: $5.708 trillion That's a 39.4 percent increase in federal spending over the next … Continue reading ‘Trump cuts spending’ is Fake News. He’s increasing it worse than Obama.
Eighty years ago, on May 27, 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court said no to economic fascism in America. The trend toward bigger and ever-more intrusive government, unfortunately, was not stopped, but the case nonetheless was a significant event that at that time prevented the institutionalizing of a Mussolini-type corporativist system in America. In a unanimous … Continue reading When the Supreme Court Stopped FDR’s Economic Fascism
F.A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom in 1944 as a response to the Russian communists and the German and Italian fascists of the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s, as well as to those in other parts of the West that might be tempted by the allure of a society based on total security or … Continue reading The Road to Serfdom: 15 Quotes
Will the war on freedom just peter out? No. Let’s look at four reasons why not. People are fed up with political correctness. No guff. Bill Maher is. Clint Eastwood is. We are told that Canadians are fed up too. But so? Two Canadian literary magazine editors were forced to resign from their national publications this month because they do not … Continue reading The Left’s war on free speech is just beginning
Mats Jarlstrom’s trouble all began with a red-light camera. In April 2013, Jarlstrom’s wife, Laurie, received a ticket after driving her Volkswagen through an intersection in Beaverton, Oregon, that was equipped with a traffic camera. His wife paid the fine, but the timing of the traffic lights at the intersection piqued Jarlstrom’s interest, so he … Continue reading Engineer Fined for Criticizing Government without a License
What word best describes the actions of government? Would it be greed? How about thuggery? Or cronyism? Writing for Reason, Eric Boehm has a story showing that “all of the above” may be the right answer. But I Am an Engineer At first it seems like a story about government greed. When Mats Järlström’s wife … Continue reading Exposing the Occupational Licensing Scam
As Venezuela descends into a nightmare of starvation and violence, the long-standing debate over the feasibility of socialism takes on new relevance. Years of explicitly socialist policies from the Chavez and Maduro regimes have taken their toll, as nationalization and a variety of other attempts to abolish or subvert market processes have destroyed what was … Continue reading Venezuela’s nightmare is where all redistributionist economies lead
When writing about money laundering laws, I’ll sometimes highlight gross abuses by government and I’ll periodically make the usual libertarian arguments about privacy. But I mostly focus on how the laws simply don’t make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. Anti-money laundering laws and regulations impose large burdens on the private sector, which creates disproportionate hardship for … Continue reading Marijuana prohibition gives criminals free reign
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