June 11, 2016

Social Security and Medicare going broke even faster than projected

fromSchiffGold: For the first time since 1982, Social Security will have to dip into its $3 trillion trust fund in order to cover benefits this year. The program’s expenses will exceed its revenue three years earlier than projected.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Berkeley scholar admits "climate change has run its course"

fromZeroHedge: Treating climate change as a planet-scale problem that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Trade clash: EU to hit US with $3.3 billion in tariffs next month

fromCNNMoney: Americans are about to start paying for Trump's economic misconceptions.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Jerry Brown wants to tax drinking water

fromTheDailyCaller: The California governor will not be happy until every penny you earn is transferred to the politicians who run the state.
The Government is Not Us      Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Cops swarm and beat a black man unconscious in Arizona for no apparent reason

fromTheDailyMail: Robert Johnson was beaten unconscious by members of the Mesa Police Department because he "wouldn't sit down", though the law prohibiting standing was not provided.
The Government is Not Us      Police State America

Venezuela’s oil meltdown defies belief

fromWolfStreet: The problems for Venezuela continue to mount, and the news that it is considering force majeure points to a more catastrophic decline in production and exports.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

April 3, 2016

The spending bill brings us closer to national bankruptcy

fromReason: Thanks to Congress and President Trump, budget deficits will only mushroom. 
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Cops kill unarmed dad over window tint, then use his dead finger to unlock phone

fromTheFreeThoughtProject: Family claims that after killing a man over illegal window tint, cops went to funeral home and demanded access to his dead body so that they could unlock his phone with his fingerprint.  
Police State America

Consent of the governed & informed juries

fromAmmoland: It used to be a common understanding that jurors had the prerogative, even the duty, to vote to acquit the accused if the juror believed that the person was being tried for violating an unfair or improper law.
Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

Enough is enough: police violence plagues America

fromCounterPunch: The systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and our liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting. 
Police State America

Judge says coffee must come with a cancer warning in California

fromWallStreetJournal: In reality, it is politicians that should come with a cancer warning. They are a proven malignancy to our economic health.
Regulation Nation

Will Stephon Clark’s killing by police finally force open California misconduct investigations?

fromReason: Lawmakers have tried to counter the powerful law enforcement lobby and failed. 
Police State America

VIDEO: Stossel - Trump: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Michelle Malkin: Obamacare’s Tax-Time Torment

The bumbling Obamacare bureaucracy.   Thousands of taxpayers must do without a form needed to claim a tax credit for their overpriced health-insurance premiums. Where is my 1095-A? This is what it must be like dealing with a government agency in a third world country.” That was the lament on Twitter of just one poor citizen this week trying   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Real Chris Christie

The Causes Of The Greek Economic Crisis – And The Cure

by Jaana Woiceshyn.  New headlines and news stories about Greece’s looming economic collapse appear daily. This weekend, the National Post has a series of articles on the theme “Greece on the brink.” Some point the finger at the country’s political leadership: “The negotiation game: Greece’s debt crisis a case study in the art of brinksmanship.”  ... MORE

American Families Are Being Economically Destroyed

by Michael Snyder.     The systematic destruction of the American way of life is happening all around us, and yet most people have no idea what is happening.  Once upon a time in America, if you were responsible and hard working you could get a good paying job that could support a middle class lifestyle for an entire family even if you only had a high    ... MORE

Look Out, Taxpayers: Student Loans Aren’t Being Repaid

More government folly comes home to roost.     The more than $1 trillion in student loan debt is a looming problem for taxpayers because the borrowers aren't paying it back in great numbers or amounts. "Widespread failure to repay is a problem for the lender, in this case, federal taxpayers," economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of   ... MORE

Ira Stoll: Government-Backed Green Energy Goes Bust

What the Xunlight bankruptcy reveals about cronyism.  The recent Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidation filing of the Toledo, Ohio-based solar-panel manufacturer Xunlight Corp. has attracted barely any national attention. Maybe it’s gotten to the point—after Solyndra, Evergreen, Abound, and Satcon—that the failure of another    ... MORE

VIDEO: America's 3 Most Fee-Ridden Cities

Obama's Green-Energy Scams Leave Taxpayers In The Red

by Justin Sykes.       How we gave China a stimulus. It’s been more than five years since President Obama signed his misguided economic-stimulus package into law, creating green-energy subsidies and expanding others, but American taxpayers are still feeling its disastrous effects. This month a deal was reached between competing creditors of      ... MORE

Matt Welch: Obama's Mourning In America

Presiding over diminished expectations.     One of the best ways to survive the grotesque and empty power pageantry of Washington's annual State of the Union extravaganza is by visiting the University of California, Santa Barbara's online archive of past addresses and looking up the speeches that corresponded to where the current POTUS     ... MORE

Steve Chapman: For Ships Of State, A Looming Iceberg

The crushing burden of government employee pensions.     If you're in the hospital with multiple fractures, a staph infection and a collapsed lung, you may not take great comfort when your doctor informs you that his last patient has it worse, being dead. Sometimes encouraging comparisons are not that encouraging. So Chicagoans didn't        ... MORE

VIDEO: Nick Gillespie - Austerity And Reality

Veronique de Ruby: Slouching Toward Bankruptcy

Its dangerous to put off Social Security reform.    In November 2004, President George W. Bush was re-elected after campaigning on personal accounts for Social Security. It was unfair, he argued at the time, to make a generation of young people pay into a system that's going broke. Bush's plan promised to make the program solvent,     ... MORE

VIDEO: Will The Govt Shutdown Harm The Economy?

VIDEO: John Stossel - What's Up With Detroit?

Steven Greenhut: Detroit’s Long Road To The Bottom

The Motor City’s path to economic ruin.    Californians frustrated by the state’s long-term fiscal situation sometimes throw up their hands and declare that things must get worse before they get better. Let the tax-and-spenders have at it, they say, and then voters eventually will wake up and change their ways. Unfortunately, “eventually” can   ... MORE

Daniel Hannan: Statism Is Turning America Into Detroit

Ayn Rand's Starnesville comes to life.    Look at this description of Detroit from today’s Observer: What isn’t dumped is stolen. Factories and homes have largely been stripped of anything of value, so thieves now target cars’ catalytic converters. Illiteracy runs at around 47%; half the adults in some areas are unemployed. In many          ... MORE

John Stossel: Stalled Motor City

The laws of economics must be racist.       MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry — the same TV commentator who said Americans need to stop raising kids as if they belong to individual families — had an extraordinary explanation for why the city of Detroit sought to declare bankruptcy last week: not enough government. "This is what it looks like when   ... MORE