October 26, 2018

What a bunch of idiots!

fromSovereignMan: FICO decided that they would reinvent the way they calculate the scores– giving a big boost to people with bad credit. People who have a history of not paying their bills will immediately be deemed creditworthy.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

The shocking differences between Google and DuckDuckGo

fromLibertarianNews: Don't be a chump. Don't be tracked and manipulated. Make DuckDuckGo your default web search engine.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Thousands line up for zero-down-payment, subprime mortgages

fromCNBC: Deja Vu. Borrowers can have low credit scores, but have to go through an education session about the program and submit all necessary documents, from income statements to phone bills.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Brothers face $450,000 in fines for cutting trees on their own property without asking gov’t first

fromTheFreeThoughtProject: For removing invasive trees on their own property, two brothers are being fined a half million dollars because they didn't ask the state for permission first.
The Government is Not Us     Regulation Nation

The NEW social media: alternatives to Facebook, YouTube,Twitter, and other Big Tech platforms

fromActivistPost: You probably won’t find your parents, your best friend from kindergarten, and your Aunt Suzie on these platforms – not yet, anyway. But what you WILL be able to do is speak without fear of censorship.
Indoctrination and Censorship

The public sector pension crisis

fromReason: Will your state pay what its politicians promised? Almost certainly not.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

April 16, 2016

Overdose deaths are the product of drug prohibition

fromCreators: The government's dirty little secret: Drug legalization will save lives.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

America's sinking public pension plans are now $1.4 trillion underwater

fromReason: More government malfeasance wherever you turn. Taxpayer contributions to pension plans have doubled in the past decade, but pension debt continues to increase.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Drivers using mobile phones could be fined without even knowing they’ve been caught

fromNews.com: NEW hi-tech cameras that detect drivers using their mobile phones without them even knowing and automatically issues fines could soon change everything.
Regulation Nation

The way we shop online will be threatened in the Supreme Court this week

fromReason: Plus: Ketamine nasal spray gets boost from Johnson & Johnson study and Philly protests over jailing of rapper Meek Mill.
Regulation Nation

Canada's Liberal party considers decriminalization of all illicit drugs

fromTheGuardian: Drug cartels and police unions will join forces to fight this.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

VIDEO: During raid on wrong home cops kill innocent unarmed dad—no charges

fromTheFreeThoughtProject: Cops are allowed to shoot first and ask questions later. They are given special privilege as agents of the state and are not to be confused with public servants.
Police State America

February 28, 2018

Armed and dangerous: If police don’t have to protect the public, what good are they?

fromRutherfordInstitute: In the American police state, police have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. So when police in Florida had to deal with a school shooter, what did they do?
Police State America    The Government is Not Us

How environmentalists keep heating bills high

fromCreators: Making the poor poorer is merely collateral damage for those with a religious devotion to environmentalism.
Regulation Nation    Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

VIDEO: Victor Davis Hanson: Obama's Legacy of Identity Politics

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: A look at how the Obama administration deployed tribal affiliations to divide the American people by creation of a majority grievance culture.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption    Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Walter E Williams: Another Liberal-Created Failure

fromCreators: The dollar cost of the liberal vision of deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people is a relatively small part of the burden placed on society. Many innocent people have been victimized by mentally ill people.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

The pension nightmare for California’s cities is getting scarier

fromSacramentoBee: For politicians who have long been buying votes from the public employees union, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market    The Government is Not Us

Venezuelan inmates eating rats and pigeons to avoid starvation

fromBreitbart: Venezuelan prisoners are eating rats and pigeons as a means of survival as food supplies continue to dissipate in the failed socialist state, according to a report published this weekend.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market 

October 25, 2017

Britain says no the term "pregnant woman" as it excludes transgender people

from FoxNews: For those suffering from gender dysphoria, it is apparently considered unkind to suggest a womb is necessary
in order to be pregnant.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

California's six-figure pension club has 62,000 members

from Reason: And seven retirees in Los Angeles pulled down more than $1 million each in retirement benefits last year. "Public service" has its privileges.
Economic Policy: Statism vs. The Free Market

Lies and manipulation: The sorry state of global climate alarmism

from WattsUpWithThat?: While practitioners of environmental religion fret about one-tenth of one degree, India has real concerns: food and water.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Europe: journalists against free speech

from GatestoneInstitute: Gone is all pretense that journalism is about reporting the facts.
Media Bias on Parade

Sens. Rand Paul and Ron Wyden unveil privacy-protecting surveillance reform bill

from Reason: Two senators fight back against the surveillance society and the police state to protect individual from their government.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Don’t call the cops if you’re autistic, deaf, mentally ill, disabled or old

from Rutherford Institute: Sometimes it’s dangerous enough calling the cops when you’re not contending with a disability. Unfortunately, the risks just skyrocket when a disability is involved.
Police State America

How And Why Gov't Will ‘Borrow’ Your Retirement Savings

by Simon Black.    The stage is set. According to financial research firm ICI, total retirement assets in the Land of the Free now exceed $23 trillion. $7.3 trillion of that is held in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). That’s an appetizing figure, especially for a government that just passed $19 trillion in debt and is in pressing need of new funding sources.  ... MORE

A Sneaky Way To Reduce Social Security Benefits

Ponzi's next move: raise the retirement age. Americans like their Social Security benefits quite a bit: They oppose cuts to them by a margin of two to one. Even Millennials, who won’t be seeing benefits anytime soon, feel protective of Social Security, according to a poll from the Pew Research Center. One way to effectively      ... MORE

Veronique de Rugy: States Must Confront Pension Costs

State-Based Accounting 101: ranking fiscal condition.   One of the most boring classes I took in college was on accounting. Over the years, however, I've come to understand the importance of proper and transparent accounting. As the disastrous examples of Greece, Puerto Rico, Detroit, and Chicago demonstrate, dodging long-term   ... MORE

VIDEO: Understanding Your State's Fiscal Health

Steve Chapman: Government Debt On The Road To Ruin

Promise today, figure out how to pay tomorrow.  Americans are addicted to living beyond their means, at least when it comes to the functions of government. That's why the federal debt tripled over the past decade and under President Barack Obama's budget plan would keep growing indefinitely. Why not? If you don't have to pay for all   ... MORE

Congress Poised To Allow Cuts To Private Pension Payouts

by Evan Halper.     More than 1 million Americans who were promised secure, predictable retirement income probably will see part of their monthly benefit checks evaporate as Congress moves to stabilize some private pension systems veering toward insolvency. The expected congressional action to allow previously promised private-sector   ... MORE

Washington Is Trying To Get Your Retirement Account

by Charles Payne.      Big government's next big reach. Tuesday was another anxious day for the market, ahead of three major events beginning with the Fed decision getting announced today, Scotland’s vote on Thursday, and the debut of Alibaba on Friday. All along, I have felt that the past few sessions have been an orchestrated attempt to    ... 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: Social Security Vs. Private Retirement

Does the Bell Toll for Excessive Public Pay?

by Steven Greenhut. “The art of government is to make two-thirds of the nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third,” mused Voltaire. Even that cynical French Enlightenment writer couldn’t imagine what would transpire one day in California, where a portion of the mere 15.3 percent of the public that works for government  ... MORE

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

Barry Farber: Is Detroit A Foreshadow Of America?

A wake up call or the beginning of the end?      Be glad that symbolism is important. Be glad up to a point. Then quit! Symbolism can ennoble. Symbolism can also kill. Did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1941 to destroy the “symbolism” of this new American world power? I don’t think so. I was the twerpiest of all possible pre-juvenile    ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: When The Government Goes Bankrupt

What happens when the government goes bankrupt?   This question is one that sounds like a hypothetical exercise in a law school classroom from just a few years ago, where it might have been met with some derision. But today, it is a realistic and terrifying inquiry that many who have financial relationships with governments in America   ... MORE

Terence P. Jeffrey: Stockton Was Murdered

It was an inside job. Were a rational person given the assignment to search this planet to find the best place for human beings to live and build wealth, he might well settle on San Joaquin County, Calif. That is where Americans built a city called Stockton — the municipality a federal bankruptcy judge just declared dead. How did Stockton die?   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Guns And Pensions

The great appeal of pension politics.   A nation's choice between spending on military defense and spending on civilian goods has often been posed as "guns versus butter." But understanding the choices of many nations' political leaders might be helped by examining the contrast between their runaway spending on pensions while skimping     ... MORE