Michael Tanner: A Redistributive State Of The Union

Focus should be on creating wealth, not spreading it around. Shortly after President Obama was elected, NBC News interviewed a young woman from Detroit named Peggy Joseph. She explained that she was excited about Obama’s election because “I won’t have to worry about putting the gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage.”  ... MORE

VIDEO: 3 Supreme Court Decisions to Watch

Energy Firms: Regulations Threaten Future Development

A clarion call to end of the Department of Energy.   Mid-market energy industry executives primarily from the oil and gas sector are optimistic about the potential for U.S. energy security but are worried that regulations could jeopardize the availability of those resources, according to a report released Jan. 25 by small and mid-market business lender CIT Group ... MORE

Monty Pelerin: The Welfare State & Political Self-Interest

It's finally time to sink the Bismark. Otto, that is.   The siren song of Socialism contains the seeds of destruction that now threaten the very foundations of civilization. Socialism as a disease progresses slowly, but it has been underway for more than a hundred years. The malignancy is now metastasizing. Unfortunately, ours are the generations that will ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: A Brass Age?

This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance.   The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between a stock and a bond. Yet there they are, mouthing off about Wall Street on television, cheered on by politicians and the  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Military Spending

John Hayward: Buffett Cleans Up After Keystone XL

The Sage of Obama is one lucky guy.  When President Obama, who is normally a great proponent of “infrastructure” projects, made his bizarre decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline project, I wondered if he might have been induced to create those thousands of American jobs if the oil could be moved by his beloved high-speed rail. As it turns out, oil ... MORE

Richard Branson: Time To End The War On Drugs

Findings from the Global Commission for Drug Policy. Just as prohibition of alcohol failed in the United States in the 1920s, the war on drugs has failed globally. Over the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion has been spent fighting this battle, and all we have to show for it is increased drug use, overflowing jails, billions of pounds and dollars of  .. MORE

VIDEO: State of the Union 2012


CATO Institute scholars respond to President Obama's State of the Union.

Binyamin Appelbaum: Fed Sees Rates Staying Near Zero

Bernanke favors keeping lid on boiling pressure cooker. The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it intended to hold short-term interest rates near zero “at least through late 2014,” extending its most basic and longest-running response to the financial crisis by at least another 18 months. The decision means that the Fed does not expect the ... MORE

John Stossel: The Real State Of The Union

Chicken soup for the realist. Has Barack Obama learned nothing in three years? During his State of the Union address, he promised "a blueprint for an economy." But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges aimed at improving their ... MORE