When the state is arbitrary and capricious. Colorado prosecutors are getting frustrated at jurors for daring to
exercise rationality instead of blindly following the will of the State.
A growing number of juries are acquitting people of driving under the influence of cannabis, even when tests show they are over the state’s legal blood-THC limit. ... MORE
Separating drivers from their money. When it comes to embracing transparency, no government enterprise fails more miserably than traffic enforcement. Police departments and municipalities resist disclosing the number of tickets they issue for fear of branding their communities as speed traps. And local courts routinely reduce speeding charges ... MORE
Socialism nearly killed them. This week school children across the country will be hearing the tale of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. You probably heard a similar story when you were in a kid that went something like this: The Pilgrims sailed over to America from Plymouth, England on the Mayflower. During their first winter in the new ... MORE
By Pete Kasperowicz. Spending frenzy after debt ceiling suspension. The national debt has surged more than half a trillion dollars in the last three weeks, as the suspension of the debt ceiling in late October has allowed the government to borrow as much as it wants. Before the debt ceiling was suspended, the national debt stood at $18.15 ... MORE
from Pew Research. We should be worried about the 19%. A year ahead of the presidential election,
the American public is deeply cynical about government, politics and
the nation’s elected leaders in a way that has become quite familiar. Currently, just 19% say they can trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest ... MORE
Incentives matter. One of the things that makes it tough to figure out how much has to be charged for insurance is that people behave differently when they are insured from the way they behave when they are not insured. In other words, if one person out of 10,000 has his car set on fire, and it costs an average of $10,000 to restore the car to its ... MORE
by A. Barton Hinkle. More incandescent hypocrisy from the ruling class. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) did New York a huge favor earlier this month when he declared fantasy sports leagues a form of illegal gambling and ordered two of their principal organizers, DraftKings and FanDuel, to stop taking bets from state residents. ... MORE
Sugar-coating empty words. It is amazing how many different ways the same thing can be said,
creating totally different impressions. For example, when President
Barack Obama says that defeating ISIS is going to take a long time, how
is that different from saying that he is going to do very little, very
slowly? It is saying the same thing in ... MORE
Politicians use cops to legally hold up citizens. Civil asset forfeiture is a growing problem throughout the nation,
driven by a profit incentive that encourages property seizures by law
enforcement authorities even under dubious circumstances. That is the inescapable conclusion of the second iteration of Policing for Profit: ... MORE
by Michael Lotfi. Gov't overspent by nearly $530 billion anyway. According to a monthly treasury statement, through the first eleven months of fiscal year 2015 (Oct. 1, 2014 – end of August), the United States federal government has collected a record-breaking haul in tax revenue. In total, the feds have collected over $2.8 trillion so far, which ... MORE
Maybe the politicos should have read the bill. It’s looking like ObamaCare won’t survive even if Congress can’t manage to repeal it. The nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, said last week that it’s losing too much — $425 million — from policies sold on the health exchanges, and may have to pull out by 2017. The company ... MORE
Whiny college students protest hurt feelings. Remember the campus unrest in the 1960s? Whether you agreed with the
students or not, they were protesting about things of great consequence —
like civil rights, or the military draft, or the Vietnam War. They had
chants like “hell no, we won’t go.” Those were the good old days. Now
we are ... MORE