Partisanship Has so Far Been Tea Party Activists' Big Mistake | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary

Partisanship Has so Far Been Tea Party Activists' Big Mistake | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary: "57 percent of tea party activists view our last president favorably.

What's going on here? Tea party activists claim they're a group with a principled opposition to big government in all its forms. How can anyone take that claim seriously when the membership embraces a president who personifies everything they're supposed to hate?

Aren't these activists opposed to profligate spending? Then why do they look favorably on 43, who led the largest debt expansion in American history and spent more than his six predecessors, doubling the federal budget during his tenure?

Don't the tea party activists hate bailouts? Have they forgotten which president rammed through the $700 billion TARP, bailed out Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and gave $17 billion to Chrysler and General Motors after Congress refused to authorize tax dollars for failing automakers?"

"no right-minded supporter of limited government could possibly 'miss' a Republican president who, in Medicare Part D — the free-pills-for-seniors program — engineered the biggest expansion of entitlements between President Lyndon Johnson's Medicare and Obamacare."

An Economy of Liars | Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr. | Cato Institute: Commentary

An Economy of Liars | Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr. | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Ludwig von Mises, predicted in the 1930s that communism would eventually fail because it did not rely on prices to allocate resources. He predicted that the wrong goods would be produced: too many of some, too few of others. He was proven correct.

In the U.S today, we are moving away from reliance on honest pricing. The federal government controls 90% of housing finance. Policies to encourage home ownership remain on the books, and more have been added. Fed policies of low interest rates result in capital being misallocated across time."

Religious Persecution International | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary

Religious Persecution International | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary: "A new study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life explores religious persecution around the world. According to Pew: '64 nations — about one-third of the countries in the world — have high or very high restrictions on religion. But because some of the most restrictive countries are very populous, nearly 70 percent of the world's 6.8 billion people live in countries with high restrictions on religion, the brunt of which often falls on religious minorities.'

Include moderate restrictions, which most Americans also would consider to be intolerable, and more than half of the world's nations limit religious liberty. Fully 86 percent of the globe's people face significant limits on their right to worship God."

Campaign For Liberty — Profits Cure Disease

Campaign For Liberty — Profits Cure Disease: "If you were told you have cancer, would you want Congress to: a) eliminate taxes on companies developing a cure, or b) eliminate their profits?"
"Choose now, because once you are diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease it will be way too late to change your mind."

"The high profits from selling the first units of the cure to the rich provide the investment capital needed to expand production and lower unit costs, making the cure for cancer available to less-wealthy people. If you tax those profits, there is no money to reinvest and the cure will be only for the rich forever."

Campaign For Liberty — Greek To Me

Campaign For Liberty — Greek To Me: "The annual budget deficit in Greece is 12% of GDP; ours is at 11% and climbing. Their public debt is 125% of GDP; ours is over 90% and climbing. More people work for the government in Greece than make things; same here. As economist John Welch put it, Greece is a few chapters ahead of us in the same book. We should read ahead and see how this particular work of economic fiction ends."