Back to School, Back to the Front Lines | Neal McCluskey | Cato Institute: Commentary

Back to School, Back to the Front Lines | Neal McCluskey | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'To be ground-zero in sociopolitical warfare, of course, isn't why any school district is here. Nonetheless, it is inevitably what happens when you force diverse people to support a single system of government schools.

Thankfully, there is a way out: Give parents control of education funds and let them choose options commensurate with their values offered by liberated educators. Instead of making people go to war, let them go in peace.'

Why Grover Norquist Is Wrong about Taxes | Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why Grover Norquist Is Wrong about Taxes | Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'To complain about federal handouts — as ATR tends to do — while supporting tax breaks for the ethanol production — a position initially taken by ATR this spring — is to make a fetish of form over function.'

' First, holding the line on taxes constrains only one of the four tools (taxes, tax deductions, spending without taxation, and regulation) used by government to alter economic outcomes. As long as you expand government in some other way, you live up to your pledge to Grover. Second, the charge that eliminating a tax break is the same as raising a tax (and thus, verboten) turns the alteration of economic outcomes via the tax code into an actual conservative virtue. Third, it encourages less transparent exercises of government power and, thus, makes it harder to police government action. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, it allows politicians to falsely advertise themselves as partisans of limited government even when they are busily expanding government.'