Challenging the Rule of Law | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Challenging the Rule of Law | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Do you think the General Electric Co., which owns NBC, should have freedom of speech, but not FedEx, which does not own a media company?"

"Other corporations will now have the same rights that media corporations enjoy. One overlooked aspect of the ruling is that in the Internet age, almost any company can create a low-cost electronic newspaper, making it easy to get around the restriction if the Supreme Court had left the old rule intact."

"An IRS official said, 'We expect the Swiss government to continue to honor the terms of the agreement' — despite the agreement having been deemed unlawful."

"IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, in a Jan. 26 speech, said some 'taxpayers would be required to annually disclose uncertain tax positions in the form of a concise description of those positions and the maximum amount of U.S. income tax exposure if the taxpayer's position is not sustained.' The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution clearly states: 'No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.' Perhaps Mr. Shulman and his colleagues have never read the Constitution.

The 16th Amendment to the Constitution states: 'The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes,' yet the IRS routinely assesses taxpayers for taxes on 'imaginary' income, such as the portion of capital gains that are solely a result of inflation. For instance, if you paid $1,000 for 100 shares of stock in a company in 1983, and sold the stock for $2,000 in 2006, the IRS would claim you had 'income' of $1,000 and tax you on that. In fact, the consumer price index more than doubled in that period and you would not have been able to buy as much with the $2,000 in 2006 as you could have bought with the $1,000 in 1983. By any economic or dictionary definition of 'income,' you had none — yet the IRS lays what is, in effect, an unlegislated wealth tax on the inflation, which was caused by the government (i.e., the Federal Reserve)."

Foreign Aggression - Morris and Linda Tannehill - Mises Institute

Foreign Aggression - Morris and Linda Tannehill - Mises Institute: "In a laissez-faire society, defense against foreign aggression would be offered for sale on the free market, just as would any other type of defense. Because of the close natural connection between insurance companies and defense agencies, it would probably be most feasible to sell defense against foreign aggression in the form of insurance policies. That is, insurance companies would sell policies agreeing to protect their insureds against foreign aggression and to indemnify them for losses resulting from such aggression (the contract to be void, of course, if the insured provoked the conflict by his own aggressive actions). The insurance companies would see to it that whatever defenses were necessary to prevent the losses were provided, and they would make sure that a very efficient job of defense was done, since any losses would cost them large sums of money."

"A major portion of the cost of defense against foreign aggression in a laissez-faire society would be borne originally by business and industry, as owners of industrial plants obviously have a much greater investment to defend than do owners of little houses in suburbia. If there were any real threat of aggression by a foreign power, businessmen would all be strongly motivated to buy insurance against that aggression, for the same reason that they buy fire insurance, even though they could save money in the short run by not doing so.

An interesting result of this fact is that the cost of defense would ultimately tend to be spread among the whole population, since defense costs, along with overhead and other such costs, would have to be included in the prices paid for goods by consumers. So, the concern that "free riders" might get along without paying for their own defense by parasitically depending on the defenses paid for by their neighbors is groundless."

Obama's Targeted Killings in Yemen | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obama's Targeted Killings in Yemen | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary: "'So the president claims the power to order U.S. citizens killed anywhere in the world, while engaged even in the most benign activities carried out far away from any actual battlefield, based solely on his say-so and with no judicial oversight or other checks.'

In addition to the corollary death of innocent civilians, these strikes do kill terrorists, don't they? But Greenwald reminds us, it is 'the U.S. Government (that) has accused them of being a terrorist.'

On what evidence? Remember Donald Rumsfeld assuring us 'the worst of the worst' were being held at Guantanamo Bay? But, as Greenwald notes, federal judges reviewing habeas petitions of prisoners there have found, in some cases, 'an almost complete lack of evidence to justify the accusations against them.'"

It's the Language of Action, Not a Trick - Predrag Rajsic - Mises Institute

It's the Language of Action, Not a Trick - Predrag Rajsic - Mises Institute: "In our everyday life, money is generally seen as the good that is being given up in return for consumption goods and services. Actually, what is being given up is the alternative use of that money.

When deciding on a purchase, a person assesses the value of an item and compares it with the values of other things that could be obtained using the money needed to make that purchase."

"Offering two pairs of shoes for $150 would create an artificial unit for mental analysis. For most people, the appropriate unit of shoes is one pair. People rarely have a single immediate end that would be satisfied by purchasing two pairs of shoes. Thus, when offered two pairs up front, people first need to disaggregate the offered two-pair unit into one-pair units and align them with different ends on their value scales, together with different combinations of money prices that add up to $150."

South of the Border, the Cult of the Presidency | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary

South of the Border, the Cult of the Presidency | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary: "If you think we've got it bad, pity the Venezuelans, whose strongman president, Hugo Chavez, rules the airwaves with his own talk show. 'Hello, President!' airs Sundays, sometimes for up to eight hours, and it features Chavez singing, insulting his enemies, giving shout-outs to Fidel Castro, and even, on one occasion, describing a gut-wrenching bout of diarrhea he'd had while filming the show."

Spending Our Way to Stagnation | Daniel J. Mitchell | Cato Institute: Commentary

Spending Our Way to Stagnation | Daniel J. Mitchell | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Any money that the government puts in the economy's right pocket must be borrowed, which means the money comes out of the economy's left pocket. Keynesianism doesn't boost national income, it merely redistributes it."

"Most studies using current economic data show that economic performance is maximized when the public sector is less than 20% of GDP. And if historical data is used, the evidence suggests that government should be even smaller."

Ironically, John Maynard Keynes might not be a Keynesian if he was alive today. He certainly would not be a proponent of big government. In correspondence with another British economist, he agreed with the premise of '25% [of GDP] as the maximum tolerable proportion of taxation.'"

Surveillance Can't Make Us Secure | Julian Sanchez | Cato Institute: Commentary

Surveillance Can't Make Us Secure | Julian Sanchez | Cato Institute: Commentary: "a portal set up to help the American government catch criminals may have proved just as handy at helping the Chinese government find dissidents.

In a way, the hackers' strategy makes perfect sense. Communications networks are generally designed to restrict outside access to their users' private information. But the goal of government surveillance is to create a breach-by-design, a deliberate backdoor into otherwise carefully secured systems."

"In the summer of 2004, unknown intruders managed to activate wiretapping software embedded in the systems of Greece's largest cellular carrier. For ten months, the hackers eavesdropped on the cellphone calls of more than 100 prominent citizens — including the prime minister, opposition members of parliament, and high cabinet officials."

"DCSNet is designed to allow authorized law enforcement agents to initiate a wiretap or gather information with point-and-click simplicity. Yet a 2003 internal audit, released several years later under a freedom-of-information request, found a slew of problems in the system's setup that appalled security experts."

"surrendering privacy does not automatically make us more secure — that systems of surveillance can themselves be a major source of insecurity."

FOXNews.com - Postal Service Seeks Permission to End Saturday Delivery

FOXNews.com - Postal Service Seeks Permission to End Saturday Delivery: "Though the idea of cutting service from six to five days has gotten a cool reception on Capitol Hill, Potter said that the plan would include enough flexibility so that customers who need Saturday service can get it and that this and other changes need to be implemented for the Postal Service to survive."

I think this is a good idea. Saturday service is needed and we can't afford to continue the subsidies.

"Though he said privatization had been on the table during a lengthy internal review, that option appeared to be ruled out. One consultant, Thomas Dohrmann from McKinsey & Company, said privatization was 'unlikely' in part because it would be hard to find a buyer."

A single buyer isn't necessary. Sell stock in the company and let many people own a portion of it. The change in control could also be gradual with staggered board member terms.

"Potter said mail volume went from 213 billion pieces in 2006 to a projected 166 billion pieces in fiscal 2010."

How useful is it to look at pieces of mail? Even though the number of pieces have gone down, the number of package pieces has probably gone up.

Book Review: War, Revenue, and State Building | Justin Logan | Cato Institute: Commentary

Book Review: War, Revenue, and State Building | Justin Logan | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The early Republic had a high tolerance for danger. The British had set fire to the White House during the War of 1812 and remained in North America openly refusing to comply with the terms of the Treaty of Ghent. (One might compare the gravity of this threat to that posed by Afghanistan's own 'handful of ragamuffins' today.) Even so, the U.S. Army was slashed in size from roughly 47,000 men during the war to less than 10,000 after it. This tiny force accounted for more than three-fourths of federal spending at the time."

Obama's Budget and the $1 Trillion Mistake | Chris Edwards | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obama's Budget and the $1 Trillion Mistake | Chris Edwards | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The lesson from all this is that an administration's promised spending beyond the first year is meaningless. Obama is proposing a freeze on a very small part of the budget, for example, but his budget plan next year will likely find reasons to break that promise."