Daily Archives: February 20, 2012

When voters head to the polls in May to vote on amending the N.C. Constitution on the issue of defining marriage, they won’t actually see the text of the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. That’s just one of the quirks of the state’s constitutional amendment process. Jeanette Doran of the N.C. Institute for ConstitutionalContinue Reading

A recent poll finds that most small business owners are pessimistic about the economic future and are not looking to hire more workers. Well — those people merely have invested capital and look at the nuts and bolts of decision making every day. Who are they compared to the great policy experts in Washington, DC,Continue Reading

John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

If you read the comment to my earlier post, you see exactly the phenomenon at issue. Despite evidence presented that Hoover was anything but a laissez-faire supporter who  cut federal spending (what Keynesians call “austerity” but which really means that the government consumes less of the economy’s limited resources, leaving more for production driven byContinue Reading

It’s a highly cherished fiction1 by policymakers that they are the ones who create the jobs, not the millions of individual entrepreneurs and small-business owners making unobserved individual hires looking out for their own best interests. Politicians love the ribbon-cutting ceremonies, the press releases, the corporate-welfare incentives, the “jobs” bills, “stimulus” bills, unclassifiable nonsense, andContinue Reading

Cato Institute’s Sallie James notes in this post that Iowa’s rock-solid statist, Senator Tom Harkin, offers the view that it’s a mark of success that the number of people receiving Food Stamps has reached record levels under the Obama administration. Perhaps Harkin would like a country in which the federal government gave everyone the foodContinue Reading

I’m referring to Paul Krugman’s claim that Hoover’s administration was one of governmental “austerity.” The facts, well known to economists who aren’t propagandists for the constantly expanding state, are that Hoover was the original “big government conservative,” as Don Boudreaux’s letter below shows.   Editor, The New York Times 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY Continue Reading