School children learn that there are three branches of government: the legislative, executive, and judicial. In actual practice, however, there are four branches of government. The fourth is what for decades now has been called a “headless fourth branch of government,” the administrative state. As early as 1937, in a ” Report of the President’s …

Thanks to the proliferation of body cameras and security cameras attached to homes and businesses, police are far more frequently being caught lying. For example, this month, NYPD cop Michael Bergmann lied about nearly being struck by a suspect’s car. Bergmann was convicted of perjury when a surveillance camera showed otherwise. Earlier this year, Florida …

Even The New York Times now admits there is a deep state — and that it serves its own agenda while ignoring the elected civilian government. Original Article: It’s Trump vs. the Deep State vs. the Rest of Us.

One of the best side effects of the Trump presidency has been the hostility of the so-called “deep state” or “intelligence community” directed at the president. This, in turn, has led many Americans to realize that America’s powerful, un-elected secret police agencies serve an agenda all their own. Consequently, polls show one’s views of the …

Were an American from the mid-nineteenth century to time-travel to modern America, he’d be truly amazed to find that Americans are often expected to thank soldiers “for your service” and to act as if the military was doing the taxpayer a favor. The lionizing of government employees in uniform has become standard fare in the …

This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Decades later, the wall remains a symbol of the violence employed by socialist states, and a reminder that the egalitarian workers’ paradise of East Germany was so hated by its residents that the state had to build a wall to keep residents …

It has become nearly commonplace for pundits and politicians to claim that Americans are working more than ever before; that they’re working more jobs, and working longer hours — all for a lower income. During the Democratic debates this summer, for instance, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio claimed  “the economic system now force[s] us to …

Friday marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like most historical events that are commemorated as if they took place on a single day, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, was just one of many interrelated events that led to the end of the system of Soviet …

Federal spending and federal taxation in the United States set new records in 2019. And the federal budget deficit swelled to more than a trillion dollars. Europe is in the middle of an enormous spending binge. But apparently hard-core laissez-faire libertarian purists have taken over the world’s governments.
At least, that’s the case in the minds of many leftists and conservatives who have convinced themselves that “market fundamentalists” have conquered the world’s institutions, and have enacted a global regime of near-zero taxation, free trade, and almost totally unregulated markets.
We hear this over an over again when everyone from The Pope to Bernie Sanders claims “neoliberalism” — a term used to “denote… a radical,

I’m not of the opinion that the American economy is doing amazingly well. However, I’m also not of the opinion that it is falling apart, or that the American middle class is disappearing before our eyes. Nor is there is no one, single, magic statistic we can point to and say “see, we’re all worse …

Federal spending and federal taxation in the United States set new records in 2019. And the federal budget deficit swelled to more than a trillion dollars. Europe is in the middle of an enormous spending binge. But apparently hard-core laissez-faire libertarian purists have taken over the world’s governments. At least, that’s the case in the …

The US Census Bureau released new poverty data this month, and California once again has the nation’s highest poverty rate, according to the “Supplemental Poverty Measure.” According to the SPM, California’s poverty rate in 2018 was 18.1 percent, followed by Louisiana with 16.5 percent, and Florida, with 16.2 percent. The states with the lowest poverty …

The money supply growth rate rose in September, rising to an eight-month high.  To last time the growth rate was higher was during Frbruary of th is year, when the growth rate was 3.19 percent. During September 2019, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 3.10 percent. That’s up from August’s rate of 1.85 …

The latest evidence of the brutality of the patriarchy, we are told, is the fact that sanitary napkins are subject to sales tax. Thus, some protests have sprung up around the country decrying the fact tampons and pads are made less affordable by taxation. Some the SJW-world’s natural enemies were quick to point to the …

The Americas are unusual because citizenship is often granted based on birthplace, rather than on the citizenship or place of origin of one’s parents. Countries in North and South America have historically tended to more freely grant citizenship due to their relatively low populations, abundant land, and a historical dependence on migrant labor to take …

The horseshoe theory may rest on a false left-right spectrum, but attacks on economic freedom animate both the Bernie Sanders socialist left and the Trumpite protectionist right. As I noted last week, some conservatives of late have become especially enthusiastic about attacking the freedom of Americans to buy and sell freely without government interference. In …

I haven’t run an empirical study on the number of articles published, but it sure seems like conservatives are writing more articles than usual condemning economic freedom, and the people who advocate for it. This would make some sense in the Age of Trump when the the president has pushed the right’s policy agenda more …

Anti-market pundits and politicians have long claimed that unregulated markets are damaging to communities, and therefore must be regulated, restrained, and made to fit our policy preferences. “Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster,” conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson declared last January. The implication being that markets can be …

As 2018 came to an end, politicians and media pundits insisted that ” gun violence ” was growing and hitting crisis levels . While a homicide rate of anything greater than zero is an measure of very-real human misery, it nonetheless turns out that fewer people were murdered in 2018 than in the year before. …

It appears many Indians and Brazilians and Chinese are willing to risk the global warming for a chance at experiencing even a small piece of what wealthy first-world climate activists have been enjoying all their lives.Original Article: Greta Thunberg To Poor Countries: Drop Dead.

On Monday, celebrity climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a speech to the UN Climate Action summit in New York. Thunberg demanded drastic cuts in carbon emissions of more than 50 percent over the next ten years. It is unclear to whom exactly she was directing her comments, although she also filed a legal complaint with …

The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled “illegal” a parliamentary tactic used by PM Boris Johnson to ensure Brexit would be carried out on October 31, more than six months after Brexit was supposed to take effect. While the court wasn’t ruling on Brexit, per se, the context of the situation makes it clear the ruling …

When a parent leaves the work force to focus on parenting, this shows up in government stats as lower employment and less consumer spending — suggesting a less productive economy. But that’s not what’s going on at all. Original Article: Why the Government Can’t Measure Income, Happiness, or Well-Being.

The money supply growth rate fell in August, dropping to a 150-month low.  To find a lower growth rate, we need to go back to August 2007, when the rate was 1.59 percent. During August, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 1.87 percent. That down from July’s rate of 2.19 percent, and was …

One of the central problems of aggregate measures of national income and well-being is the fact so much of it relies on incomes, wealth, production, and consumption measured in terms of dollars. This means only activities that can be tracked, counted, and ranked based on dollar values and production totals will be among those activities …

The resurgent claim that the modern economy was built on slavery is yet another attempt to attack capitalism while also claiming “we are all to blame” for slavery. The slave owners of old tried a very similar tactic. Original Article: Why They Keep Trying to Blame Capitalists for Slavery.

Virtually all laws involve “legislating morality.” When people use this phrase they often really just mean “I want laws to back my version of morality, not yours.” Original Article: “Libertarian” Is Just Another Word for (Classical) Liberal.

The term “liberalism” is a victim of what historian Ralph Raico has called “conceptual mayhem.” From its original use to describe the ideology of private property and freedom for individuals, the term eventually came to describe ideologies of an entirely different sort. By the mid-twentieth century, “liberal” was being used to describe a wide variety …

Ask ten libertarians for a definition of libertarianism, and one is likely to receive about ten different answers. Indeed, libertarians have something of a reputation for internecine battles over who the “real” libertarians are. Most of the world, however, couldn’t possibly care less about these battles over how to correctly slice and dice the different …

Since the end of the Cold War in 1990, US defense spending has increased 182 percent in nominal terms, and 44 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. In inflation-adjusted terms, defense spending is now about equal with the all-time peak reached in 2011, and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget estimates that defense spending will …