Money supply growth inched up in May, rising slightly above March’s and April’s growth levels. But overall growth levels remain quite low compared to growth rates experienced from 2009 to 2016. March’s growth rate, for examples, was at a 12-year (145-month) low. In May, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 2.21 percent. That …

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Paul Krugman declared that the Bush administration failed in its response to the flooding of New Orleans because the administration consisted of people, according to Krugman, who didn’t “believe in government.” One cannot say that about progressives who truly believe in government, and believe in unlimited government at that. …

By slapping new regulations on high-interest credit cards, Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez will just prevent high-risk borrowers from getting loans. Original Article: “Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez Declare War on the Poor With Anti-Credit-Card Law”.

Homelessness today is often blamed on both “gentrification” and “neoliberalism.” When these terms are used in the context of urban housing, it is usually implied that too much market freedom makes housing unaffordable to large swaths of the population. Thus, we are told capitalism is the primary culprit we now find in many large cities …

This week, two oil tankers exploded in the Persian Gulf, reportedly as a result of a limpet mine attack. Neither tanker flew a US flag. One was Panama-flagged, and the other was Marshall Islands-flagged. No one was killed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo immediately accused the Iranian regime of being responsible for the attack. Pompeo …

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Last week, the Supreme Court ruled the legal rights of members of the Crow tribe are not void simply because a US state tries to legislate them away. In the case of Herrera v. Wyoming, the US Supreme court overturned the lower courts’ findings that tribal rights (established in an 1868 treaty with the United States …

With the heating up of the abortion debate, the phrase “legislate morality” has come back into more frequent use. This week, the Washington Post printed a letter to the editor with the headline “Anti-abortion legislation is Prohibition all over again.” The author complains: “Prohibition was an attempt by government to legislate morality.” Similarly, state legislator …

Compared to other types of universal healthcare systems, what we call “single-payer” healthcare is possibly the worst of all. Original Article: “Single-Payer Healthcare Is the Worst Kind of Universal Healthcare”.

The Bill of Rights doesn’t mention that freedom of speech is restricted to a special class of establishment journalists. Freedom of speech is a universal property right, regardless of what the establishment-media gatekeepers say. Original Article: “Yes, Julian Assange Is a Journalist — But That Shouldn’t Matter”.

Money supply growth inched up in April, rising slightly above the March growth level, which was at a 12-year (145-month) low. In April, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 1.99 percent. That was up slightly from March’s growth rate of 1.92 percent, but was well down from April 2018’s rate of 4.32 percent. …

In the United States, thanks largely to Bernie Sanders, the term “single-payer health care” has become more or less synonymous with the phrase “universal healthcare.” This stems partially from the fact that “single-payer” is the term most often used to refer to foreign systems of universal healthcare, and also because most Americans know virtually nothing …

With the rise of the Yellow Vest Movement in France — which began last October and continues today — French activists and writers have begun to re-evaluate the state of French income and poverty. Since the movement began, articles with titles such as ” Revealed: The shocking scale of poverty in France in 2018 ” …

As I’ve noted in the past , when it comes to government spending on social welfare programs, the United States is hardly the free-market, libertarian “paradise” many social democrats suppose it to be. When we look at social spending as a percentage of GDP, the US is similar to Switzerland, and the US spends more …

Since I don’t exactly live in the world’s most crime-free neighborhood, I recently had to replace my house’s 30-year old steel doors. They weren’t cheap, but as I spoke with the salesman, he noted I had lucked out because their prices would be going up significantly in the near future due to new steel tariffs. …

Public high schools still aren’t taking school security seriously. Last month, hundreds of thousands of students in the Denver area stayed home from school when a woman in Florida suggested online that she was “obsessed” with the Columbine shootings. The woman, named Sol Pais, disappeared from her home near Miami in mid-April. Soon after, her …

Scanning the headlines, one might notice that there is now a multitude of articles on the measles virus in most major media outlets. Outbreaks in places like New York City have led to what the AP calls “extraordinary police powers” to mandate vaccinations or quarantine those suspected of the disease.
Proponents of mandatory vaccines defend these measures while contended there is too much resistance to measles vaccination based on a variety of philosophical or religious concerns. They want new state laws eliminating the possibility of opting out of any vaccination for any non-medical reasons.
Why So Few Choices in Vaccines?
But why are some people resistant to the measles vaccine? And more importantly, are there any ways that

The United States has a long, violent history of intervention in Latin America, although few Americans know about it. Were one to ask the average American, for example, about the US occupation of the Dominican Republic — which lasted for eight years from 1916 to 1924 — one is likely to only receive a blank …

Scanning the headlines, one might notice that there is now a multitude of articles on the measles virus in most major media outlets. Outbreaks in places like New York City have led to what the AP calls “extraordinary police powers” to mandate vaccinations or quarantine those suspected of the disease. Proponents of mandatory vaccines defend …

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren says she wants to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. That is, she wants free college for anyone willing to attend a public higher education institution. Presumably, an important goal of this policy change — other than getting Elizabeth Warren elected, of course — would be to increase the total number …

Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both come out in favor in “free” public colleges and universities. The scheme could be funded, as CNN describes it, by “drastic increase in federal spending on higher education.” Much of the rhetoric around swirling around this issue relies on the idea that government spending on higher …

The Census Bureau has long known more about my family history than my family does. For instance, it was through old census forms that I discovered my grandmother changed her name from “Paula” to “Pauline” at some time after 1930. This was news even to her children. The 1930 census form also reported her place …

On Monday, Bernie Sanders released ten years of tax returns, and it turns out he’s a millionaire. Thanks especially to revenues from book royalties, Sanders is now, as CNN put it, “in the category of the super-rich.” Or, as some might say, he’s part of “the 1%.” After years of denouncing “millionaires and billionaires” and …

Julian Assange was arrested last week in London, and he awaits legal proceedings designs to extradite him to the United States to be tried on hacking charges. At least, those are the charges currently known. Experience suggests that US authorities are likely to add additional charges once they have Assange in the US. The US …

The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris isn’t the first historically significant church to go up in smoke. The Basilica of Saint Paul’s Outside-the-Walls — after standing for more than 1,400 years — was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1823. It housed the tomb of the Apostle Paul, and was a major basilica, second only to St Peter’s as a pilgrimage site. Thanks to a construction worker, the church was accidently set on fire.
Its destruction was a great disaster at the time, and an international appeal went out for assistance in its reconstruction. The world responded and the church was rebuilt to the original design. Today, it is a beautiful church, and it remains the site of the Apostle’s tomb. It also still contains many works of

When I was a kid in the 1980s, Velcro shoes hit the stores in force. Although Puma first started using the fasteners in 1968, it was not until the 1980s that the shoes became commonplace on the street and at retail outlets. At the time, many of us mocked the idea. “Who is so lazy …

Donald Trump this morning condemned the Federal Reserve’s “unnecessary and destructive actions,” by which he presumably means the Fed’s recent attempts to tighten monetary policy. Since 2016 — after nearly a decade of ultra-accommodative monetary policy, the Fed began to ever-so-slightly scale back its easy-money policies, beginning with gradual increases in the federal funds rate. …

In recent decades, a number of states enacted statewide law preempting local ordinances enacting rent control. Now, some state governments are beginning to move in the opposite direction. State-level policymakers are attempting to repeal these bans in some states with the hope that local governments will then enact rent-control measures of their own. Two recent …

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants more government regulation of social media. In a March 30 op-ed for the Washington Post, Zuckerberg trots out the innocent-sounding pablum we’ve come to expect from him: I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s …

Although it was long assumed that the electoral college favored Democrats — and this assumption continued right up to election night 2016 — Democrats in the United States have now decided the electoral college is a bad thing. Thus, we continue to see legislative efforts to do away with the electoral college, accompanied by claims that it’s …