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Obamacare Stifles Job Creation, Causes Layoffs
At Bloomberg News, Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc., explains how the 2010 healthcare law is preventing jobs from being created and resulting…
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Washington Post: “Obama’s Green Technology Program was Infused with Politics at Every Level”
The Obama administration’s green-energy programs were driven by politics, not the public interest or sound policies. As The Washington Post recently noted in discussing…
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Businessmen: Obamacare Stops Them from Hiring
Journalist John Stossel describes how "three successful businessmen came on" his TV show last week "to explain how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays…
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Obama Administration Betrays America’s Friends Overseas
America is now “turning its back” on Iraqis who helped the U.S., contradicting Obama’s rhetoric on the campaign trail. Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical Anti-American…
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Federal Officials Gave Valuable Insider-Information to Obama Supporters like North Carolina’s Democratic Governor
If you’ve lost money in the stock market over the last few years, it may be because politically-favored people are trading in the stock market…
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Useless Law School “Educations” Shielded Against Improvement and Competition by Special-Interest-Driven Regulations
The New York Times featured an excellent news story Sunday by David Segal on the costly white elephant that is legal education in America.
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Were Into Subprime Lending, and Lied About It
"One of the regular claims from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac apologists . . . is that the two entities were blameless" for causing…
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Crushing Student Loan Debt to Pay for Useless “Educations” that Provide Only Paper Credentials, Not Knowledge
Student loan debt is rising at an exponential rate, as an illustration at the Daily Dish shows (at this link). A college tuition…
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Taxpayer-Subsidized Housing Booms and Busts: You’re Paying to Prop Up My Home Value, While Yours Collapses
In Washington, D.C., the region where I live, massive federal spending on government workers and contractors props up home values. My small, 60-year-old two-bedroom home,…
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Medicaid Payments Go to Dead People, As Do Food Stamps and Stimulus Package Money
The State of Maryland spends millions of Medicaid dollars on dead people, “about half of it from the federal government,” notes The Washington Examiner.
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After 959 Days, Still No Federal Budget Passed by Senate
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Food Stamp Fraud Costs America Billions
Food stamp fraud is costing the taxpayers billions, notes the Heritage Foundation. Fraud levels were 39 percent in the District, 25 percent in Maryland,…
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Will “International” Norms Override Civil Liberties and Protections Against Violent Crime?
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges to life sentences without parole for teenage murderers, in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson…
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Federal Spending on Student Financial Aid Drives Up College Tuition, Shrinks Economy
At Bloomberg News, Virginia Postrel writes about how federal subsidies intended to make college more affordable have instead encouraged rapidly rising tuitions, in a column…
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Reforming Medical Malpractice Law: Interesting Discussion about Damage Limits in Malpractice Cases
Point of Law has an interesting debate over whether medical-malpractice noneconomic damage caps hurt consumers, between Ted Frank and Shirley Svorny. As…
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Legalizing Kidney Sales Would Save Thousands of Lives, Save Taxpayers a Bundle
Kidney sales should be legal, explains kidney donor Alexander Berger in The New York Times. Berger is a research analyst for GiveWell, a nonprofit that…
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Obama Administration Ignores Illegal Racial Discrimination In Voting Against Whites, Koreans, and Filipinos in Guam
Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Rice v. Cayetano (2000), racial exclusion from voting is unconstitutional, even when the victim is white, and the…
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Hidden Regulations Stifle Job Creation; EEOC Kills Jobs By Promoting Lawsuits
When reporters write stories about the cost of regulations, they only focus on regulations found in formal codes of regulations. But most regulations aren't formal…
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Class-Action Abuses Challenged in the Courts; CEI Files Amicus Brief Challenging Abuses
Thanks to the Center for Class Action Fairness, courts are finally enforcing safeguards against the diversion and misuse of class-action lawsuit settlements, which all…
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Amtrak Bans 12-Year-Old Unaccompanied Child Riders
In Japan, 6-year-old children are not only allowed to ride the train by themselves, but are eligible for a special fare. Not so in America,…
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Stimulus Will Hurt Economy in the Long Run, Congressional Budget Office Confirms
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Law Schools: Incubators of Evil and Waste?
The New York Times had a disturbing article Sunday about how most law schools are utterly failing to teach their students the basics of how to…
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Obama Peddles Myths About the Great Depression: No, Hoover Didn’t Cut Taxes or Spending
Herbert Hoover increased marginal tax rates on the wealthy to 63 percent, and more than doubled government spending as a percentage of the economy. But…
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More Scholarships for Murderers to Attend Law School: It’s the “Progressive” Thing to Do
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Maryland’s Governor Spends $553,000 on Pianos at Left-Wing Junk College
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High-Speed Fail: Even Left-Leaning Washington Post Criticizes Obama Administration Rail Boondoggles in California and Elsewhere
Even the left-leaning Washington Post, which has not endorsed a Republican for President since 1952, is getting fed up with the Obama administration's desire to…
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Obama Administration Promotes Panic Over “Bullying” To Incite Attacks on Students’ Rights and Well-Being
Obama administration officials call bullying an “epidemic” and a “pandemic.” But in reality, bullying and violence have steadily gone down in the nation’s schools,…
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Cronyism: Obama Administration Showers Your Tax Dollars on Shifty Wall Street Operator and Liberal Donor
In a corrupt deal, the Obama administration is paying a shifty Wall Street operator's firm an extravagantly inflated price for an unneeded vaccine, at a…
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Supreme Court Grants Review in Case Challenging Obamacare as Unconstitutional
The Supreme Court today granted certiorari in the Obamacare cases brought by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business. The court allotted 5…
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Smokers’ Opportunity to Quit Smoking Opposed by Blinkered Anti-Tobacco Zealots
As The New York Times' John Tierney notes, a tool to quit smoking and save lives is being blocked by anti-tobacco zealots: If you…
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Obama Administration Contributes to Life-Threatening Drug Shortages Even as it Decries Them
In a recent column, Michelle Malkin explained how Obamacare price controls, FDA and DEA rules, and Obama administration policies have contributed to shortages of…
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The Limits of Higher-Education Spending as a Stimulus; Obama’s Student-Loan Flim-Flam
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Can Fraud Be Immunized by Giving the Defrauder Certain Governmental Powers Over the Victims?
Can a private organization that has been delegated some government regulatory powers claim absolute government immunity against lawsuits when it engages in fraud against those…
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Bailout for Underwater Mortgage Borrowers Is Illegal and Economically Illogical
Economist Mark Calabria says Obama’s new $7.4 billion plan to let underwater mortgage borrowers refinance at investors’ expense is illegal and won’t help the…
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Senate Bill Would Further Undermine Due Process on Campus
Historically, most colleges used a "clear and convincing" evidence standard in student and faculty discipline cases, to safeguard due process. As Nicholas Trott Long noted in…
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Public Interest Groups Challenge Misleading Government Information Used to Justify Ethanol Mandates and Subsidies
Recently, ActionAid USA and CEI filed a correction request under the Data Quality Act targeting misleading claims made by the EPA regarding the effects…
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Liberal Indifference to the Jobless in the Private Sector
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claims that joblessness is not a problem in the private sector, where huge numbers of people have lost their jobs,…
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The Imaginary Age of Austerity
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Cut the Capital Gains Tax and Government Spending to Create Jobs and Promote Technological Advances
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Amity Schlaes notes that cuts in the capital gains tax were one of the key factors that paved the…
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Corporations Pay Lots of Taxes, and it’s Only Natural that They Should Have Legal Rights
Despite the recent demonization of corporations, corporations pay lots of taxes, including most of the nation's property taxes, notes Josh Barro. They often pay…
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Jerrold Nadler’s Fiscal Fantasies: Herbert Hoover Increased Spending, He Did Not “Slash the Budget” During the Great Depression
Attacking the idea of a Balanced Budget Amendment, "Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution," issued…
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Capital Gains Taxes are Too High, and are a Tax on Savings that Punishes Thrifty People for Inflation
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University of Wisconsin Administrators Violate the First Amendment to Silence Dissent and Criticism
Wisconsin college administrators attacked the First Amendment this week, both by censoring a professor's poster and criticism of fascism, and by inciting a flash mob…
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Poverty Skyrockets in the World’s Poorest Country Due to Racial Violence After Revolution in Neighboring Libya
Niger is the poorest country in Africa and the world: Many of its people go hungry every day, many children die before their fifth…
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Judge Censors Speech About Affirmative Action and Fraud in Racial Set-Asides
Political "commentator Andrew Bolt 'was found guilty Wednesday of breaking Australian discrimination law by implying that fair-skinned Aborigines chose to identify as indigenous for…
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Justice Department Promotes Bad English in the Schools
Arizona can't require teachers to speak proper English anymore. The federal government claims that monitoring whether teachers mispronounce words racially discriminates against Latinos, despite two…
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Obama Administration Attacks Religious Freedom and Separation of Church and State
The Obama administration is attacking religious freedom in court, even as Obama depicts his policies as ordained by God. At a Congressional Black Caucus…
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Obamacare Will Increase Health Insurance Premiums by 55 to 85 Percent in Ohio, Study Says
The Charleston Daily Mail’s Don Surber points to a recent study “that shows that 790,000 Ohioans will lose their private health insurance and premiums…
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Dodd-Frank Financial Law Uses Regulations to Outsource American Jobs
American jobs will soon be outsourced due to the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" law passed in 2010 with strong support from the Obama administration. That law…
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Government Fines Businessman for Creating Jobs
A CEO recently told Congress about how he was fined for hiring too many people: “I incurred more than $500,000 in legal bills to…
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Obama: More Class Warfare, More Corporate Welfare, More Unemployment and Political Division
President Obama has implied that his critics don't understand math, which is odd given his inability to balance a budget (he's run up the…
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More False Claims from Obama About Taxes and Spending
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The Mythical Benefits of Plastic Bag Bans Debunked
Some municipalities have now imposed taxes or restrictions on plastic shopping bags, even though banning or taxing plastic bags has little effect on litter, and…
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How to Make Legal Advice and Legal Services More Affordable Without Taxpayer Subsidies
At Truth on the Market, I discuss how to make legal advice and legal services more affordable at this link. I also discuss…
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Obama’s Proposed New Tax Will Multiply Red Tape and Enrich Tax Lawyers and Accountants More than the Treasury
I have argued that "significant tax increases" may be necessary as part of a deficit reduction deal, given the enormity of the deficit and…
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Obama’s “American Jobs Act” Is A Wasteful “Blue-State Bailout,” Researchers Say
In the The Wall Street Journal, two researchers call Obama’s proposed “jobs” bill, the $450 billion “American Jobs Act,” a “blue-state bailout in…
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Obama Justice Department’s Double Standard on Hate Crimes
The Obama administration has a double standard on hate crimes. When the victim is black or Hispanic, they prosecute the alleged offender. When the…
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Obama Wants More Spending on Failed Federal “Job Training” Programs that Teach Welfare Recipients and Young People Bad Habits
In The Wall Street Journal, James Bovard, a former CEI Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow, takes aim at some of the billions in waste contained…
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The Lazy Non-Poor People Below the “Poverty” Line Who Get Welfare, and the Hard-Working Poor Above it Who Get Taxed
There are plenty of people below the poverty line who aren't really poor, and some people above the poverty line who are indeed quite…
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Obama’s Job Creation Proposal Will Be Ineffective, Experts Say
Despite its massive price tag of $450 billion, President Obama's recently-proposed American Jobs Act seems like a useless dud to experts who've analyzed it, and the…
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AP: Obama’s “Jobs” Plan Will Increase Deficit, Is Not “Paid For”
Associated Press fact checkers took issue with President Obama's claims about his new $450 billion federal "jobs" plan: President Barack Obama’s promise Thursday that everything…
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Obama’s Costly, Unaffordable, Harmful New Stimulus: The “American Jobs Act”
President Obama wants Congress to pass a $447 billion proposal called the "American Jobs Act," a costly set of recycled stimulus plans that contains no new ideas…
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The Inconsistencies of Food Nannyism: Are Potatoes Worse Than Soda?
The federal government has rejected a proposal from New York’s Mayor to exclude sugar-sweetened drinks from the food stamp program. But the government…
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TSA Agent: Be Quiet About Alleged Sexual Assault, or Pay $500,000
Give some people a badge, and the power goes to their head. A TSA agent has threatened to sue a female traveler who complained…
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Obama Infrastructure Stimulus: Union Payoff Filled with Rail Boondoggles and Pork
Obama's proposed infrastructure stimulus is a payoff to Big Labor, as economist Ronald Utt explains. It "represents tens of billions of dollars in high,…
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Obama’s Ironic, Belated, and Unaffordable Infrastructure “Stimulus”
In a Labor Day speech to an AFL-CIO rally in Detroit, President Obama said that "roads and bridges nationwide need rebuilding and more than…
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Massive Justice Department Attack on Banks?
A monumentally-destructive Justice Department attack on banks may soon occur. Earlier, I wrote about how the Obama Justice Department is now forcing banks to…
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More Failed Stimulus Spending: Green Jobs Boondoggles Promoted by Obama Fail, Go Bankrupt, But Obama Wants More
As the stock market sinks today in the face of news that no jobs were created in America last month (even as the number…
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More Failed Stimulus Proposals from Obama Administration: Increase Wasteful Education Spending
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Obama Administration Violated Federal Laws in Operation Fast and Furious, which Led to Killings of Americans and Mexicans
The scandal over Operation Fast and Furious, in which the Obama administration funneled thousands of guns to violent Mexican drug lords in an abortive, mismanaged…
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Obama Administration: Time to Pay Your Neighbor’s Mortgage
The Washington Times yesterday had an editorial, "Paying Your Neighbor's Mortgage," about the costly new bailout advocated by political appointees in the Obama administration,…
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Obama Justice Department Forces Banks to Make Risky Loans, Planting the Seeds of a Future Financial Crisis
The Wall Street Journal today writes about how the Obama administration is repeating the "mistakes of the past by intimidating banks into lending to…
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Many New Job-Killing Regulations from the Obama Administration
Andrew Stiles describes "Ten Job-Destroying Regulations" from the Obama administration that will wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs. Another job-killing regulation is the…
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More Barriers to Job Creation from Obama Administration: Employers Must Hire Alcoholics as Truck Drivers Despite Liability Risk
The president is full of hollow rhetoric about creating jobs, even though his stimulus package destroyed jobs in our export sector and…
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No, the Government Didn’t Cut Spending During the Great Depression, and More Government Spending Won’t Fix the Economy
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Time to Stop Increasing Education Spending?
Even The New York Times is now questioning the massive spending increases on education that have occurred over the last generation in a discussion…
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Politicization of Justice Department Worsens
If you are a moderate or conservative, don't expect to get a job with the Justice Department during the Obama administration. All 15 of the…
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More Bailouts, Urge Left-Leaning Journalists
Left-leaning journalists are urging more mortgage bailouts to try to increase consumer spending, since they erroneously think that inadequate consumer spending is the principal cause…
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Deregulate the Practice of Law to Promote Justice and Create Jobs
It's time to deregulate the practice of law, write Clifford Winston and Robert W. Crandall of the Brookings Institution in The Wall Street…
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Schools Use “Bullying” as a Pretext to Violate Students’ Rights to Free Association and Freedom of Speech
In a small but growing number of schools, you have to invite all the kids in your child's class to her birthday party, even if…
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Higher Education Bubble Leads to Sex-for-Tuition and Kidneys-for-Cash Proposal; Moody’s Questions Value of Liberal Arts Majors
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Record 45.8 Million People Are Now on Food Stamps; Fraud Surges
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Weird Healthcare Regulation of the Day: No Coverage for Men With Breast Cancer
"Disease does not discriminate, but apparently Medicaid coverage does. A 26-year-old South Carolina tile-layer has found himself with breast cancer and out of luck for…
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Obamacare Costs Additional $50 Billion a Year More Than Predicted, Based on Yet Another False Assumption in Calculating its Costs
“Federal payments required by President Barack Obama’s health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts…
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The “Obama Law” Devastates Impoverished People in the World’s Second Poorest Country, The Congo
People are going hungry, pulling their children out of school due to poverty, and joining criminal gangs to make ends meet in the poorest region…
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Obama’s Uninspiring, Empty Response to the Downgrade of America’s Credit Rating
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down a massive 634 points after Obama gave an uninspiring address in response to the downgrading…
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How Many Billions to Bail Out Borrowers Who Fraudulently Took Out Liar Loans?
The government is looking into the possibility of bailing out underwater mortgage borrowers, including speculators and McMansion owners. It’s also seeking to…
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Hoover Didn’t Cut Spending, and Spending Cuts Didn’t Trigger the 1937 Roosevelt Recession
The false left-wing meme of the day is that the modest spending cuts in Sunday's debt limit deal are bad, because spending cuts caused the…
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Time for Cuts at the Pentagon, “The World’s Largest Socialist Economy”?
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Egregious Abuses by Expert Witnesses and Family Courts
The Seattle Times recently featured a special report about a psychological "expert witness" who destroyed countless lives in the court cases in which…
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Congressman Mike Doyle: $3.5 Trillion in Spending is Too Little for the Government to “Spend Any Money”
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Gender Quotas Spread in Europe, Mandated for Corporate Boards
After Norway adopted gender quotas for corporate boards -- requiring companies to have boards of directors comprised of at least 40 percent women -- large…
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Don’t Block the Debt Limit Deal Over Possible Pentagon Spending Cuts
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The Limits of Government-Funded Psychology: 9/11 Counseling Backfires
After school shootings, psychologists fan out and provide “grief counseling” to student bodies, but it’s far from clear that this does any good. Critics say…
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Stop Messing with My Daughter’s Happy Meal!
There are apples and other fruit sitting around my house, and my four-year-old daughter can eat an apple anytime. By contrast, she seldom gets to…
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Trial Lawyer Sues Father of Three Children Killed in Crash; Why the Right to Criticize Lawyers is Vital
When you criticize lawyers or the legal system, thin-skinned lawyers get indignant. The head of the State Bar of California, Harvey Saferstein, called for…
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Thousands of Jobs and Billions in Wealth Wiped Out by Dodd-Frank Conflict Minerals Provision
Thanks to the "conflict minerals" provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, thousands of the world's poorest people will lose their jobs. Why? Simply because they…
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Government Promoted the Risky Non-Traditional Mortgages that Triggered the Financial Crisis
Ed Pinto, who was an executive at Fannie Mae long before it went into the toilet and nearly took the financial system down with it,…
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Obama Administration Crafting Yet Another Bailout: Speculators and McMansion Owners May Benefit
As if America didn't already have enough bailouts, the Obama administration is planning yet another -- one that could enrich "McMansion homeowners and property…
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Steve Wynn: Obama is the “Greatest Wet Blanket to Business and Progress and Job Creation in My Lifetime”
Even Democratic businessmen are getting disenchanted with the Obama administration and its knee-jerk hostility to anything that creates jobs or wealth. Las Vegas mogul…