Category: Featured

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Featured · Health Care · Legal Affairs

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Appeals Court Slightly Wounds Obamacare

It’s too soon for champagne, but perhaps a beer is in order. In a 2-1 decision in the case of Halbig v. Burwell, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service cannot interpret the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, as allowing subsidies for those Americans who purchase health insurance from the federal health insurance exchange known as Healthcare.gov. This is because the text of the law specifies that subsidies or tax credits are available for insurance purchased on state-created exchanges.

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Featured · Government · Regulation · Taxes

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Is Tax Inversion Really Unpatriotic?

The subject of tax inversion, in which American firms avail of lower tax rates in foreign countries by merging companies in those countries, has become very topical in the last couple weeks thanks to a decision by Abbvie, a drug company, to merger with Shire, an Ireland-based firm and move its headquarters overseas. One of at least 47 tax inversions in the last decade, the Abbvie-Shire deal is the largest such action yet, worth $54 billion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, President Obama and Democrats in Congress have become apoplectic with rage at the audacity of a business making a prudent decision to escape bloodsucking taxes.

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Featured · Government · Legal Affairs

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All Presidents Should be One-Termers

The American presidency has grown in power almost continuously since the outbreak of World War II. The executive has risen from being simply the chief magistrate of the government to be being a quasi-legislative force, a leader who pushes an aggressive legislative agenda as well as enforcing the laws passed by the legislature. The president is frequently referred to as “the most powerful person in the world,” or “the leader of the free world.” Such appellations represent far more than good PR. They are statements of fact that the president of the United States has drastically more power and authority than any other individual on Earth. For that reason certainly, presidents should be restricted to a single term of office.

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Featured · Legal Affairs · Politics

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Guilty Until Proven Innocent: A Frightening Proposal from Down Under

The Labour Party, the main opposition political party in New Zealand, made headlines last week when it announced its proposed policy for trying people accused of rape. According to the party’s justice spokesman, Andrew Little, the party is proposing that the burden of proof be reversed in rape trials. In other words, people accused of rape must prove their innocence.

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Prohibition

Featured · Government · Liberty

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Why Do Gerson and Wehner Think The Drug War Helps People?

I have difficulty with viewing these arguments from Wehner and Gerson (and David Frum) as anything but naive posturing. For Gerson, the aim seems to be that the drug war is something that is helping people, and backing off from it is bad for society; for Wehner, he seems to conclude that the path back to electoral success is doubling down on the drug war to appeal to single women and moms.

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PaulPerry

Featured · Politics

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2016 Republicans Must Have Answers On The NSA And Iraq

At the Examiner, Gene Healy writes about why the Rand Paul/Rick Perry initial sparring is good for the foreign policy debate on the right. Whether it’s good or bad in the long run, I do believe it illustrates a number of challenges Republican candidates in 2016 will have to deal with, and the difficulty of assessing where the Republican base is headed at a time when few leaders have run in tandem with its shifting views on national security and foreign policy.

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Featured · Government · Liberty

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Iceland: The Unlikely Cradle of Representative Government

When asked to imagine the birthplace of our contemporary republican democracy, most educated people point to the democratic traditions of ancient Athens and to the institutions and offices of the Roman Republic. Yet, Athens was destroyed and its democracy destroyed centuries before the birth of Christ, and the Roman Republic succumbed to imperial despotism in 27BC. These shining examples continued to burn as embers of remembrance long after their practical extinction, thanks to a political and intellectual class dedicated to the preservation of ancient documents and knowledge. But while preserving the records, the successor states of both Athens and Rome were neither democratic nor republican in character.

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Environment/Energy · Featured · Government

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Heartland’s Science Director Breaks Ground to Rein in US EPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Monday, June 1, a power-plant proposal that seeks a 30% carbon dioxide emissions cut by 2030 from existing power plant, based on emission levels from 2005. With this proposal, the main piece of President Obama’s Climate Change Agenda has been set in motion. Although the rule is scheduled to be completed one year from now and will give flexibility to the states, it will regulate carbon emissions from hundreds of fossil-fuel power plants across the U.S. The 600 U.S. coal plants will be hardest hit by the standard.

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Featured · Government · Internet/Telecom · Legal Affairs

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Down the Memory Hole

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described the “memory hole,” a chute leading to a vast incinerator into which all unwanted documents were cast. The memory hole served as the ultimate form of state censorship, destroying any trace of information deemed to pose a threat to the regime. Thanks to a ruling in May by the European Court of Justice, a genuine digital memory hole has come online.

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NY Times photo of Dr. John Christy. Salon would like to see him a bit less comfortable.

Environment/Energy · Featured · Media · Science

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New York Times Commits Rare Act of Objective Climate Journalism, Salon Pounces in Outrage

Attention, MSM climate reporters: Not only do you not understand the climate, you don’t understand how or why you do not understand the climate. That’s just one reason why you need to respect scientists such as climate “skeptic” John Christy, who at least has the humility to understand that. Confused? Then read on.

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Featured · Government · Liberty · Politics

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The Case for Six Californias

It began as the idea of one eccentric entrepreneur, but now has 1.3 million signatories backing it: the case for breaking California up into six separate states is gathering steam. When the Six Californias campaign began, most serious commentators thought it was crackpot scheme, a pipe-dream of a few people that had no hope of gaining traction. They have been proved wrong. To an extent anyway.

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separation-of-powers

Featured · Government · Legal Affairs

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Supreme Court to Obama Administration: Congress Writes Laws, You Don’t!

Now that the dust has settled on the Supreme Court’s 2014 session, we can look at the decisions and conclude that the Administration received a serious smack down. Two big cases got most of the news coverage: Hobby Lobby and the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) recess appointments. In both cases, the Administration lost. At the core of both, is the issue of the Administration’s overreach.

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Environment/Energy · Featured

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Blowing Our Dollars in the Wind

Wind energy produces costly, intermittent, unpredictable electricity. But Government subsidies and mandates have encouraged a massive gamble on wind investments in Australia – over $7 billion has already been spent and another $30 billion is proposed. This expenditure is justified by the claim that by using wind energy there will be less carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere which will help to prevent dangerous global warming.

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apple:sumsung

Featured · Internet/Telecom · Legal Affairs

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The New Rent Seeking?

According to data released this week, Samsung and Apple make up the majority of the top 20 global smartphone models sold in the first quarter of 2014. While that success demonstrates the robust market prowess of these smartphone manufacturers, the real winners are the customers, getting more services, better products and lower prices. Almost the exact opposite happens when companies resort to lawsuits to gain market advantage, a sort of rent seeking via the courts.

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