Earlier this week my colleague Ryan Young posted a blog about the FCC’s proposal to increase access to and decrease the cost of broadband technology by charging consumers more for land-based telephone services.

He makes some excellent points about the pointlessness of taxing telephone usage to subsidize broadband services and the fact that it is innovation not intervention that will propagate and push new technologies while decreasing costs to consumers.  As Mr. Young notes, land-based internet is neither cost effective nor as…

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More cash/Fewer Clunkers

Via the Von Mises blog:  According to the consumer pricing index report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the price of used cars rose 3.4% in October thanks to the government’s cash-for-clunkers that spirited away a large portion of the used-car inventory. So, for those of us who chose not to buy a new “greener” car last month, and who want to purchase a dirty old used car, we have a smaller pool from which to select.…

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Here’s an interesting video from ReasonTV (a Reason Magazine offshoot) that mimics the popular UPS whiteboard commercials. In this video Nick Gillespie details the war UPS is waging against FedEx in the regulatory arena. The fight centers on labor laws. Because UPS ships by ground while FedEx ships via air they are governed by two different sets of labor laws. The laws that govern UPS workers makes it easier for them to unionize, raising the labor costs for the company. Instead…

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The FDA is getting into the business of mixing drinks.  Employing a dangerously questionable array of regulatory powers, the agency is trying to determine if the  the combination of caffeine and alcohol is a tempting and harmful brew for underage drinkers. Rather than do any investigative work of their own, they are giving producers of these drinks 30 days to prove that the alcoholic energy drinks are safe.

What makes them think these drinks are not safe? As difficult as this is…

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The Obama administration is patting itself on the back for saving the jobs of thousands of educators by doling out stimulus funds earlier in the year.
But should we all cheer just because Ms. Frizzle didn’t get the boot? Teachers, like all professionals, have no right to employment. In the private market people who are good at their jobs are in demand and courted with money. People who are bad either work for less money or have to find a different…

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If you live in the general Washington, DC metro area you should be prepared for a fun-filled, traffic jamming time the weekend of September 11th. Thousands of citizens from all walks, incomes, and political backgrounds are slated to descend on the city for the so-called 9/12 March on Washington–the latest in the series of national tea party gatherings.

As I noted in my blog recounting my experience speaking at the Independence Day tea party the only way the tea party movement…

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That is if you find the usual crowd of holier than thou, environment-angelical, yuppie-types slightly annoying to navigate through while you purchase your organic produce and cage-free eggs. The aisles might just be a little less crowded since the Wall Street Journal published CEO, John Mackey’s op-ed on health care reform on 8/12.

“While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded…

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Over the past few months the NCAA, along with the four major pro-sports leagues, has been a vocal opponent of Delaware’s attempts to legalize per-game sports gambling in the State. They were among the group of sports leagues that petitioned a federal judge to issue an injunction to stop the state. Like the pro-sports leagues, the NCAA believes that allowing gambling in the state will damage the reputation of college athletics and increase the temptation for players to cheat.

When the federal…

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Delaware is hitting back at the sports leagues lobbing threats in response to the state’s plan to legalize gambling on sports in the state.

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell issued a statement this past week saying sports betting plan will create jobs and help pay for government services.

Lawyers for the four major pro sports leagues and the NCAA are expected to seek an injunction this week to stop Delaware from implementing sports betting, however.

Delaware is one of only four states that…

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“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”

I am quite fond of the symbol of the mailman. Dressed in a crisp blue uniform, they evoke romantic memories of a small town I never lived in, and simpler times that are only simple in superficial retrospection.

But it is time to put the mailman to rest.

With proposals to limit deliveries to 5 days a week and to plans to close…

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“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.” ~Ayn Rand

Most agree that the US health insurance market is in need of reform. However, there is a wide spectrum of beliefs about what the problems in the market are and the best way to confront them.

Those who believe that…

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Over the last few months I have been keeping an eye on the tea party movement. My participation has waned and heightened throughout, from my first impressions to my ultimate conclusions about the utility of tea parties. This weekend I was able to glean a different perspective when they asked me to deliver one of the speeches at the DC Independence Day Tea Party at Upper Senate Park next to the Capitol Building.  This time, I was able to get a…

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It is truly amazing to me that some people who call themselves “liberal,” “progressive,” and “tolerant,” are so irrationally afraid and intolerant of anyone who holds a differing viewpoint to the degree that they feel the need to lash out, discredit and attempt to purge them from the intellectual discussion of ideas. Recently, I was shocked to discover that such people were trying to accomplish this by employing methods I thought hadn’t survived beyond the Nuremberg trials.

I saw this spectacle…

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An article in this morning’s wall street journal commends a coalition of business associations and councils that sent a letter to China’s Premier publicly criticizing the latest attempt to censor information Chinese citizens can access on the internet. The green dam-youth escort mandate would require all computers going into the nation to be equipped with an information blocking software.

It is rare public criticism of China’s policy, but it’s not brave, it will do nothing to change the policy, and reveals the…

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Since the beginning of his presidential campaign, I noticed something about Obama’s style of oration (and I’m not the only one). He has sweet, flowery, and yes, powerful words, but they are devoid of substance. His locution is very much in the vein of the daily newspaper horoscopes, which are so vague that they can apply to just about any reader–depending on how the reader interprets it. Obama care is everyone’s everything.

He has stated, correctly, that people on all…

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Sin taxes are often justified by claiming that the item/behavior taxes costs the taxpayer money. By applying a tax, the government claims it can pay for the public services that the behavior produces a need for as well as increasing the cost of the behavior thereby discouraging continuation. The most obvious example is the cigarette tax. Increased prices supposedly incentivize smokers to quit or at least temper their addiction, while revenues from the tax can pay for health services.

But what…

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I don’t think there is anything that pisses off eco-socialists more than a free market answer to their problem of climate change. They simply don’t know how to respond. Since capitalism is their true antichrist it certainly can’t be the answer to their ostensible reason for whining.

Take for example CEI adjunct scholar Dan Sutter’s proposed plan of action which is both free market and would achieve some of the environmentalists’ stated goals. In his recently released paper, Sutter argues that allowing insurance…

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Maryland does not have enough money in the budget to pay for the publicly funded programs they have built into the system over the last decade. Politicians are unwilling to cut programs and they don’t want to raise taxes lest they incur the ire of voting residents.

What is the solution to this apparent paradox? Well, for many years, Md. politicians have pushed legalizing and taxing slot machines as a way to bridge the gap. One of the newest rhetorical weapons…

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Okay, so the title of this blog post might be a little provocative, but allow me to explain.

The term “green” as used by environmentalists refers to the pristine beauty of nature free from the corrupting influence of humanity, but humanity where ever it exists, by our nature must use our environment for our survival.  When it is broken down, the philosophy of environmentalism is the philosophy of life on earth without humanity at all. Green becomes the color of a…

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You undoubtedly have heard that on April 15th many Americans will participate in Tax Day “Tea Parties,” a reference to the colonial tea parties that occurred in 18th century America. The protests have been widely covered by a broad range of media outlets.

The sentiment behind modern tea parties isn’t clear; it is varied. Some attending the protests want lower taxes, or to show their objection to the ways taxes are being used, some are there to object to the very idea…

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