I don’t get it. Here is an article saying that President Obama is “riding the populist wave” of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, giving him ” his best chance to reconnect with the American people.” These Occupy Wall Street people claim to represent the 99% against the elite 1% who are getting rich by taking...
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In a recent podcast interview (please see below) of the economist Clifford F. Thies at Econ Journal Watch (EJW), he discusses the ideas and impact of Richard T. Ely (1854–1943), the highly influential “Progressive.” Ely was co-founder, first Secretary, and subsequent President of the American Economic Association (AEA), that continues to take great pride...
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The New York Times reports in “A Gold Rush of Subsidies in Clean Energy Search” that NRG Energy is receiving nearly $1.6 billion in government subsidies for its new compound in California of almost one million solar panels. The Times further notes that: Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and...
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In the aftermath of the Solyndra cronyism debacle, the Los Angeles Times now reports that a no-bid contract was awarded last May to a firm controlled by a billionaire Obama supporter for the highly unlikely national security threat of a small pox attack: Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a...
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The title of this post comes from the fantastical Andrew Fox, who laments another case of corporate welfare promoted in the name of energy conservation: the Fisker Karma, a new electric luxury automobile touted by its manufacturer as ”a bold expression of uncompromised responsible luxury.” Mr. Fox caught wind of the farce as he came...
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As did many, former Mayor Willie Brown wrote a tribute of Steve Jobs in his San Francisco Chronicle column this week. Except, in inimitable Willie Brown fashion, his was rather more a tribute to himself—an accolade to Brown’s magnanimous use of his discretionary power to make a San Francisco Apple store possible. It seems...
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In the “everything old is new again” category, USA Today reports: Sixty-six former aides to lawmakers serving on a congressional panel charged with finding ways to slash the federal deficit have represented powerful defense and health care industries that face colossal cuts in government spending, a new analysis shows. Meanwhile, as the article also...
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In May 2010, President Obama visited California’s solar-panels manufacturer Solyndra, touting it as an “engine of economic growth” and a model of his stimulus spending schemes. Dedicated to government-financed “green energy jobs,” this administration saw the company as encapsulating everything right about the state’s collusion with the environmental-industrial complex. Just last month the business...
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If both sides in Washington agree on something, it is almost surely a bad deal for taxpayers and a disaster for freedom. A common theme in the media is on Obama’s jobs proposal and the GOP reaction. While the president is being assertive, pushing hard for a huge spending spree aimed at expanding employment,...
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In a recently released report, the Commission on Wartime Contracting concludes that waste and fraud have consumed at least $31 billion and perhaps as much as $60 billion of the $190 billion or so that the U.S. government has expended in grants and contracts with private individuals and companies for work in Iraq and Afghanistan since fiscal 2002. According to...
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