If you are a legal resident alien, you will be required to obtain the same government-mandated health coverage that US citizens must obtain. However, if you have been here for less than five years, and if your income falls below 133 percent of the federal poverty level, you will not be allowed to enroll...
Read More »

Immigration reform has seemingly become an important part of the agenda. It is good that attitudes of tolerating the presence of illegal immigrants rather than wanting them deported have overtaken the majority. A higher percentage of Americans also favor more immigration rather than less, which is also a happy development. Yet I fear that the...
Read More »

Most voters prioritize the economy and far behind that comes foreign policy, where both major presidential candidates offer more of the same. One can make arguments that on these important issues, one side is worse than the other. But another important set of issues, those of civil liberties, has gotten much less attention than...
Read More »

As a young woman, I took over a business that was bankrupt: its liabilities exceeded its assets by a considerable amount, and the wolf was well and truly at the door. Lots of people thought I was foolish not to “erase” its debts through filing bankruptcy and be given a “clean slate” by the...
Read More »

Journalist Alexander Cockburn has died after a painful battle with cancer at the age of 71. Cockburn wrote for The Nation and co-edited Counterpunch, my favorite radical leftist website. Whenever I talked about there being hope on the left, I was mainly thinking about people like Cockburn. Cockburn embodied the admirable concerns of leftism—good conditions...
Read More »

I had a weird dream the other day. Immigration, which is in a downward spiral in the U.S., continues to fall dramatically. At a certain point the debate shifts to the desperate need to attract foreigners. Eventually, headlines such as “a million immigrant visas to be granted on a first come, first serve basis...
Read More »

Jesse Walker has an intriguing blog post about data concerning illegal immigration. The most fascinating part to me discusses an analysis concluding that illegal alien crackdowns and border fencing has actually increased the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. By making it more risky for undocumented migrants to come in, the border walls have...
Read More »

A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old Dallas girl was deported by U.S. immigration officials to Colombia. She spoke no Spanish and they did appear not to have even checked her fingerprints to ensure she was who they thought she was. It’s true, she gave a false name to local police, but there is simply no excuse...
Read More »

Pundits of late have been lamenting the decline of technological innovation. Has the rate of innovation in fact slowed down? And if so, how can we best revive it and speed up the rate of economic progress? Independent Institute Research Director Alex Tabarrok offers his penetrating insights on this hot topic in his new...
Read More »

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...
Read More »