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I was on the road a good deal last week, driving from my home in southeast Louisiana first through a long stretch of Mississippi to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, then to the outskirts of Birmingham and on to Auburn, Alabama, and finally from there back to my home by way of Montgomery and Mobile. Along the way, I was...
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It’s all over the news. “The recession is over.” The mainstream economists say so. This was the longest recession since World War II, I heard on the news (say, I thought the economy was just dandy throughout that war—oh, never mind). The end of this terrible recession into which the free market plunged us...
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Welfare states are unstable, and tend either to give way to free market reforms and liberalization, to collapse under their own weight, or to fall down the slippery slope of interventionism and degenerate into authoritarian regimes. For as long as I can recall, and certainly for decades before I was born, the American left...
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The Independent Institute’s Senior Fellow William Shughart on Human Events, bringing the real costs of the federal bailouts to YOU. Check out MyGovCost‘s Government Cost Calculator for more!

Back in February 2008, I satirized George W. Bush’s $150 billion stimulus checks in “The Power of Numbers: Simplify! Simplify! I broke down the costs of Big Government for a family of four and showed how pitifully small $150 billion was in comparison to the $5 trillion then spent by local, state and federal governments....
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Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs debates James Galbraith (Professor of Economics, University of Texas; son of infamous, “liberal”, Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraith) on Antiwar Radio regarding the folly of government bailouts for insolvent banks, creation of the Glass-Steagall Act as a means to prevent FDIC insured banks from taking excessive risks, benefits...
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When I saw that an anarchist website was urging its members to “crash” the tea party movement, my first thought was that they might perform a worthy service. The anarchists would be in an excellent position, for example, to expose the statist orientation of many tea partiers on war and immigration. Unfortunately, the main...
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In a new interview with Ashley Martella on Newsmax TV, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano discusses the current court challenges to Obamacare. He details why the health care reform just adopted by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama is unconstitutional and the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down major portions of it....
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Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) was asked “Specifically where in the Constitution does Congress get its authority to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance?” He couldn’t cite a specific section, but noted that Congress has required individuals to do lots of things in the past. As a practical matter, Senator Reed is right. Originally, the...
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