All Posts Tagged With: "Barack Obama"
Presidential Hubris
If we were going to spend $700 billion, it seems it would be wiser having that $700 billion going to folks who would spend that money right away. In October Barack Obama said this in defense of his opposition to extending the 2001 and 2003 tax-rate reductions for people making more than $200,000 a year. [...]
22Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedThere’s Too Little Trust in Government?
There is one point on which I can unequivocally agree with E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s, column “Can We Reverse the Tide on Government Distrust?”: “So far, the Obama administration has missed the opportunity to demonstrate . . . how it is changing the way government works. How is its approach to . . . regulations [...]
22Oct2010 | Charles Johnson | 2 comments | ContinuedWashington’s Lies
During his campaign President Obama and his congressional supporters estimated that overhauling the nation’s health care system would cost $50–$65 billion a year. On June 15 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that Obama’s overhaul would cost at least $1 trillion. It’s clear that Obama’s cost estimates are untrue, and over ten years, it’s likely [...]
22Sep2010 | Walter E. Williams | 6 comments | ContinuedThe VAT: Not Just Another Tax
Recently there has been a great deal of speculation about how the U.S. government will deal with its massive budget deficits and increasing levels of debt. For readers of The Freeman the answer is rather simple: Since most of what the federal government does goes beyond its “legitimate” role, cut spending. Drastically. Discussions about balancing [...]
25Aug2010 | Roy Cordato | 3 comments | ContinuedUnions Lose Respect
I have often argued that American labor unions enjoy much more respect than they deserve. In February the Pew Research Center released the results of its latest nationwide survey of public opinion regarding labor unions. It seems that, at last, labor unions are suffering significant losses of respect. Table 1 shows the percentage of Americans [...]
29Jun2010 | Charles W. Baird | 8 comments | ContinuedSubsidizing More College Students Won’t Help the Economy
Governments in the United States subsidize college education heavily. State universities charge students very low tuition rates, and the federal government has a host of grant and loan programs designed to make college affordable to most families. (As politicians make those programs more generous, schools have spent more and raised tuitions, thus creating an upward [...]
29Jun2010 | George C. Leef | 7 comments | ContinuedObamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
In his previous book, The Big Ripoff (reviewed in the June 2007 Freeman), author Timothy Carney launched an attack on two of America’s preeminent political myths—that the Democrats are “the party of the little guy” and the Republicans are “the party of free enterprise.” Both notions are useful to candidates in the endless quest for [...]
20May2010 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedProducing Jobs: Thoughts on Obama’s Plan for Small Businesses
The ears of small business America must have perked up when President Obama spoke about that critically important sector in his State of the Union address. Mine certainly did. Here’s when it really got interesting: “I’m . . . proposing a new small business tax credit—one that will go to over one million small businesses [...]
20May2010 | Bruce Yandle | 2 comments | ContinuedComparing the Great Depression to the Great Recession
President Obama has often remarked that the Great Recession (2008–10) is the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It’s interesting to study the many parallels between the Great Recession and the Great Depression. Causation. The main causes of both crises lie in actions of the federal government. In the case of the Great Depression, [...]
20May2010 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 59 comments | ContinuedThe Washington-Wall Street Kabuki Dance
When I watch the public furor over the ruling party’s attempt to “toughen” regulations on the financial industry, I get the same feeling I often have in a theater: Good show but it’s not real.
23Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 5 comments | ContinuedIs Obama a Socialist?
President Obama is not a socialist, at least not in the usual ways that term is used. However, that hardly means his ideas are not of concern.
22Apr2010 | Steven Horwitz | 56 comments | ContinuedMr. Obama and the Bankers: “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly”
Speaking to a very receptive Elyria, Ohio, crowd a few months ago, President Obama took off the gloves and promised that he was ready to fight to provide more jobs, improved education, and security from the threat of bankruptcy for homeowners. Turning his attention to the Wall Street bankers, who had just announced another round [...]
20Apr2010 | Bruce Yandle | 1 comment | ContinuedNothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America
History buffs who focus on the world between the wars will find plenty to ponder in Adam Cohen’s Nothing to Fear. Openly critical books–from The Roosevelt Myth by John T. Flynn (1948) to FDR’s Folly by Jim Powell (2003)–have laid bare the politics and economics of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, showing us how not to [...]
20Apr2010 | Roger W. Garrison | 3 comments | ContinuedObama and the Public
Barack Obama says the people have a growing sense that “something is broken” in Washington. He attributes this to hyper-partisanship and a consequent lack of civility, and thinks public disillusionment can be reversed through better manners, bipartisanship, compromise, and cooperation. But to what end? Presumably greater government management of medical care, finance, education, and energy. [...]
20Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedForgotten Lines
In the January 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle, one of the clues was “Sassy reply to criticism.” The answer: “It’s a free country.” Why do I find this so striking? For two reasons. First, when I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, not many people around me considered that a sassy reply. [...]
20Apr2010 | David R. Henderson | 4 comments | ContinuedCorruption in Government? Shocking!
It’s funny how the people who push hardest for government intervention in more and more areas are the first to gripe that everything has become politicized. What were they expecting? Did they forget that government is a political institution? Paul Krugman and Chris Matthews, among other Progressives, are apoplectic because two senators of the minority [...]
20Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | ContinuedLiberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 led to a gusher of books in 2009 by writers opposed to the new President’s philosophy and agenda. If you judge by sales figures, one of the most successful of those books was Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin, president of Landmark Legal Foundation and a nationally syndicated [...]
20Apr2010 | George C. Leef | 3 comments | Continued-
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