California governor Jerry Brown has approved legislation that hikes the current minimum wage of $8.00 an hour to $10.00 an hour by 2016. Supporters of the legislation say this “moral imperative” will help workers and their families but it’s more likely to harm them. As Thomas Sowell notes, 90 percent of American economists find…
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SNAP is the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, the latest ad copy for food stamps, also euphemized as “Dignity Cards.” In California the program is called CalFresh, which sounds like a family restaurant chain. Whatever the name, SNAP is part of a massive handout program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). In…
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With the national debt soon to reach $17 trillion, it’s not surprising that even the President can’t quite grasp the concepts of the debt ceiling and our national debt (see: “Raising the Debt Ceiling … Does Not Increase Our Debt“)—numbers this size are notoriously difficult for any of us to accurately conceive. That’s why…
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In his statist manifesto Who Stole the American Dream? New York Times vet Hedrick Smith says “government has to be much smarter in picking the companies it funds, and much tougher overseeing their performance.” Smith’s only example of un-smart funding and oversight was Solyndra, president Obama’s favorite solar energy firm, which transformed more than…
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Once upon a time in a far off land, a beautiful flower was discovered. Its bulbs became highly prized and their prices rose steadily. Word of the rising prices for the bulbs spread across the land and virtually everyone, rich and poor, began to buy bulbs for investment. The price of bulbs soared adding to the…
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Rather amazing video of comments made by President Obama before the Business Roundtable. Unfortunately, we can’t embed it, so you’ll have to click through to see it for yourself. What we can share with you, however, are President Obama’s words from the White House’s official transcript of the event: Now, this debt ceiling —…
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As we recently noted, California’s government employee unions do not hesitate to tell anybody who will listen that the state capitol is “our house.” Indeed, they hold mass rallies for that purpose. Journalists, on the other hand, have a hard time getting across the reality that government employee unions really run the place. But…
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There are some really surprising poll results from polling firm Rasmussen Reports, which give a sense of how popular spending cuts would be today. Rasmussen sets the stage for the environment in which they conducted their survey: President Obama yesterday criticized congressional Republicans for insisting on spending cuts in any budget deal that continues…
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As this column has noted, the federal government of the United States is a spending machine, much of it on autopilot. But the economic downturn of recent years has forced spending cuts known as “sequestration.” That has made the federal trough a noisy place, but also informative. Philip Joyce, a professor at the University…
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From the creative minds at Bankrupting America, a fun look inside how every federal government agency really works, inspired by “The Office”: The second episode of the web series is up at their site, with a third episode on the way….
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