From the Future of Freedom Foundation’s February 2015 magazine – ObamaCare Racketeering and Intellectual Knavery by James Bovard Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power. This axiom has been made stark with the controversy arising from a video of Jonathan Gruber, one of the […]
Press TV posted a monologue I did last night responding to a new Pew poll indicating that most Americans are feeling financially stressed and that 82% of households reported suffering a financial shock last year. My riff focused on how U.S. government policies make life more difficult for average Americans: If you listen to Congress and the […]
Mises Institute “The Austrian” Newsletter, Issue #1, 2015 The Absurdity of “Reform” in DC by James Bovard In the 1930s, peasants who were starving because of the Soviet regime’s brutal farm collectivization policy lamented, “If only Stalin knew!” Nowadays, American social scientists look at floundering federal programs and lament: “If only Congress knew!” And […]
The Supreme Court accepted today a case in which California farmers challenge USDA’s right to confiscate their raisins. The Court’s decision is a defeat for the Justice Department, which argued that the Supremes should let stand a bizarre Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that would have nullified a swath of the Fifth Amendment. I tub-thumped […]
USA TODAY, December 12, 2014 Government by Cromnibus – blind, deaf and dumb: Column by James Bovard The Know-Nothing Party Rules Us All “You can lead a man to Congress but you can’t make him think,” quipped Milton Berle in 1950. Last night’s House of Representatives’ approval of the 1,603 page, $1 trillion Cromnibus bill […]
Washington Times, November 21, 2014 Gruber and the Shenanigans of Leviathan By James Bovard The closer intellectuals get to power, the more they deceive Democratic politicians and the liberal media are scrambling to curtail the damage from Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber’s proclamations on stupid voters and deceitful legislative tactics. A New York Times editorial dismissed […]
Economist Gordon Tullock died yesterday at the age of 92. I met him when I occasionally sat in on seminars at the Public Choice Center at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg in 1978. That Center offered a fresh perspective that explained why government interventions go awry and why government itself is often the most powerful special […]
