“… the very principle of constitutional government requires it to be assumed, that political power will be abused to promote the particular purposes of the holder; not because it always is so, but because such is the natural tendency of things….”
– J. S. Mill (1861) [1]
The shifts in Congress toward Republicans in yesterday’s elections can be taken as a referendum by voters for less government and more freedom and prosperity. Yet Establishment Republicans have aided the growth of government mightily, and Cronyism is entrenched on both sides of the aisle.
Will the new Republican leadership, for example, extend the Production Tax Credit to help keep Obama energy policy alive? Or will they say, enough and enough with the repeated extensions from the 1992 massive tax break. (“After 22-years of tax credits, the business of big wind is no longer about energy production,” noted Lisa Linowes.…
Continue Reading“Carbon pollution conjures up images prior to the 1960s when coal was burned without environmental controls in electric power generation; there was train transportation and city-operated district heating systems; there was home heating and cooking with vast amounts of soot strewn over snow in the winter; and when laundry was dried outside and cars parked outside too. In reality carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels is a positive benefit to society as explained by Princeton University Emeritus Professor William Happer in The Myth of Carbon Pollution.”
British journalist Tim Montgomerie recently wrote in The Times (UK), “Our energy policy is insane: this the inconvenient truth.” I could not have found a better title for the Obama-led, and too often Republican supported, energy policies at home.
Montgomerie described the plight of those in the United Kingdom saddled with energy policies that take money from poor pensioners and give it to wealthy landowners who profit from wind farms. …
Continue Reading“The crowd in Washington … benefits enormously from a complicated tax system, a Byzantine regulatory regime, and a bloated budget…. The incentives to ‘play the game’ are enormous…. Big government is inherently corrupting.”
I sometimes think that working at the Cato Institute and trying to change Washington must be akin to working at a church in the middle of Amsterdam’s red light district.
In both cases, you’re wildly outnumbered by people with a different outlook on life. And it’s not that easy to save misguided souls.
The crowd in Washington, for instance, benefits enormously from a complicated tax system, a Byzantine regulatory regime, and a bloated budget.
All of these factors create big opportunities for unearned income for bureaucrats, cronies, politicians, contractors, lobbyists, and other insiders. Telling those people they should back away from the public trough is not exactly a way to make friends in DC.…
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