Dear Paul:
I enjoyed reading your Friday (Feb, 23) column, “Romney’s Economic Closet.” You confirmed what many of we free market types have been asserting for months, namely that Mitt Romney is really one of your fellow travelers, a neo-Keynesian dressed up as an unrepentant free market guy. In other words, it takes a Keynesian to know a fellow Keynesian.
Alieta Eck, MD, President, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. James Madison.
When government controls health care, bureaucrats war against bureaucrats, medical care becomes a commodity, and the taxpayers pay dearly.
The federal government audited NJ Medicaid and determined that the state owes the federal government $145 million due to “mismanagement.” It claims that the state “improperly oversaw Medicaid patient-care services,” the part of Medicaid services involved in the “cleaning, grooming, bathing and shopping for patients” over three years beginning in 2004.
Twenty years ago, on December 19, 1991, Peter Drucker’s essay, “It Profits Us to Strengthen Nonprofits,” was published in the Wall Street Journal. Although Drucker’s opinion piece was written a generation ago, his advice is more applicable today than when the first President Bush was in the White House.
Ron Paul has two paths to the GOP nomination. The first path is that he wins early . For this to happen and for Ron Paul to win the Republican presidential nomination, he must win Iowa and win or place a strong second in New Hampshire. Even a second place finish in New Hampshire, especially if Ron Paul comes in a close second slightly behind putative front-runner Mitt Romney in his backyard, would be a huge victory for the Paul campaign, because the Texas congressman could rightfully proclaim that he is now the front-runner.
These so-called patriotic millionaires are anything but. If they want to pay more of their income to support the welfare-warfare state, it goes to show that you can be a complete fool in America and still become wealthy. What a great country. This stunt should lay to rest that wealthy folks believe in free enterprise. They worship big government as much as the left wingers in Congress, in the media and in academia.
Herman Cain’s 999 plan is the talk of the nation. GOP voters are going gaga over Herman Cain who has rocketed to first place in some polls for the Republican presidential nomination. According to Cain, his 999 plan is the first step toward imposing the Fair Tax.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO is now a top tier candidate according to the latest polls after he won the Florida straw poll a couple of weeks ago in a stunning upset over front-runners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.
For decades, make that centuries, philosophers, economists, politicians and others have been searching for the Holy Grail of taxation, a “fair” tax. And they all have failed. Inasmuch as all taxes involve coercion, the very negation of liberty, taxation is no different from what a robber who says to his victims, ‘Your money or your life.” In fact, taxation violates one of the fundamental tenets of the Judeo-Christian tradition, “Thou shall not steal.” Thus, creating a fair, coercive tax is impossible.
Several years ago, a 67-page book by Princeton University philosophy professor Harry G. Frankfurt was a New York Times bestseller. ON BULLSHIT begins with these words: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this…Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it.”
The other day I received a blast e-mail from Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) signed by its president Grover Norquist. Mr. Norquist has become a lightning rod for President Obama and congressional Democrats because of his opposition to higher taxes to address the fiscal crisis in Washington D.C. Read the rest of this entry »
The negotiations between President Obama, Speaker of the House Boehner and other Republican congressional leaders about raising the debt ceiling and cutting the deficit have stalled because the president wants to increase taxes as part of a “balanced approach” to the federal government’s fiscal imbalances. Republicrats assert that higher taxes are “off the table.”
In the summer of 1969, my wife and I were visiting her sister’s family in Utica, New York. One day we took a ride to Syracuse and stopped in a bookstore where I bought a copy of Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Having been a history major and interested in economic issues, I eagerly read the collection of essays by Rand, Alan Greenspan and others. I especially was intrigued with Alan Greenspan’s “Gold and Economic Freedom,” where he makes the case that the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies of the 1920s caused the boom that led to the stock market crash.
In two separate rallies in Trenton, teachers and then police officers, fire fighters and EMS personnel showed their support for Wisconsin teachers and for public sector unions in general. The rallies have a common theme: public sector employees apparently do not appreciate the severity of the fiscal reality facing states and municipalities around the country, and want to preserve their “rights.” Most state governments are broke and their pension plans and retiree health benefits may be underfunded by as much as $3.5 trillion.
While I was driving home Tuesday evening, I listened to President Obama’s State of the Union address for a few minutes on the radio. Obama’s speech was vapid with an insightful phrase thrown in here and there to show he really is a champion of free enterprise and middle-class values. Obama sounded like a cross between Vince Lombardi and the head of the Chamber of Commerce.
According to a New York Times/CBS News poll, Americans want less federal spending instead of paying higher taxes to reduce the deficit. However, about two thirds of Americans would prefer higher payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security rather than seeing any cutbacks in benefits. In other words, Americans rightfully oppose higher taxes to solve the federal government’s unconscionable spending polices, but they also want to perpetuate the greatest Ponzi schemes in human history, Social Security and Medicare.