Free Republic

There is a chorus of calls for Ron Paul to get out of the race because "he's not a true Republican." The Koch Brothers are trying to take over the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, and morph it into more of a conservative attack machine. You'll hear people call the Libertarians "GOP lite." Folks will accuse libertarians of siphoning votes unnecessarily from Republicans, helping to elect Democrats. Is this just a case of semantics, or disgruntled Republicans joining up with a new party just to win a nomination that they couldn't capture within the GOP? Or is there a deep...

Like many in the liberty movement, I’m disheartened by the current goings-on involving the Cato Institute, namely, the power struggle between, on one side, Cato’s co-founder and President Ed Crane, and on the other side Charles and David Koch. (Of course, there are many other people on each side of this dispute, but these are the main representatives of each side.) The immediate source of this dispute is the disposition of the shares in Cato that belonged to former Cato Chairman Bill Niskanen, who died late last year. The Kochs believe that they, the Kochs, are entitled to those shares;...

Last week, Cato Institute health care policy expert Michael Cannon testified before the Missouri Senate’s Interim Committee on Health Insurance Exchanges on why that state should not create an Obamacare exchange. His arguments apply just as much to Michigan, including this excerpt describing how creating an exchange will help entrench Obamacare. From testimony delivered on Sept. 15, 2011 Some opponents of the law nevertheless argue for creating an exchange so that states can be prepared in case the law is not overturned or repealed. Yet creating an exchange would entrench the law and make it less likely to be repealed...

Hear Us Now is pleased to host Randal O’Toole of the CATO Institute on October 11th. His topic will be, “The Best Laid Plans”: […]how government attempts to do long-range, comprehensive planning inevitably do more harm than good by choking American cities with congestion, making housing markets more unaffordable, and sending the cost of government infrastructure skyrocketing.

Mainstream America is finally getting to know the billionaire brothers backing the libertarian movement, thanks to a pair of dueling profiles in New York and The New Yorker. Now that we've heard about their charitable giving, David's 240-foot mega-yacht and role as patrons of the Tea Party movement, it's time to ask a more serious question: How libertarian are they? The short answer...not very.Charles and David Koch, the secretive billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the largest private oil company in America, have spent millions bankrolling free-market think tanks and pro-business politicians in order, as David Koch has put it,...

When garden variety academics leave their ivory cocoons, they are really at a loss. Recently, Notre Dame University philosophy professor James P. Sterba tried to sell the libertarian Cato Institute on the “right” to welfare. “You’re not at the ABA anymore Jim,” his co-panelist Jan Narveson, chided him. Narveson is a professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo. Indeed, Sterba’s understanding of liberty might be more at home at the American Bar Association. “I submit that the liberty of the poor, which is the liberty not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus resources of others what is...

Health Care: Will the administration seize the moment of Scott Brown's victory to work out real solutions, or will it follow Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the cliff? Or is it just about government control? Before Sen.-elect Brown became the Scott heard 'round the world, House Speaker Pelosi was asked what his victory in the bluest of blue states would mean. "Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts," she replied in a bit of an understatement. The dynamic has changed, yet the Democrats, as the country song goes, apparently don't know when to hold them...

Climate scientists are refuting claims that raw data used in critical climate change reports has been destroyed, rendering the reports and policies based on those reports unreliable. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market advocacy group, is arguing that U.S. EPA's climate policies rely on raw data that have been destroyed and are therefore unreliable. The nonprofit group -- a staunch critic of U.S. EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gases -- petitioned the agency last week to reopen the public comment period on its proposed "endangerment finding" because the data set had been lost (E&ENews PM, Oct. 9). But climate scientists...

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency." As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee. As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points...

Health Insurance: Driven by focus groups, the administration and Congress rail against insurance companies to get ObamaCare passed. So why have they been protecting the insurance companies from real competition?In a recent stop in North Carolina, President Obama told the crowd that our existing health care system "works well for the insurance industry, but it doesn't always work well for you." This shift from discussing what's in his plan to fighting the insurance bogeyman is no accident. In June, Joel Benenson, the president's chief pollster, told the Economic Club of Canada, where health care is a public scandal, that the...

For You have been a shelter for me, A strong tower from the enemy. I will abide in Your tabernacle forever; I will trust in the shelter of Your wings. (Psalm 61: 3, 4)

For someone looking to expose MSM bias, the weekend episodes of Good Morning America are a godsend, a veritable corncucopia of liberal media advocacy on display. I really should send co-anchors Kate Snow and Bill Weir gifts next Christmas in thanks for all the material they’ve supplied over the months. But, true to FinkelBlog’s pledge to dole out the kudos when the MSM has done something to deserve them, let’s acknowledge that GMA gave a fair shake today to a group of free-market economists who have come together to oppose the president’s stimulus plan, arguing instead that the government should...

Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of seven books on international affairs, including America's Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan (2006). The People's Republic of China continues to send worrisome signals about its security strategy. As the tone of cross-straits relations grows increasingly strident, China's latest military reshuffle and ongoing lack of transparency about its military budget are creating new tensions with both the United States and its neighbors in East Asia. In the lead-up to the opening of the Communists' 17th National Party Congress...

With former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson creeping ever closer to a formal announcement that he will run for president, it is worth asking whether he is the genuine small-government conservative that has been missing from the top tier of the Republican field (with all due apologies to Ron Paul). A preliminary look at his record suggests that while he is not quite the second coming of Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan, he may be much better on most issues than the alternatives.

Jane Gravelle: After the Clinton administration proposed a fairly substantial increase in the cigarette tax as a way of funding health care reform, my colleague Dennis Zimmerman and I wrote a paper entitled "Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform and Economic Analysis."* The part of the paper I'd like to talk about is the justifications for increasing the cigarette tax. I'm an economist, so I start with the presumptions that people have subjective preferences about what they like to do and how they spend their money and that, in general, we want to allow people to enjoy their lifetime...

Next week, the Baker-Hamilton Commission will make its recommendations on U.S. Iraq policy, and Congress will begin hearings on defense secretary nominee and Cold War realist Robert Gates. Both events will reflect the failings of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. But even as a grudging acceptance of reality takes hold in Washington, the architects of the war are urging that we double down on the losing bet in Iraq. Amid spiraling sectarian violence, the leading advocates of invading Iraq seem now to have centered on an explanation for how their idea has driven that country to blood-soaked disaster: deposing...

Has Our Time Come? http://www.hereticalideas.com/ A **new study from the Cato Institute [see link below] suggests that libertarians might be the new swing vote. The libertarian vote is in play. At some 13 percent of the electorate, it is sizable enough to swing elections. Pollsters, political strategists, candidates, and the media should take note of it. After examining the relevant polling data, Cato concludes that libertarians and libertarian sympathizers constitute somewhere between 10 and 20% of the American population. Some explanations are offered as to why libertarians constitute such a bigger constituency than one might expect. First is that libertarians...

The Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. gave Gov. Bill Owens a D grade for his fiscal performance during his last year in office in a report released this week. The Libertarian-leaning think tank releases a report card every two years for all 50 governors based on 23 criteria gathered from various sources, such as the U.S. census and budget data provided by state governments. According to the report, Owens “engineered one of the biggest falls from grace in this report card’s 16-year history.” The institute blasted Owens for his support of Referendum C, which was passed by voters last November...

Robert A. Pape is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of the forthcoming Cato Institute paper "Suicide Terrorism and Democracy: What We've Learned since 9/11." The attacks of September 11th, 2001 brought us face to face with the horror of suicide terrorism. In the years since, pundits have painted al Qaeda as a fearless enemy motivated by insatiable religious hatred. Amid prognostications of doom, we lost sight of the truth: that suicide terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, and that beneath the religious rhetoric with which it is perpetrated, it occurs largely in...

On July 14, the U.S. Department of Education released a study that the teachers' unions are holding up as evidence that public schools are better than private schools. The study doesn't actually show this, and is riddled with methodological flaws anyway. If you tell the average American that public schools are better than private schools, she's likely to respond, "What have you been smoking?" In this case, the evidence shows that the average American is right. The study tells us nothing whatsoever about the relative quality of public and private schools. It takes raw test scores from isolated years and...

People sweltering from a heat wave in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. might find cold comfort in the fact that the temperatures of the past few days are not the hottest on record. That "honor" belongs to a summer 76 years ago -- decades before the controversy over "man-made global warming" began."From June 1 to August 31, 1930, 21 days had high temperatures that were 100 degrees or above" in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service. "That summer has never been approached, and it's...

News Release June 8, 2006 Media Contact: (202) 789-5200 Cato Institute Experts Comment on the Death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the Future of Iraq WASHINGTON – Cato Institute foreign policy experts are available to discuss the latest events in Iraq. Contact the media relations department to arrange an interview: (202) 789-5200, pr@cato.org. Christopher Preble, Cato Institute, director of foreign policy studies: "The death of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is welcomed by all civilized people. Zarqawi terrorized the Iraqi population, and engaged in some of the most brutal acts of the insurgency, including beheadings and the slaughter of countless...

John Stossel thinks sweatshops are good for workers, while minimum wages hurt the poor. Controversial? Sure. Just don't call him a Conservative. "I'm a Libertarian," according to Stossel, the TV network consumer reporter turned staunch free-market defender. "I hold beliefs Conservatives abhor." Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the conservative Fraser Institute think tank yesterday, Stossel made it clear his politics don't quite fall within the traditional left or right wing spectrum. He takes no issue with gay marriage, for example, while he says sending troops to Iraq "wasn't a good idea." At the same time, lefties likely won't love...

TESTIMONY OF DANIEL GRISWOLD Director, Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy Studies before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration,Border Security andCitizenship May 26, 2005 "The Need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Serving Our National Economy" Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting the Cato Institute to testify today on the subject of immigration reform and the U.S. economy. Our current immigration system is fundamentally out of step with the realities of American life and desperately needs comprehensive reform. Immigrants play an important part in the success of America's free-enterprise economy. Immigrant workers willingly fill...

N ew Hampshire had New England's lowest per capita taxes, and it was the only state in the union whose residents didn't see a tax increase in 2005. Nationally, states collected a total of $649 billion in taxes in the 2005 budget year, which ended in June for most states, according to a report yesterday by the Census Bureau. That's $2,192 per person. The numbers include only taxes collected by states. They do not include federal or local taxes, which can greatly increase a person's taxes. All states collected more taxes in 2005 than they did in 2004. And every...

Another Perspective What Are Op-Eds For? By Iain Murray Published 2/1/2006 12:08:02 AM WASHINGTON -- Ever since the Cato Institute fired syndicated columnist Doug Bandow over the revelation that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff had asked and paid him to write articles favorable to his clients, the Left and some in the media have launched a witch hunt against conservative writers with links to private industry. Yet, during this burning time, no one is asking the question: What are opinion pieces for? The question has not arisen because some on the Right, by acquiescing to the Left's desire for blood, are...

...Mr. Bush stands himself in excellent company here with some of the most respected names in business: GE's Jeff Immelt, Duke Energy's Paul Anderson, Ford's Bill Ford Jr. They, in turn, have benefited from the pioneering PR efforts of BP's John Browne, whose conversion to climate change was based firmly on science -- sociology not climatology.... Mr. Browne and his copycats have largely restricted themselves to acknowledging the inevitability of carbon regulation, not the inevitability of carbon-driven global warming. Most of all, they see a cornucopia of subsidies and tax breaks flowing from an emerging Western consensus to treat carbon...

As President Bush "goes on tour," trying to sell his still ambiguous Social Security Reform plan to the American people in 60 different cities, the one idea that is clear is that the program, as we know, it should be reformed. If Social Security was one of its own recipients, it would already be retired and collecting, now at age 70. Come to think of it, retirement doesn't sound like a bad idea, either. It seems President Bush is not the only one who can be accused of ambiguity on this issue. Many members of Congress have differing opinions about...

Since his re-election, President Bush has spoken a number of times about domestic reforms designed to create an "Ownership Society." Among the best known of those proposed reforms are personal Social Security accounts and health savings accounts that would give individuals, rather than government, control over their financial futures and health care. Both of those initiatives are essential reforms, and an Ownership Society itself is desperately needed. But there is a third component that should be included in this agenda: education. If an Ownership Society means anything, it should mean giving parents control over their children's education. When children are...

In May 2003 President Bush announced plans to create a U.S.-Middle East free-trade area within a decade. The new trade initiative aims to combat terrorism, and the Islamist extremism that underlies it, by promoting economic and political development in the Muslim world. The administration moved quickly to begin putting its plans into action by announcing that the United States and Bahrain would soon commence negotiations for a free-trade agreement (FTA). Meanwhile, negotiations for an FTA with Morocco are already under way, and a U.S.-Jordan FTA, now in its second year, has produced a boom in Jordanian exports. The Bush administration...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS Last week Washington was the site of the biggest birthday party you never heard of. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the American Conservative Union, and the guest list included all the grandees of right-wing America, from Senator Mitch McConnell to Phyllis Schlafly to Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association to, of course, President Bush. In his speech, the President promised that "for our blessed land the best days lie ahead," and was greeted with several foot-stomping ovations and cries of "Four more years!" But the real flavor of the event was captured by what the...

WASHINGTON - The world has moved on since the case of Terri Schiavo, whose husband sought to remove the feeding tube that kept her alive, briefly grabbed public attention last fall. But Terri's life remains at risk. Michael Schiavo, her parents, the state of Florida, and advocacy groups continue to fight over her future. Alas, she keeps losing where it matters most, in court. Terri collapsed in 1990, leaving her profoundly cognitively disabled. Her husband won a $1.3 million malpractice judgment that included money for her medical care, but subsequently refused to fund rehabilitative treatment for her. Along the way...

Republicans stuff record pork down federal piehole "The pledge not to waste our tax dollars rings hollow," says Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, "given that in a matter of days [President Bush] will sign into law a budget-buster that provides money for Alaska skating rinks, Michigan swimming pools and Iowa indoor rain forests." Moore is referring to the president's pronouncement in his State of the Union address that "we must spend tax dollars wisely" and the complete lack of opposition from the White House to the mile-high pile of...

New Forms of School Choice: The Real McKaysSchool Choice Forces Emboldened by Recent String of Judicial and Legislative Victories By Robert Holland Printer Friendly   Email a Friend The fastest-growing voucher program in the land is the McKay Scholarship, which three years ago emerged in the choice-friendly climate of Florida. As of July 2003, more than 9,200 Florida special-education students were using McKays to attend private schools equipped to accommodate them. (Special education is education lingo for  individualized instruction developed  to meet the needs of each student judged to have a disability.) McKays predate the June 2002 Zelman decision. But the...

<p>Nondefense spending has skyrocketed under Republican control of Congress and the White House, and critics say the outlays will hit the stratosphere with the passage this week of a drug entitlement for seniors. The Congressional Budget Office reported that nondefense spending rose 7 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, nearly double the 4 percent discretionary spending caps that President Bush insisted Congress honor. Since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, nondefense spending has leapt 13 percent — 21 percent if spending on the war on terrorism is included. And he is poised to become the first Republican president to sign into law a new federal entitlement: the $400 billion Medicare expansion to cover prescription drugs. Sean Spicer, spokesman for Rep. Jim Nussle, Iowa Republican and the conservative chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the spending increases appear worse when lumping in the annual late-year "emergency" congressional expenditures that he said are little more than thinly veiled pork projects. "Even without the emergencies, we're looking at [spending] numbers well above inflation, and that's definitely a concern," Mr. Spicer said. Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the Bush record on spending has been a major disappointment. "My impression of Bush is that I've never seen him give a speech in which he says government is too big and we need to cut costs," Mr. Edwards said, pointing out that President Reagan vetoed 23 bills in his first three years in office, while Mr. Bush has yet to unsheathe his veto pen. Accepting additional spending is the price Mr. Bush pays for getting his agenda through Congress, Mr. Edwards said. "When you have a president who has a bunch of his own spending initiatives like education and the Medicare drug bill, it makes it difficult for him to go out and say that Congress is being wasteful," he said. Prominent conservatives are beginning to chafe about the kind of spending occurring on their watch. Nine Republican senators and 25 House Republicans voted against the Medicare drug bill, citing cost as the major reason. The $31 billion energy bill also has stalled, largely because many in Congress object to the price tag. The president is itching to get the bill to his desk even though it is four times more expensive than what he had proposed. Even radio host Rush Limbaugh, an unwavering booster of the president and his policies, told listeners Tuesday that after passing the Medicare bill Republicans no longer can contend they are the party of smaller government. The White House did not return a call for comment. Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said mandatory government spending on entitlements such as Medicare will reach 11.1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, a record high. That number will climb exponentially, he said, once seniors begin getting government-paid drugs in 2006. "Congress often underestimates entitlements by a lot," Mr. Riedl said. "By our calculations, it will cost $2 trillion between now and 2030." That's assuming that the program never is expanded, he said, an unlikely scenario. When Congress created the Medicare program in 1965, the projected cost in 1990 was $9 billion. The true cost, after several expansions that came with low-balled price tags, was $67 billion, 7.4 times higher. "The lawmakers who pushed for the Medicare drug bill never answered the question of how they would pay for it," Mr. Riedl said. "Apparently, they are leaving the $2 trillion tax hike to future congresses to figure out." Tom Schatz, executive director of Citizens Against Government Waste, said he hopes that conservatives can bring the president and Congress "back to earth in terms of spending" if Mr. Bush wins a second term. "We hope that this is not the legacy of the Bush administration," Mr. Schatz said. "We hope these will be aberrations that will be corrected in coming years." A senior Republican congressional aide said many conservatives on Capitol Hill are hoping that is the case. If it isn't, Mr. Bush and the party will have some explaining to do to their political base. "There's only so long we can be told [by the White House], 'Just keep waiting for spending restraint,' " the aide said. "Eventually you develop a credibility problem. There's a point where people say, 'We've heard that for five years and nothing's happened.' "</p>

Citizens for a Sound Economy August 27, 2003 Alabama Will Lead Us In September, voters in Alabama can show the nation that higher taxes aren't the answer to state overspending. Every once in awhile certain voters in our republic have the opportunity to make a profound impact on the country’s future. In 1979, the voters in California approved proposition 13 which dramatically lowered property taxes in that state. Proposition 13 sparked an anti-tax revolt across the entire country and helped elect Ronald Reagan president. Reagan then proposed and Congress approved across-the-board tax cuts that sparked the longest peaceful expansion in...

=============================== NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100 Washington DC 20037 World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org =============================== For release: February 5, 2003 =============================== For additional information: George Getz, Communications Director Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222 E-Mail: pressreleases@hq.LP.org =============================== Bush's dirty little budget secret: $10 in new spending for every dollar in tax cuts, Libertarians say WASHINGTON, DC -- If you think President Bush's tax cuts will save you money, guess again, Libertarians say, because the long-term spending increases in his new budget outnumber tax cuts by a ratio of 10 to 1. "Showing gratitude for Bush's tax...

The Dow has been down from its highs above 10,000 for well over a year. It now hovers around 8,000, and any new bull market still seems far off.For that reason, the White House isn't pushing partial privatization of Social Security. Without a growing market, it seems too risky. Even private account fans say expanding IRAs and 401(k)s may be the best they can hope for now.That may be a mistake, according to a new study by pollster John Zogby and the Cato Institute. It found the appeal of private accounts does not rise or fall with the markets. Even...

<p>In his quest for the governorship, Independence Party candidate Tim Penny has said that he would "keep pressure on Washington" to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare; that the federal government should pay its "fair share" of special education costs, and that light rail is a must-have -- all positions he says reflect his "sensible center" politics. But three years ago, when Penny was employed as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, he helped write a federal budget proposal that called Medicare a "Cadillac health plan" that was "unjustifiably generous." On education, the proposal recommended eliminating funding for everything from HeadStart and school-to-work programs to college work study grants and the Direct Student Loan Program.</p>

Protecting Private Property Rights from Regulatory Takings Testimony of Roger Pilon Senior Fellow and Director Center for Constitutional Studies Cato Institute Before the Subcommittee on Constitution Committee on Judiciary United States House of Representatives February 10, 1995 Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee: My name is Roger Pilon. I am a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies. I want to begin by thanking Congressman Hyde for inviting me to speak before this subcommittee on the subject of Protecting Private Property Rights from Regulatory Takings. I want also to thank...

Back in the late 1990s when Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed the existence of a "vast, right-wing conspiracy," she was scoffed at by the Republicans, the press and anyone sore at the Clintons for whatever infraction, real or imagined, they might have committed. The country got a good laugh, and the expression has become almost as much a part of our political lexicon as "What did you know and when did you know it," "I am not a crook" and "Read my lips: No new taxes." However, while Hillary's naysayers were chortling and guffawing, those "thinkers" at the Cato Institute may...

<p>PALO ALTO, California -- It's a sunny summer day and you pull your CDs from your home stereo, toss them in your bag and head out. In the car, you listen to your music, and when you reach the beach, you slip a CD into a portable boom box.</p>

WASHINGTON, July 12 (UPI) -- There is a reason why new government programs seem to proliferate, and why existing programs -- even bad ones -- can be as hard to kill as Count Dracula. It is set up that way on purpose using a very specific technique, according to Charlotte Twight, who spoke at a forum at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. on July 11. "The reality is that today, the government seems to grow, even when the public doesn't want it to grow, and seldom shrinks, even when the public would prefer it to shrink," said Twight. As...