Wes Messamore on the argument that printing money works.

Finally Mark Levin doing some nice work:

Reagan surely didn’t follow real small government conservatism, but at least he talked about it.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The financial impact on Toyota Motor Corp. from its global recall could total more than $5 billion over the next year, due to increased incentive campaigns, litigation costs and marketing efforts by the embattled car maker, analysts say.

Jack Hunter’s latest column (you can also read it here):

Hunter, as usual, has got it completely right. The conservative movement should stop promoting the FNC/RNC machine and neocon talking heads and return to its limited government’s roots.

David Kramer does a great job of explaining it:

Since along with everything else in life, we “need” the government to “protect” us from extremely delayed flights, the morons in the government have come up with a law that establishes that “airlines can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger if planes are delayed three hours and passengers can’t get off.” Continental Airlines has decided to get around this ridiculous new law by stating that it will cancel any flight that will be delayed rather than risk the fine. (By the way, does the $27,500 per passenger go to each “injured” passenger? Not!) The CEO of Continental says that these sort of extended delays are rare, and are “mostly caused by an outdated air traffic control system that the government has failed to upgrade.” (No!! Really??)

Of course, the unintended consequence of this government-forced decision by Continental is that there will then be less flights and, therefore, even more delays for passengers (even though they won’t be experiencing the delays by sitting in grounded planes for over three hours).

Michael F. Cannon asks a great question:

The rationale for [Obama's] proposed tax on high-cost health insurance plans is that it would encourage people to purchase less-comprehensive coverage and thereby reduce health care spending.

If that’s a good idea, then why is it bad when insurers raise premiums?

Bob Herbert’s latest column is full of statist rhetoric, but I have to link to it because of the paragraph below, which sums up perfectly what most Americans are feeling and what in my opinion ignited the Tea Party movement:

That’s just silly. People are upset because they are mired in economic distress and are losing faith that their elected representatives are looking out for their best interests. They’ve watched with increasing anger as their government has been hijacked by the economic elite. They know that the big banks that were bailed out by taxpayers can borrow money at an interest rate of near zero while at the same time charging credit-card holders usurious rates of 20 to 30 percent.

Jim Hoft reminds us of this:

Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of life? Lenin thought so. He declared socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.

Neocon Ronald Reagan also warned about it:

Now, back in 1927, an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism, the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program.

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project…Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it.

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” – Nancy Pelosi’s speech to NACo.

You have to pass coercive legislation so the people understand what they’re being forced into? A completely sick logic.

The Washington Post has some troubling data:

About 11.4 million out-of-work people now collect unemployment compensation, at a cost of $10 billion a month. Half of them have been receiving payments for more than six months, the usual insurance limit. But under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates — the longest period since the program’s inception.

The solution to this problem? Get rid of governmental unemployment benefits! Below are some reasons it should be done:

1. They rely on coercively taking money from someone and giving it to someone else.
2. They cause the unemployment to go up (because some people start living off them).
3. Finally, if people really want “benefits” when they loose their jobs, they should be able to buy some kind of unemployment insurance on their own.

They embrace a statist Congressman who’s being accused of sexually harassing a male staffer just because he name called Democratic bigshots like Rahm Emanuel. John Bresnahan dissects this quite well in his latest Politico piece. Read it.

Austrian economist Jim Rogers says it’d be good for the euro and the Greek people:

Eric Margolis:

Accordingly, Nobel Peace Laureate Obama will decide what to do with America’s 5,500 strategic nuclear weapons – that possess enough destructive power to destroy the planet at least five times over. Some experts say it’s 50 times over.

Obama, strongly influenced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is expected to decide to spend US $7 billion modernizing US nuclear weapons and plants. Maintaining US nuclear weapons cost some $52 billion annually. Nuclear weapons deteriorate over time, so require regular maintenance and refurbishment.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll. Also interesting, only 23% believe the health plan will improve the quality of care and just 17% believe it will achieve the stated goal of reducing the cost of care.

It’s Israel, argues Lew Rockwell.

It’s just sad to see the government destroying businesses and killing jobs left and right:

Affiliates earn money by using their Web sites to link customers to online sellers like Amazon. Amazon told affiliates in an e-mail on Monday it would no longer pay them advertising fees because of the new law.

The law says online retailers have to start collecting state sales tax themselves or send annual notices to customers telling them to pay the tax.

Regan is worried about it:

This seems to be one of the fears of the government getting more involved in health care.  It’s the slippery slopee; if the government is paying the bill to fix our ailments, then they will eventually want to get involved in prevention.  I really hope that would never be the case because I like have the freedom to decide my lifestyle and medicine choices.

A wise reader adds:

One wonders if rather than taxing pizza and pop, the government should start by merely removing the corn subsidies that make corn syrup so cheap. The net effect on prices would be similar, and you’d actually have less government intervention, not more.

Last week I learned that Kristin Davis, the businesswoman that provided Eliot Spitzer with prostitutes was running for New York Governor. She claimed on the Joy Behar show she was for small government and fiscal conservatism. I wasn’t convinced she was telling the truth, but after this, I am:

“I advocate returning to limited government, accompanied by a minimal amount of confiscatory taxation to support only essential services along with Pay as Go budgeting; means testing for all government assistance programs; abolition of all member item pork barrel spending, balanced budgets; actual surpluses and payments to reduce long term state debt.”

The former Manhattan Madame spent 4 months in an upstate prison in 2008, convicted of running an illegal escort service. Her clients included former NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer. But she used that time productively. On her reading list during her stay, included economic texts by free market illuminaries Frederich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ludvig von Mises. She’s also reportedly a big fan of the writings of capitalist philosopher and one-time New Yorker Ayn Rand.

That’s what will happen in America if ObamaCare is signed into law:

Obama’s medical takeover bill is a monstrosity in many ways, but the biggest danger comes from the separate treatment it reserves for the ruling left compared to us ordinary folks. Obama’s Medi-Grab will force ordinary people into a medico-legal corral. But it exempts members of the ruling left, and by creating a political monopoly over medical care, it ensures that we must all go begging, hat in hand, to the bureaucracy for our very survival.

If Obama wins, Europe is our future. In Britain, Gordon Brown does not go to his local NHS clinic to get substandard medical care, nor does he go to the scandalously dirty hospitals in the Midlands. In Brussels, the European Union bureaucrats would just sneer at medical care for ordinary folks. They get nothing but the best. That hypocrisy is all over the American ruling left as it is emerging today: Obama and Al Gore both attended special upper-class schools from early on in life. Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar. They are special, these well-born rulers, not like you and me.

Read the whole thing.

“We’ll know the economy is recovering when promotions are no longer organized around potential joblessness.” – Megan McArdle.