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Archive of posts published in the tag: lobbyists

The Neo Progressive Era

While the second Wilson Administration pushed illiberal policies such as the Sedition Act of 1918, today we have voluntarily embraced illiberal mean to achieve liberal ends. I find this even more disturbing. The cancel culture and politically correct curbs on free speech has eroded legitimate debate and made the voting booth the last remaining safe space. This is magnified by a media that has replaced objective journalistic standards will the protection of partisan narratives.

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The Lobbying Principle

From my article in today’s American Thinker, Save the Swamp: If the per capita cost of government is x, then every deduction, credit, and tax benefit awarded to one party comes at the expense of another.  The main function of

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A Uniquely American Problem

Once a government program is established to provide benefits to a prescribed group, there is soon to follow a movement to expand the definition of that group to include more people (voters).  Lobbyists will form to expand the new institutionalized

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Collusive Capitalism

Charles Murray writes in the Review section of the weekend Wall Street Journal, July 28-29/12, Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem. Excerpt: Two important changes in objective conditions have contributed to this change in mood. One is the rise of collusive

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Is There a Corporate America ?

In the discourse we now know as the class war, we see some of the same characteristics of prejudice applied to economic classes. We see the rich demonized.  All of the wealthy are held accountable for the behavior of the

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The Root of the Lobbying Problem

I just finished reading Capitol Punishment by Jack Ambramoff, the notorious lobbyist who served years in federal prison for numerous crimes related to his lobbying activities.  I remain cautious of such memoirs of the guilty because they are so often

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Ants at a Picnic

Cato‘s David Boaz writes Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue in The Cato Policy Report for Jan/ Feb 2012 Excerpt: The libertarian argument for keeping more of society in the private sector is not that there’s no self-interest or corruption in business; it is that

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Self Defeating Progressivism

There are two particular targets of American progressive political ideology: special interests and the curse of bigness, primarily in business. But the preferred solution of the progressives, central planning and regulation, only serve to make these matters worse. The proliferation

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More Government = More Lobbyists

Are lobbyists that bad? If the government was about to make sheet-rock illegal because of bad or misguided information and you were in the sheet-rock or home-building business, wouldn’t you seek to persuade the lawmakers than their efforts were wrong?

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The Seeds of our Next Crisis

One of the most intriguing concepts of economics is the concept of “moral hazard.”  It is a corollary to a more obvious principle that everything has a cost. An understanding of it is critical for those whose world view is

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