“Cato Institute” on The Daily Caller

Accusations always get more attention than the end result; it’s just the way the world works. Unfortunate as it may be, accusations garner bold headlines and long stories in newspapers, while corrections get a tiny blurb buried in the pages of the A section with the proverbial “we regret the error.” But when the error is made by the government, a correction is rarely forthcoming. Government corrections are released without notice or fanfare. They just appear one day, while the accusation lives on in the media and on the Internet. Never let a good charge go to waste, even when it’s proven to be wrong. Such is the case with the recent attacks by liberal members of Congress, bloggers and the media on for-profit education. (more)

Many American colleges and universities are steering their students toward a new source of “financial aid”: food stamps. (more)

In New Jersey, residents who want to transport firearms legally must request a permit from a local law enforcement office and produce a letter stating why it is necessary for them to carry a gun.  In other words, New Jerseyans have to prove need before exercising what many Americans consider a constitutional right. (more)

It’s been a week since the great electoral tsunami of 2010, and the exit polling is coming in.  This bi-annual ritual allows us to dig into the real thoughts and feelings of voters.  ATR commissioned a poll by Kellyanne Conway’s The Polling Company, inc./Woman Trend to see what voters thought about a value-added tax (VAT).  The results are a stunning rejection of a VAT for America. (more)

There you are, about to sign the papers, when the car salesman offers to throw in a $1,000 options package.  He knows those options will cost you a further $440 by reducing the performance of your new car’s engine, but he doesn’t tell you that. (more)

The latest offering from conservative humorist P.J. O’Rourke, Don’t Vote — It Just Encourages the Bastards, is a real page turner. You may find yourself staying up way past your bedtime because you just can’t put it down. (more)

Last week, libertarian think tank the Cato Institute released its Fiscal Policy Report Card for governors. In the study, “governors are graded on their fiscal performance from a limited-government perspective,” earning points for tax cuts and spending cuts, and losing points for tax hikes and increased spending. (more)

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently issued its annual survey of employer-sponsored health benefits, declaring: “Family Health Premiums Rise 3 Percent to $13,770 in 2010, But Workers’ Share Jumps 14 Percent as Firms Shift Cost Burden.” That’s half-right — but the other half perpetuates a myth about employee health benefits that stands in the way of real health care reform. (more)

Tea Party activists who are debating whether to embrace “family values” issues in a year when the economy could make or break the Democrats and sweep their candidates to power are also divided over another hot-button issue — immigration. (more)

We skeptics of free trade are used to being told, “You don’t understand economics.”  In fact, one major reason I wrote the book Free Trade Doesn’t Work was simply to expose, once and for all, that there do exist extremely serious and intellectually reputable arguments, within the confines of accepted mainstream economics, which question free trade.  And indeed they exist. (more)

Workers under age 45 will pay the price for AARP’s lobbying against Medicare and Social Security reforms over the past two decades in the form of reduced benefits, critics say. (more)

The city of Dubai has become a major Middle Eastern commercial center.  It also has been called the Middle East’s “shopping capital.” (more)

Because the number of Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries is growing much faster than the number of taxpayers, those entitlements are headed toward bankruptcy.  Social Security trustees reported that permanent, escalating Social Security deficits will begin in 2015.  Medicare trustees have said Medicare’s situation is “much more severe.” (more)

There is no question that the federal government’s bailout of General Motors has worked, in the most basic sense of the word. (more)

Since there have been so many bailouts, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger suggested in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that print and broadcast media should be bailed out, too.  He calls this “enhanced public funding of journalism.”  He dismisses concerns that government funding might lead to government control, citing “a strong culture of independence.”  A few days after Bollinger’s article appeared, he was named Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, so he is in a position to promote his ideas on a larger stage. (more)

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Princeton economist Alan Blinder wonders why 64 percent of Americans do not believe the $849 billion “fiscal stimulus” bill “saved or created” many jobs.  “The main reason,” he explains, “appears to be that the White House’s January 2009 forecast was too optimistic—projecting, for example, an unemployment rate around 8% by the end of 2009 if the stimulus passed.”  He thinks that’s unfair. (more)

Nothing seems to scare the populist Left more than the people.  Protest the Obama administration’s big spending, pervasive centralizing, expansive regulating policies, and you must be an enemy of all that is good and true.  Attend a Tea Party rally and you’re probably a racist and certainly not a Christian. (more)

The appointment of General David Petraeus to lead the American and allied forces in Afghanistan has revived claims that the surge he oversaw in Iraq succeeded.  Even President Barack Obama, who opposed the surge, is reported to have conceded, “it turned out to be a good thing” before announcing his own surge in Afghanistan. (more)

While the American economy staggers out of recession, a new report shows that there’s at least one boomtown where people are raking in the dough and living large: Washington, D.C. (more)

The Supreme Court’s invalidation of Chicago’s handgun ban in McDonald v. City of Chicago will prove a landmark victory for gun rights. The Second Amendment, considered a dead letter for much of the twentieth century, now applies to the states as well as the federal government. (more)