February 29, 2020

Math Anxiety Writ Large

Some years ago, the phrase “math anxiety” became popular to describe the difficulty many students had with learning elementary math skills. I haven’t heard it much lately. Maybe because I am no longer in the “ed biz” or ...

April 28, 2019

Real Leverage on Illegal Immigration

The main reason it is so difficult to deal with illegal immigration is that there is an unwritten but not secret alliance between RINOs who want cheap labor and leftists who want new voters. It is not clear whether either side of that bargain really ...

September 15, 2017

Time for a New Budget Process: Tiered Spending

It is high time that conservatives reform the budget process.[i] In theory, Congress should prioritize expenditures to achieve the greatest public good with the available funds taxpayers and lenders provide. But in practice, not only are tradeoffs no...

September 5, 2017

Why Can't the Whole Tax Code Be More Like FICA?

The proposals for tax reform being considered by Congress just tinker around the edges. The Trump plan is quite good, about as good as a plan could be without changing the whole structure of income-based taxation. That structure consists of several t...

August 31, 2017

Sheriff Joe: Trump strikes a blow for the rule of law

Okay.  Let's get the dirty truth right out front.  I am sick of the courts ignoring the Constitution in order to enhance their own power.  Sometimes the language of the Constitution is so direct and unambiguous that no exceptions c...

August 3, 2017

Trump's Best Defense

The partisan witch hunt being conducted against President Trump, his family, and supporters is a good example of the principle, “The best defense is a good offense.”  Have you ever been falsely accused of something? Defense is diffic...

July 17, 2017

Whom Do You Trust?

Back in the late fifties and early sixties, Jack Paar ruled late night TV on NBC and his successor, the great Johnny Carson, had a quiz show at the time which went by a few names: “Who Do You Trust?”, “Do You Trust Your Wife?”...

July 2, 2017

If you think Trump’s tweets are ‘unprecedented,’ you don't know about Harry Truman

Harry Truman is one of the few modern presidents seemingly liked by both sides. A few months ago, President Trump was excoriated for his "unprecedented" tweet to Nordstrom's concerning their shabby treatment of Ivanka.  Now, after ...

July 1, 2017

Breaking the Health Care Logjam

If you can believe their public statements, there is agreement among Republican Senators that certain parts of the ACA should be repealed. Yet they allow their disagreements over new features to get in the way of the consensus that supposedly does ex...

April 28, 2017

Saving face in the Mexican wall standoff

Just recently, Ted Cruz proposed using assets confiscated from El Chapo and other criminals to pay for the wall.  It was met with high fives all around, at least on the right.  Alas, there is a chronic shortage of billionaire criminals in c...

March 13, 2017

Good Enough Heath Care Legislation for 2017

There is a lot of hand wringing and concern over the correct order and the details of repeal and replace for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and various related budget issues.  Even now, the GOP House Plan for repeal and replace is being derided a...

July 11, 2016

Make Winston Proud, Donald

I stayed up late a couple of weeks ago to watch the results of the Brexit vote. I was so proud of our British cousins. The children of Churchill stood up to the Huns once again. Long overdue. The details are not important. Maybe their economy will su...

March 10, 2016

GOP convention rules for first ballots may avoid a contested convention

Revised 6:28 AM EST. There has been a lot of speculation about what would happen if nobody gets a clear majority of 1,237 or more delegates at the GOP convention this July.  Talk of a “brokered” or “managed” convention...

March 5, 2016

Time to End the Conservative Circular Firing Squad on ‘Amnesty’

Conservatives usually pride themselves on using straightforward language and simple logical and moral arguments. But when it comes to illegal immigration, emotion trumps logic and morality. Let’s start with the word “amnesty.” Its d...

February 21, 2016

The GOP Presidential Field and The Narcissism of Small Differences

The vicious fighting between and among the various Republican candidates for President brings to mind Sigmund Freud who wrote, in German of course, of der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen, or “the narcisissims of small differences.” Per...

February 21, 2016

The Rubio/Trump Dream Paths

Jeb Bush has suspended his campaign in light of his 8% showing in South Carolina. Trump got 33%, Rubio got 22%, Cruz got 22%, with Kasich and Carson getting 15% between them. It seems quite likely that most of Jeb’s vote will go to Rubio, say 6...

January 22, 2016

Natural Born Citizens and the Presidency

The recent controversy over the eligibility of Ted Cruz for the office of the Presidency is one of those conundrums embedded in the U.S. Constitution. That august document is full of ambiguous words and phrases that challenge even the strictest and m...

March 16, 2014

Utopia Now! in New York City

As a conservative, my first reaction to the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York was one of horror, though not disbelief.  Why should we expect New Yorkers to learn from a mere village like Detroit? New Yorkers are smarter, richer, wi...

March 14, 2014

Why Ukraine? Why Now?

The “I’m shocked, shocked” line from Casablanca is too much a cliché to carry any -- umm -- shock value, but surely it fits Putin’s actions against Ukraine.  But the civilized world, mainly the Anglosphere, has lon...

December 8, 2013

A Friendly Critique of the Levin Amendments

Mark Levin, author of Ameritopia, Liberty and Tyranny, and other conservative defenses of the United States Constitution, has published a manual on how to save and preserve the Republic and its Constitution.  Entitled The Liberty Amendments, it ...

October 7, 2013

The Budget and Debt-Limit Endgames

There is nothing so insidious as a lie which persists without rebuttal long enough to be accepted as true (with all due apologies to ideas whose time has come).   The current budget and debt crises in Washington provide plenty of examples....

August 5, 2013

Profile in Cowardice

Ah, the joys of political correctness! No matter how many times we get mugged, maimed or killed by individuals with identifiable characteristics, we must check the rulebook before taking precautions.  Would anyone question the black American exp...

July 11, 2013

Replace the IRS with the Honor System

My fellow conservatives seem to be put off by the administration's trust in the American people when applying for health care subsidies via the yet-to-be established exchanges. It goes along with our unwarranted lack of trust in poorer Americans not ...

May 30, 2013

How to Junk the IRS

Corruption of the IRS cannot be denied now that the Fifth Amendment has been invoked. The most hated agency of the federal government could be nearly eliminated, its function radically simplified and its discretion drastically curtailed. A new approa...

February 22, 2013

The Delinquent Twins of Financial Ruin

Paul Krugman and Elizabeth Warren are two of the most prominent progressive intellectuals of our era.  Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner in economics who hails from the Economics Department of Princeton University and thinks he knows things that n...

February 8, 2013

Three Principles for Immigration Reform

The immigration reform fight rages on.  Amnesty, or no amnesty, that is the question. Democrats are doing what they do best -- pandering to an aggrieved constituency by promising something for nothing.  They are all but certain that this is...

January 29, 2013

The Hippocritic Oaths

This morning I heard Rand Paul, the Junior Senator from Kentucky, deliver an angry message to his colleagues. The subject was their failure to obey their own rules. He mentioned their failure to pass a budget in nearly four years. But his outrage was...

January 23, 2013

Filibuster Fever

Harry Reid and his fellow tactical geniuses are serious about gutting the current filibuster rules. The left loves it. It is always a mistake to underestimate opponents' intelligence. But this seems so stupid that it challenges this wisdom. In orde...

January 21, 2013

Lessons from the NRA Ad

The NRA ad is neither tasteless nor over the top. The orchestrated and nearly-unanimous response by the legacy media is just the latest example of a perfectly reasonable conservative message being twisted by paid liars. Make no mistake: these people ...

January 12, 2013

Republican Debt Limit Tactics

With the debt limit due to kick in by the middle of February, there is not much time for Republicans to do what they should have done years ago.  The danger of reaching the borrowing limit is not default on the existing debt.  At present, a...

January 7, 2013

Sloppy Analysis by the Heritage Foundation

In my article here at AT yesterday, I defended the Republican support for the 157-page American Taxpayer Relief Tax Act of 2012. Today in NewsMax, they quote someone at the Heritage Foundation detailing the "tax increases" contained in the bill. The ...

January 6, 2013

A Contrary View: Fiscal Cliff Deal a Win for Republicans and America

As a recent critic myself of Republican leadership, I would like to congratulate Speaker Boehner, Leader Cantor and the entire Republican leadership in the House and the Senate.  They have succeeded in luring the President and his minions into a...

January 1, 2013

The Gloater in Chief

Yesterday I watched the President of the United States once again disgrace his office with a partisan speech disguised as a news conference, attacking the Republican Party even as his minions are negotiating with it.  Supposedly, some of the iss...

December 12, 2012

The Great Betrayal of 2012

It looks all but certain that another man named John is about to betray conservative American voters. Last summer, John Roberts fell for the statesman trap and failed to strike down Obamacare. Now it appears that John Boehner is about to follow him i...

November 6, 2012

Geek's Guide to Election Night

You know who you are. Most nights you are still awake after a comedic interlude with Greg Gutfeld, so you tune in to a rerun of Rachel Maddow to satisfy your inner masochist. On election night, you have lined up your energy drinks, coffee and favorit...

October 24, 2012

Razar's Rules for Czars

Here are a few rules to help our Congressmen and Czars do their job properly. Private Subsidies: 1. Never give a subsidy to any for-profit company. By subsidy, I mean money, cash, loans, loan guarantees, special tax concessions not available to peop...

October 16, 2012

Debate FAQs

These are NOT actual quotes...just questions I would like to hear tonight. Obamacare: Q1 to Romney: You say you will repeal Obamacare. Yet most Americans like the coverage of pre-existing conditions, allowing children to age 26 to stay on parents' po...

September 14, 2012

The Free Lunch Crowd

If there is reincarnation, I want to come back as a mega-bank, or better yet as the Fed.  Monetary Czar Bernanke is embarking on a buying spree euphemistically called QE 3.  The gnomes of Fed-land are really smart.  They know how much ...

August 19, 2012

Debate Commission Blues

Who the heck picked the commission on debates?  Who put them in charge? Why not let each side choose an equal number of moderators?  Imagine Rush Limbaugh and Ann  Coulter paired with Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow. Put all four candida...

July 7, 2012

Tax or Penalty: Who Cares!

The deep thinkers who are running the Romney campaign are arguing what you should call the provision of a law that prescribes a stick to encourage people to buy health insurance: a tax or a penalty.  The Supreme Court seems to think it is an imp...

July 6, 2012

Armchairism

Armchair critics are always quick to point out flaws in someone else's work.  They usually have little more than a superficial understanding of actual problems or their practical solutions.  Quick with advice but never willing to do any of ...

June 29, 2012

Holder's Contempt: Who Owns the Government?

Who owns the documents being suppressed in the clumsy Fast and Furious cover-up? Murder-gate would be a descriptive moniker. Could some intrepid reporter ask the hapless Jay Carney if the POTUS believes that the U.S. Government is "of the people, by ...

May 20, 2012

Tax Reform That Is Simple, Transparent, Fair

America's tax code is like a runaway train that is constantly fueled and loaded, even as it hurls down the tracks, with incomprehensible rules, regulations, and bureaucratic minutia.  This article explains how and where to reform our tax code....

May 19, 2012

J.P. Morgan and the Credit Default Swaps Monster

It is difficult to assess the J.P. Morgan $2-billion loss based on the information released so far.  That doesn't stop the knee-jerk anti-capitalists, though, from charging Jamie Dimon with reckless neglect or worse. Many analysts -- notably...

February 11, 2012

It's Really Quite Simple, Lou

Who pays for the contraceptives. What? No, who. What are the contraceptives for? Yes, they are for what. That's the question. But who uses the contraceptives? No, who pays. Who pays what? No, that would be wrong. What uses the contraceptives, but who...

January 31, 2012

The Republican Menagerie

You can't read a political analysis of presidential politics in the Republican Party without tripping over the denizens of the zoo. In no particular order, you have RINOS, Libertarians, Fiscal Conservatives, Social Conservatives, Foreign Policy Hawk...

January 11, 2012

Mitt Romney, Vulture Capitalist?

Democrats are firmly in favor of a mixed economy: socialism and crony capitalism.  What a shock it was to find out that self-righteous so-con stalwarts like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry are actually socially conservative socialist/crony capitali...

January 6, 2012

The Living Constitution of the Left

It is amusing to see how the left can pick and choose among constitutional requirements. The part of the Constitution authorizing "recess appointments" absent Senate confirmation is alive. The word "recess," though, no longer has its original meaning...

December 20, 2011

FICA Fever

Congress has caught FICA Fever. If you look it up you will find it means a desire to cut payroll taxes, while ignoring the fictional Trust Funds. Let me say at the outset that I have no idea if a "payroll tax holiday" of a thousand dollars or two per...

December 13, 2011

Criminal Negligence at MF Global

I spent an unpleasant few hours watching Jon Corzine play a Congressional Committee like a Stradivarius.  Here is a man with a stellar resume: Goldman Sachs financial genius and CEO, senator from NJ, governor of NJ; CEO of MF Global.  The c...

November 12, 2011

Apollo and Dionysius Meet Again

In a lame attempt to counter the refreshing grass roots spontaneity of the Tea Party, the leftist AstroTurf machine of head puppeteer George Soros has spewed forth a toxic brew of anarchists, communists, fascists, criminals, and aging hippies.  ...

October 26, 2011

Deconstructing the Cain Nines

I like almost everything about Herman Cain.  He is as solid a free-market supporter as any of the candidates.  He is a staunch supporter of Israel.  He is a true believer in the Constitution and is 100% pro-life.  His instincts re...

October 2, 2011

The Hybrid Tax Reform Plan

The personal Tax Code contains both Payroll Tax (FICA) and Income Tax components. Based on the fiction that FICA somehow funds a pension plan and a medical insurance plan, discussions of the share of total tax paid by various groups of taxpayers usua...

August 17, 2011

The Debt Ceiling: A Scoreless Tie after One Inning

I am sick of the debt ceiling fiasco and yet I can't let it go. Post mortems abound identifying winners and losers. Some are pleased that we dodged a bullet while others on both sides bemoan their own lack of backbone. The truth is that nothing was a...

July 25, 2011

The Inevitable Financial Crisis

A mere three years after the last fake financial crisis, we are about to suffer an even bigger one. In short order we can expect to see Failure to raise U.S. debt limit, triggering Default on U.S. debt Downgrading of U.S. credit rating Greece, S...

January 25, 2011

The Irony of Secular Justification for Abortion

One of the most popular attacks by pro-abortion activists on the pro-life movement is that the opponents of abortion are trying to impose their own religious beliefs on others. It is undeniable that pro-lifers tend to be partly motivated by personal ...

September 30, 2010

Nightmare on Green Street

Let the good news spread throughout America to every city and village, every farm and hamlet, and every family which is struggling economically. America is energy independent!Have you ever wondered why the financial markets are so patient with the fi...

March 5, 2009

The Toxic Mortgage Hoax

Hardly a day goes by without a story about toxic mortgages being published. You would never know from the stories that an asset cannot be toxic, unless "toxic" is given a whole new meaning. If you hold a stock that is down 50%, (and who doe...

February 22, 2009

Where am I wrong?

This is almost too simple. I must have miscalculated, but here goes. The annual total paid by individual taxpayers (excluding FICA and Medicare) is around a trillion dollars.Suppose we cut the individual tax rate to 0 for a year instead of blowing a ...

January 26, 2009

The Ten Trillion Dollar Black Swan

It is nearly unanimous. The reason for the current financial mess isn't over-leveraging, or criminally negligent management and Directors, or even an excess supply of millions of homes. It is that darn mark-to-market rule. Just ask Warren Buffet, Don...