— Governors of five states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country's 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure, as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.

— The global warming alarmist in chief has unveiled the environmentalists' real objective. And no, protecting the planet is not their top concern. In a letter addressed to President-elect Obama and his wife, Michelle, James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, makes an appeal for a carbon tax, ...

— It’s hardly a news flash that many people who are widely regarded as lions of the pro-market side have gone over to the dark side in recent months. I am not going to name any names; if you are one of the guilty parties, you know who you are; and ...

— Treasuries recorded their biggest annual gain since 1995 as falling stocks and frozen credit markets drove investors to the relative safety of U.S. government debt. Yields of all maturities touched record lows as financial firms’ losses in the credit crisis exceeded $1 trillion and policy makers made unprecedented moves to ...

— [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_gU50mfehI#t=0m18s[/youtube] Milton Friedman responds to questions of morality and principle regarding capitalism

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— To understand the scope of Obama’s dirigiste designs, it’s useful to recall his campaign gaffe (a "gaffe," of course, is an instance in which a politician is caught candidly disclosing his intentions) in which he informed an audience in Roseburg, Oregon ...

— Not to spoil the party, but this is not a new idea. Keynesian "pump-priming" in a recession has often been tried, and as an economic stimulus it is overrated. The money that the government spends has to come from somewhere, which means from the private economy in higher taxes or ...

— In the end you have to ask, is it really worth trillions in subsidies, vast tariffs, impositions all around, just to keep what you declare to be an essential industry alive? Well, eventually, as we have learned in the case of pianos, this is not essential. Things come and things ...

— The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence ("aggress") against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be ...

— Pete Sepp, vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, said the polar bear exhibit and many of the other proposals in the report are just plain pork. "To the people supporting them, these proposals aren't a joke, but to the taxpayers funding them, yes -- this will be a joke ...

— The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the ...

— The Treasury sold $27 billion of three-month bills yesterday at a discount rate of 0.005 percent, the lowest since it starting auctioning the securities in 1929. The U.S. also sold $30 billion of four-week bills today at zero percent for the first time since it began selling the debt in ...

— Texas is currently the envy of the nation with an $11 billion budget surplus. How did the state do it? For starters, the Texas Constitution gives the state Comptroller of Public Accounts (a chief fiscal officer, of sorts) the responsibility to certify the state's budget and send back any spending ...