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Posts Tagged ‘quote of the day’
May 4th, 2018 at 1:25 pm
Holman Jenkins on the Return to FCC Sanity Under Chairman Ajit Pai
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From the always-insightful Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal in his latest “Business World” commentary:

Mr. Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, cares about good policy.  That hasn’t been the rule for years.  During the Obama era, tech and telecom policy were driven by White House interest in whipping up millennials and exploiting public hostility to cable providers.”

December 14th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Quote of the Day
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Reason’s Matt Welch on President Obama and the “Economic Consensus” of his fiscal policy:

Obama is a political master at drawing boundaries around the “respectable” debate and marginalizing a swath of his critics as being beyond the pale. Will he succeed at doing it with economics, too? We only know that he will try.

December 10th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Quote of the Day
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Moderate Senator Olympia Snowe Discussing Health Care Reform:

Every line and every word in this 2,000-page document matters. . . When it comes to the subject at hand, the most consequential health-care legislation in the history of our country and reordering $33 trillion in health-care spending over the coming decade, surely, we can and must do better.

December 3rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Quote of the Day
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The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me.  The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.

Clive Crook on the ClimateGate Global Warming Scandal.

November 23rd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Quote of the Day
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This might be a bit too “wonky” but here is the take from two Harvard economists on fiscal policy:

Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases. As for fiscal adjustments, those based upon spending cuts and no tax increases are more likely to reduce deficits and debt over GDP ratios than those based upon tax increases.

Bottom line: tax increases are bad.
HT: Greg Mankiw

October 28th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Quote of the Day
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“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action…  The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

From a 1994 Congressional Budget Office report on the Clinton health care plan.

October 2nd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Quote of the Day
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From Gerald P. O’Driscoll at the Cato Institute:

The loss of 263,000 nonfarm jobs is another depressing economic statistic reinforcing the prospects of a jobless and joyless economic recovery. Job losses were widespread, but concentrated in construction, manufacturing, retail trade and government. Employers want to fire, not hire.  The reasons for this lie in Washington, where lawmakers are busy piling on spending, taxes, and mandates.  From an employer’s perspective, each new hire is a liability.  The Obama administration’s economic recovery plan, which was centered on job creation, is now a manifest failure. The stimulus brew it concocted has proven to be an economic depressant.”

October 1st, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Quote of the Day
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This is from Senator Jim DeMint’s op-ed in today’s Washington Examiner:

So insatiable is Washington’s appetite to spend that the federal government has not only spent all the money it has, but all the money previous generations were thought to have saved, and now we’re working our way through the money future generations hope to earn. What our government has done is a crime. And yet, almost no one in Washington – in either party – seems interested in the giant iceberg we’re steaming toward… Not when there are deckchairs to rearrange!”

September 25th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Quote of the Day: Seat-Warmers in the Senate
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From David Boaz at the Cato Institute:

“[A]s of 2005 there were 18 senators who gained office at least partly through their family ties – sons, daughters, wives, nephews of former senators, governors, presidents, and so on.  The Founders envisioned the Senate as an assembly of wise and accomplished men, chosen for their experience and judiciousness. Political campaigns that favor the handsome, the glib, the panderers, and the best fundraisers are bad enough. But a Senate full of legacies and seat-warmers is especially unfortunate.”

September 24th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Quote of the Day
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This gem is from David Boaz at the Cato Institute:

Wouldn’t it save time if the Massachusetts legislature would just pass a law saying that if the governor is a Democrat, he fills any Senate vacancy, while if the governor is a Republican, a special election must be held?”

September 21st, 2009 at 11:36 am
Quote of the Day
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From AEI’s Steven Hayward, writing in the WSJ:

“[T]o meet the target the climate campaigners have set, the U.S., Europe and Japan will have to replace virtually their entire fossil-fuel energy infrastructure. For the U.S., the 80% target means reducing fossil-fuel greenhouse-gas emissions to a level the nation last experienced in 1910. On a per-capita basis, we’d have to go back to the level of about 1875.”

September 17th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Quote/Metaphor of the Day
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Professor Greg Mankiw on the CBO’s “neutral” cost estimate for the Senate’s new health care bill:

In other words, the plan would reduce the deficit if it were carried out as written, but there is good reason based on historical experience to be skeptical that it would be.

Let me try to put CBO’s point in a more familiar setting: Your friend Joe, who says he wants to lose weight, asks you for an extra slice of pie after dinner. Naturally, you are doubtful about the wisdom of the request.

“Ahem, Joe,” you whisper, “Aren’t there a lot of calories in that?”

“Yes,” he says, “but the pie is part of a larger plan. I am committed not only to eating that slice of pie but also to going to the gym every day for the next week and spending at least half a hour on the treadmill. The exercise will more than work off those extra calories.”

“But that’s what you said last week, when you asked for an extra piece of cake. And you never made it to the gym.”

“Yes, I know,” Joe replies ruefully, “but this time I really mean it….Can you please pass the pie?”

September 3rd, 2009 at 10:50 am
Quote of the Day
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From the Washington Post Editorial Board:

Much is expected of elected officials. Much more is expected and demanded of those entrusted with chairmanships and the power that comes with them, especially when it involves the nation’s purse strings. From all that we’ve seen thus far, Mr. Rangel has violated that trust continually and seemingly without care.

September 1st, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Quote of the Day
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“Being a libertarian means living with an almost unendurable level of frustration. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events.

Imagine spending two decades warning that government policy is leading to a major economic collapse, and then, when the collapse comes, watching the world conclude that markets do not work.

Imagine continually explaining that markets function because they have a built in corrective mechanism; that periodic contractions are necessary to weed out unproductive ventures; that continually loosening credit to avoid such corrections just puts off the day of reckoning and inevitably leads to a larger recession; that this is precisely what the government did during the 1920’s that led to the great depression; and then, when the recession hits, seeing it offered as proof of the failure of laissez-faire capitalism.”

Professor John Hasnas on being a libertarian today.

August 31st, 2009 at 11:01 am
Quote of the Day
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“Who caught the fish that I will eat tonight?  Who trucked it from the sea to my hotel?  Who will cook that fish?  Who designed the dishwasher that cleaned the plate and utensils that I will use? I know almost none of the millions of people whose daily efforts make possible my life and that of countless other Americans.  These people don’t hatch grand plans for arrogantly re-working society.  They offer only to deal voluntarily with me and with others, never pretending – unlike Mr. Kennedy – to be endowed with a mysterious genius and a saintly inspiration justifying haughty intrusions into the affairs of others.”

Professor Donald Boudreaux writing for Cafe Hayek.

August 13th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Quote of the Day

There is acknowledgement that the US China trade relationship needs to be rebalanced, but little imagination on how to proceed.  Deep down, our leaders and policymakers have convinced themselves that for all its flaws, the old system was better than anything we are going to think of, and that simply restoring confidence will fix everything, at least for as long as they remain in office.” Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

August 12th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Freedom Line Quote of the Day
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“Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health.  This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health,” John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal.