The LIHEAP of Free Money
Through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), the federal government provides grants — currently about $5 billion of taxpayers’ money a year — to states to assist low-income...
About: Michael Tennant
Posts by Michael Tennant
Oakland Officials Get SMART to Circumvent the Constitution
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,...
Adding Refueling to the Fire of U.S.-Iran Tensions
“Airports in Britain, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates have refused to offer fuel to Iranian passenger jets after unilateral sanctions imposed by Washington,” according to a report in...
ACLU Tries to Ground No-Fly List
Once in a while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) gets something right. Case in point: the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the federal no-fly list. ...
A Taxing Proposal for Online Retailers
There are many positive features about shopping online, including convenience, selection, and speed. There is also the fact that a customer doesn’t have to pay sales tax on items...
Billions for Broadband, But Not One Sense of Liberty
This Independence Day weekend Americans have been reminded once again of the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men...
Steele Galvanizes Neocon Hawks
Michael Kinsley famously defined a gaffe as “when a politician inadvertently tells the truth.” That being the case, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s comment that the war in...
Congress Considers Extending Unemployment Benefits — Again
One ironclad rule of government programs is “if you subsidize something, you will get more of it.” Thus, paying poor, unmarried women to have children increases the number of...
ObamaCare Gives Small Business the Business
Economist Robert Higgs wrote a paper in 1997 arguing that “regime uncertainty” — “a pervasive uncertainty among investors about the security of their property rights in their capital and...
House Republicans Detail ObamaCare’s Broken Promises
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on June 23 released a report entitled ObamaCare: Three Months of Broken Promises. The 41-page document (PDF) serves simultaneously as an exposé of...
GOP-favored Alternatives to ObamaCare
Though a recently released report by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) does a fairly thorough and convincing job of contrasting the reality of ObamaCare with Democrats’ promises...
Rep. Steve King Tries to Force House Vote on ObamaCare Repeal
President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, into law on March 23. Immediately several U.S. Representatives and Senators introduced bills to...
Faisal Shahzad: Exhibit A for Noninterventionism
One of the most dramatic moments in the 2008 election cycle occurred almost a year and a half before Election Day, during a South Carolina debate among GOP presidential...
Gulf Oil Spill Greases the Skids for Federalism
One of the few good things to come from the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is Americans’ increasing realization that the federal government is both incapable...
Federal Flood Insurance Drowning in Red Ink
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is drowning in red ink — $19 billion in red ink, to be exact, according to Fox News. The reason is simple: The...
Feds Fight Fat by Frying Freedom
If you think what you put into your body is your business alone, think again. The federal government, run by people who suffer from “the haunting fear that someone,...
Senate Considers Making the President King of Cyberspace
The Internet is a wonderful invention that has allowed for the dissemination of a wide variety of ideas. Not surprisingly, politicians, never ones to brook dissent cheerfully, are not...
Has Obama Lost His Pull on Capitol Hill?
When President Barack Obama took office, a large segment of the American population had such unrealistically high expectations for him — he was “the Messiah” who would save us...
North Korea: A Grim Warning for the West
The New York Times — the newspaper whose reporter Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 while deliberately covering up Joseph Stalin’s starvation of the Ukrainian people —...