FreedomTalks

Some tax-day appropriate words from John McCain’s speech today:
Many in Congress think Americans are under-taxed. They speak as if letting you keep your own earnings were an act of charity, and now they have decided you’ve had enough. By allowing many of the current low tax rates to expire, they would impose — overnight — [...]

I’ll refrain from posting my own tax rant (believe me, it’s better for both of us).  But Megan McArdle’s rant warrants posting, and is especially close to my heart because I, too, made a mid year move (and, as with McArdle, it was from New York, which has even more insanely complicated tax-filing procedures — [...]

We recently set up AngryRenter.com, complete with a petition for renters and responsible homeowners to sign opposing a federal mortgage bailout. As I mentioned in the last post, opposition to a bailout is pretty high, as many view it (rightly, I think) as a taxpayer funded lottery payout for folks who gambled on property values. [...]

The editors at NRO point out that, although John McCain seems to have stated opposition to anything that resembles a mortgage bailout (in my view, correctly), it increasingly appears that he wants to effect a plan that is, well, a bailout.
[W]hat McCain said last week is disturbing. He proposed something he calls the HOME plan, [...]

On tax day, everyone’s a fiscal conservative.  Not only are taxes too high, but the process by which we pay them is far, far too complex — as anyone who’s ever filed more than the most basic return will tell you.
Here’s FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey writing on tax code complexity last year:
Americans sent a [...]

In which theoretically minor bans and regulations lead to totally outlandish instances of government overreach and/or unintended consequences.  Today’s example, courtesy of Techdirt:
News is coming out that a Brazilian court has also banned access to Wordpress.com, one of the most popular blog hosting sites around. It looks quite similar to the YouTube situation, where the [...]

Since we’re talking about net neutrality, I should point out that there are calls to extend net neutrality beyond the internet and onto things like wireless telephone networks. As I wrote last year, Columbia law prof Tim Wu has been on the forefront of this movement. Now, other groups are calling for something similar with [...]

My old colleague Wayne Crews makes an important point about net neutrality:
Everybody agrees openness is good; nobody wants their favorite websites or activities blocked.
But it’s not OK to condemn the very possibility of adopting proprietary, exclusionary business models—especially at this critical point in business and communications history. It’s only 2008.
All wealth—infrastructure [...]

There have been a number of folks—not least the lawyers at Google—worrying that the potential Microsoft/Yahoo merger might reduce competition, or give consumers fewer choices, or just plan be bad for the internet (whatever that means). Basically, these are all code-words for antitrust concerns. Now, as a card-carrying antitrust skeptic (for more, see [...]

Watch this great video of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) as he stands up for the taxpayers. Nothing new on his part, just more of the same bold leadership. And nothing new from his colleagues, just more of the same fiscal irresponsibility.