FreedomTalks

My fellow blogger and former FreedomWorks intern Matt Hittle has a good piece on ag subsidies in his school’s newspaper.
The subsidy program has strayed from its original intent. Rather than aiding needy farmers, the government helps those who need it least: subsidies are paid according to acreage, so large farms and agribusinesses reap the benefits. [...]

Free trade is an issue that has not been at the forefront of the presidential debate, other than the occasional protectionist rhetoric of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or Mike Huckabee.
Watch this short video clip of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gutierrez talk about trade versus protectionism. There is a series of clips from his speech at the [...]

Paul Teller of the Republican Study Committee has a fairly comprehensive list of business quashing bills the 110th Congress has passed during their tenure in power as leadership continues to accumulate the means of production.

Did you grow your own sugar? Did you build your own laptop? Maybe, but odds are you didn’t. You almost certainly traded money for sugar and your laptop.
We buy things because we don’t have the time, resources or know-how to make them ourselves. Heck, sometimes, we’re just too lazy, (thank God for Domino’s Pizza). [...]

Opponents of free trade often sound a lot like this, but in Cato’s Dan Griswold explains why opening up trade helps American workers:
 The middle class isn’t disappearing — it’s moving up. The Census reports that the share of U.S. households earning $35,000 to $75,000 a year (in ‘06 dollars) — roughly, the middle class — [...]

As Foreign Affairs magazine’s Michael Shifter reports, Hugo Chavez is continuing his drive for more power and even more economic ruin in Venezuela.
On the national front, Chávez is resolutely consolidating his autocratic governance model. The National Assembly overwhelmingly approved the articles for a constitutional reform that will be submitted to a national referendum on December [...]

This week the Senate will be debating the pending farm bill on the Senate floor. This latest farm policy outrage will cost taxpayers more than $280 billion over five years. It’s a combination of subsidies, tariffs and price controls, all of which are bad public policies. One of the worst giveaways from Big Government to [...]

Tuesday, the House is expected to vote on HR 3920: The Trade and Globalization act of 2007. Like George Costanza deconstructing the word manure, the innocuous title belies the more sinister aims of the bill. HR 3920 intends to expand the original Trade Adjustment Agreement of 1974 (aimed at helping those in the [...]

It is rare that I agree with the editors of the Washington Post, but today is such a day. They have a good editorial entitled, “Progress on Trade?” that makes the case for voting for the free trade bill with Peru. This bill will be voted on tomorrow in Rep. Charlie Rangel’s Ways and Means [...]

I just read a great article by George Mason University professor Bryan Caplan in the October edition of Reason magazine. Although I could not find a link to the article online, you can pick up the print version at any bookstore.
The article is an excerpt from Caplan’s book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why [...]