Will your vote count in 2020? Will your neighbors’ vote count? That might depend on whether you vote in person or try to vote by mail. In states with a significant vote by mail component, hijacking mail-in ballots is the tool of choice for those trying to steal elections. In 18 states, a photo identification...
As the People’s Republic of China grapples with the deadly Novel Coronavirus outbreak, there is mounting evidence that China’s economy is taking a major hit. The latest indicator is that U.S. crude oil futures are at their lowest prices in more than a year, down 21 percent from their January highs to $49.45 a barrel for the...
After 31 years in California, making a good living in commercial real estate, John Ghiselli had enough. His youngest child was out of high school and he was free to move where he wanted to with minimal disruption to his family life. He chose Texas. And he’s hoping you will, too—he’ll even help. Ghiselli wasn’t...
Economists used to that say “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold.” Could the same apply to China—as it struggles to contain the fallout from the coronavirus? After days of paralyzing dithering, the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO) finally declared a Global Health Emergency yesterday over the Novel Coronavirus, a week after failing to...
An entire cottage industry has sprung up around the nation, with books, articles, and pundits warning about an impending Electoral College blue shift. The theory is simple; blue-state economic migrants, in search of the opportunity they can’t find in their high-tax states, bring their liberal voting attitudes to their new homes, and then vote to enact the...
John Merline, writing in Issues and Insights notes the elite left’s “apoplectic fit when President Donald Trump started talking about dishwashers at his Milwaukee rally this week.” This isn’t the first time Trump talked dishwashers and it likely won’t be the last. Republican electeds and their consultants have been openly fretting about professional suburban women. These largely...
The Feb. 3 Democratic Iowa caucuses are only weeks away, followed eight days later by the New Hampshire primary. Prior to these two key skirmishes in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, national polling suggests that former Vice President Joe Biden is leading the pack, followed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, with South Bend...
China’s social credit system is planned to go active throughout that nation this year. It’s both a totalitarian dream and a civil libertarian nightmare. Here, it is important to understand that “totalitarian” means a form of government in which everything is the concern of the state: where and how you live, your faith, how many...
The 2019 U-Haul state migration index is out, and the top states Americans are moving to are no surprise—Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington. These are states with light state and local tax burdens. Conversely, four of the top five states people are fleeing—Illinois, California, Michigan, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania—feature high taxes (though Michigan’s tax burden...
California’s Assembly Bill 5 just went into effect. With some exceptions, the law takes aim at the new gig economy and independent contractors, forcing businesses to choose between hiring contractors as employees or laying them off. A week before Christmas, Vox Media’s SB Nation, a sports website, sent notice to some 200 of its California-based freelancers that they...
President Trump signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act into law on December 22, 2017. The tax cut, combined with billions in federal regulatory relief, reinvigorated the economic expansion which is now in its 126th month, making it the longest recovery in U.S. history. While the tax reform law cut taxes for most individual taxpayers and...
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its 2018 data for fatal occupational injuries. As with many government reports, much of the data reflects common sense with a few interesting outliers. In 2018, 5,250 people sustained fatal injuries at work. To put that into perspective, an estimated 609,640 Americans died of cancer in 2018, 116 times as many...