Posts By Author » David Harsanyi

Church of the Holy Contraception
23 May 2012 12:04 am

Are you sick and tired of these moralizing moralizers imposing their morality on the rest of us? I know I am.
Though it’s commonly said that social conservatives would force us to live under theocratic rule if they could, these days the group most successful in imposing its worldview on others happens to be called the Democratic Party.
Just ask more than 40 Catholic organizations — the Catholic University of America, the University of Notre Dame, the archdioceses of New York and Washington, etc. — that filed suit against Obamacare’s contraception mandate. …

JPMorgan Proves We Don’t Need More Regulation
16 May 2012 12:05 am

When banks generate huge profits, they are exploiting the American people, engaging in unadulterated greed and, needless to say, in need of more regulation. And when banks lose too much money? Yep, they’re being insatiably greedy — but stupid, too — and, naturally, in need of more regulation.
The unscrupulous can’t win for losing, apparently.
So when JPMorgan Chase & Co. suffers about $2 billion in losses (probably more) via complex derivative trades that were used by an obscure unit within the bank to hedge against risk, everyone in Washington seems quite …

Obama’s Ridiculous To-Do List
9 May 2012 12:04 am

President Barack Obama has compiled a handy to-do list for Congress that, “if acted upon quickly, will create jobs and help restore middle class security,” according to the White House’s blog. And it’s about time. This is most certainly not, as cynics might suggest, another transparent political scheme. After all, these initiatives, the White House claims, enjoy bipartisan support — which, I gather, is meant to impress you, even if it’s not exactly true.
Regrettably, the sentiment of the to-do list does garner bipartisan support and illustrates how cheap populism leads …

The Hypothetical President
2 May 2012 12:03 am

Plenty of Americans believe that the president’s rhetoric runs counter to facts, but actually, it’s the president’s own counterfactual arguments that matter most.
Which is to say, nearly the entire case for President Barack Obama’s second term is based on not what has happened but what could, would or might under different circumstances. Things, as you’ve surely heard from one official after the next, would have been a whole lot worse without the president’s guidance.
When the Obama campaign intimates that Mitt Romney would have been less decisive to knock off Osama …

Obamacare’s Newest Fraud
25 Apr 2012 12:03 am

If the Obama administration expended as much creative energy saving taxpayers money as it does obscuring the costs of Obamacare, we’d probably have a program worth saving.
But from day one, the health care law has been larded with double-counting gimmickry to conceal its $1 trillion price tag. It started by measuring eight years of services against 10 years of taxes, and it has continued with an avalanche of waivers that shield friends of the White House from the cost of the very law they helped pass.
We now have another unsavory …

Another Day, Another Administration Witch Hunt
18 Apr 2012 12:04 am

So many imaginary villains and so little time.
This week, President Barack Obama is taking the fight to “oil speculators” and “market manipulation” (nee “free enterprise”), demanding that traders put up more money for transactions and government ratchet up enforcement and monitoring. “None of these will bring gas prices down overnight,” Obama helpfully explained in his news conference. “But they will prevent market manipulation and help protect consumers.”
No, they won’t. They’d probably hurt consumers, and they would doubtlessly raise the cost of doing business. So for a few hundred words, let’s …

Obama’s ‘Fairness’ Fiction
11 Apr 2012 12:04 am

President Barack Obama kicked off his re-election campaign in earnest this week with a stirring message of hope and unity for the American people: Eat the rich!
According to media reports, “fairness” will be one of the central messages of the entire Obama campaign. So fittingly, the Senate will pretend to vote on the Paying a Fair Share Act — or the “Buffett rule” — later this week. Sure, the United States may own $15 trillion of debt and a stagnant, underemployed economy, but nothing says leadership like coordinating your populist …

Obama and the Mother of All Tyrannies
4 Apr 2012 12:03 am

Anyone who’s had a casual conversation with his neighbors or is cognizant of reality TV should already be petrified of democracy.
But if the Supreme Court — or, as Barack Obama likes to refer to them, an “unelected group of people” — overturns Obamacare’s individual mandate, the president says that the court would be taking “an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
To begin with, as usual, much of Obama’s rhetoric isn’t exactly accurate. A “strong” majority did not …

Obama Doesn’t Care About Debt
21 Mar 2012 12:04 am

As you may have heard, Senate Democrats haven’t bothered to present a budget in more than 1,000 days and counting — which, unlike many pundits, I don’t find particularly upsetting, considering we’ve been free of a new Democratic budget for 1,000-plus days and counting.
This week, though, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., offered up the House’s budget outline, which — whether misguided, genius, flawed or whatever you might think of it — is a pretty earnest reflection of the concerns of about half the country. The primitive half. So the White House …

Obama’s Union Speech a ‘Load of You-Know-What’
29 Feb 2012 12:04 am

False choices. Populist bromides. A lecture on values. President Barack Obama treated us to some of his greatest hits this week.
Speaking before the United Auto Workers union in Washington, Obama, champion of the working man, challenged auto bailout “naysayers” to “come around” and admit that “standing by American workers was the right thing to do,” as bailouts “saved” the auto industry. (You have to wonder whether downtrodden citizens appreciate just how close they came to having to roller-skate to work.)
“They’re out there talking about you like you’re some special interest …

Aren’t High Gas Prices What Democrats Want?
22 Feb 2012 12:04 am

Gas prices are spiking. That’s great news, right? We have to wean ourselves off the stuff. At least that’s what we’ve been hearing for years. Oil is dirty. We import it from nations that hate our guts (like Canada!). And moreover, we’re running out. Oil is “finite.” Finite much in the way water is finite.
So why aren’t Democrats making the case that the spike in prices is a good thing? Isn’t this basically our energy policy these days? How we “win the future”? If high energy prices were to damage …

Commerce Is the Culture War
15 Feb 2012 12:03 am

It’s always curious to watch the champions of “choice” decide what choices to champion and what choices to dismiss for the common good.
If you believe that the Obama administration’s decision to force Catholic institutions to pay for and offer (directly or indirectly) products the church finds morally objectionable is an assault on religious freedom and free speech, you probably also realize the importance of consumer choice. After all, when government dictates what people buy and sell, it dictates much more.
First, let’s ponder the precedent: Obama argues that government not only …

Obama’s Halftime Hypocrisy
8 Feb 2012 12:03 am

On Super Bowl Sunday, America was treated to the most expensive political commercial in history — brought to you by Chrysler — called “It’s Halftime in America.”
In a series of vapid non sequiturs, Clint Eastwood’s gravelly voice pinned the promise of a city — no, a nation — to government dependency, claiming that “the people of Detroit” lost almost everything but because “we” pulled together and the “Motor City is fighting again” — punching, roaring, imbued with American grit — we survived.
Or, some might argue, after screwing stakeholders, discarding legal …

Republicans’ Obamacare Problem
1 Feb 2012 12:04 am

Once the presidential nomination process is settled — and Lord knows that day can’t come fast enough — Republicans will get back to doing what they do best, getting on Barack Obama’s case. Incredibly, though, they’ll have to do it without one of their most potent arguments.
The Republican candidate, after all, can’t effectively attack what he supports. Today both leading contenders for the nomination have defended the idea of government’s forcing all consumers to buy something in the interest of the common good. An individual mandate is about health insurance …

How To Fight Money in Politics: Free Will
18 Jan 2012 12:04 am

Have you heard about these terrifying super PACs? According to cable news anchors — and other trustworthy sources — they’re like political super-bugs, resistant to free will.
Needless to say, the principled and high-minded political debates we’ve grown accustomed to are now over. Our unsullied national conversation is about to be defiled by a carpet-bombing of television ads and radio spots. And clearly, there is no better way to corrode “democracy” than allowing defenseless voters more exposure to free speech.
Or maybe there is. Heck, I don’t even know anymore. Ever since …

The GOP’s Creative Destruction
11 Jan 2012 12:04 am

Yes, it’s true that unlike some Republicans, Democrats don’t “enjoy firing people.” They enjoy “investing” your money in exploding electric vehicles, bullet trains and other highly unprofitable but morally satisfying economic misadventures. Venture socialism is certainly empathetic.
Venture capitalism, on the other hand, happens to be useful.
And until the presidential aspirations of Newt Gingrich were dashed by this starch-shirted RINO, there existed a target-rich environment for conservatives — namely Mitt Romney’s elastic record on policy. Yet for reasons well-known, Newt and other Republicans have chosen to make Barack Obama’s populist case by attacking …

Santorum: Conservative Technocrat
4 Jan 2012 12:04 am

Rick Santorum, like most Republican candidates, fashions himself the one true conservative running in 2012. If the thought of big, intrusive liberal government offends you, he might just be your man. And if you favor a big, intrusive Republican government, he’s unquestionably your candidate.
People are taking a look at Santorum. Important people. People in Iowa. Even New York Times columnist David Brooks recently celebrated his working-class appeal, newfound viability and economic populism, noting that the former Pennsylvania senator’s book “It Takes a Family” was a “broadside against Barry Goldwater-style conservatism” — …

Bain Over Newt Any Day
14 Dec 2011 12:04 am

This week, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney called on newly minted front-runner and noted historian Newt Gingrich to return the estimated $1.6 million he made providing “strategic advice” to Freddie Mac, the quasi-governmental agency that has done the hard work of making “toxic home mortgages” a forever feature of our national portfolio.
To this, Newt, the great American theorist, unsheathed his trademark intellect and offered a completely irrelevant yet vaguely smart-sounding retort: “If Gov. Romney would give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over …

Obama vs. Capitalism
7 Dec 2011 12:04 am

In Teddy Roosevelt’s era, President Barack Obama explained to the nation this week, “some people thought massive inequality and exploitation was just the price of progress. … But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you want from whoever you can.”
And he’s right. Even today there are people who believe they should have free license to take whatever they want from whomever they can. They’re called Democrats.
Yet the president, uniter of a fractured nation, the mighty slayer of infinite straw men, …

Superfrauds
23 Nov 2011 12:04 am

Our government has the time to worry about school lunch menus in Boise, Idaho, but the Senate hasn’t found the time to pass a budget in Washington, D.C., in nearly three years. H.L. Mencken famously wrote that every decent man is ashamed of his government. This one gives you little choice.
Gridlock is ordinarily the most constructive and moral form of government, but with entitlement programs on autopilot self-destruct, we’re in trouble. So Americans turned their weary eyes toward a dream team, a supercommittee, a 12-member panel of our brightest lights, …

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