Tag: money

  • Fundraising Tells Us a Story

    The third quarter just ended which means its time that the public can start learning how candidates have done on fundraising for the last quarter. The fundraising reports are pretty dry and generally boring. They always result in reports about which opponents in any given race are getting the most cash such as Bennett outpaces…

  • How Economies Work

    photo credit: unforth When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations he was not writing about how economies and markets should work, he was writing about how they do work. Anyone who wants to know how they do work must read that book. Be prepared – it’s long and very detailed and you must be…

  • Legislator as Fundraiser

    When it comes to raising money to run a campaign an ideal legislator needs to understand the real value of money in politics. They need to accept that a serious campaign will require more money than they can personally supply (unless they have significant personal wealth). They need to be comfortable asking people to support…

  • Legislator as Candidate

    My experience with many campaigns – especially for any office higher than state legislator – is that the majority of them spend their time talking about a) the fact that they need your money to run the campaign, and b) the fact that whoever they are running against is not the right person for the…

  • Big Government = Big Solutions

    photo credit: angel_shark If you want to walk a thousand miles you do it one step at a time. If you want to eat an elephant you do it one bite at a time. The genius of big government is that Congress believes that since there are more than 500 of them they can swallow…

  • Money Down the Drain

    A little statement from an article titled “Cash For Clunkers”: Did It Work? got me wondering about the fate of three hundred million dollars. When the $3 billion is exhausted, roughly 600,000 vehicles will have been swapped for more fuel-efficient models, based on statistics released from the government so far. Do the math there and…

  • Government Can’t Do Charity

    Those pushing the need for health care reform spend a lot of time talking about the uninsured and the many unfortunate people who cannot or will not afford to pay for health care. (Mostly they talk about the “cannot pay” people except when they are proposing to have individual mandates, then they start talking about…

  • The Cost Issue is MIA

    Matthew Piccolo has a good summary of some of the major issues that are attached to the current health care proposal. That seemed like a good complementary article to what I wanted to point out about the Health Care Reform Freight Train™ speeding through the halls of Congress – there is a major issue that…

  • An Affordable Health Care System

    On Sunday, July 5, Paul Krugamn laid out his argument that affordable health care for everyone was an achievable goal.[quote] Many people would be surprised to learn that I agree with him on that. He correctly argues that we already cover the bulk of the most expensive health care patients by covering the elderly under…

  • Economic Contradiction

    Paul Krugman and I agree on little politically (I have at times agreed with him when he was arguing that TARP was a bad idea – although we disagreed on the reasons why) and despite the fact that my assumptions about the nature of sound economics differ from his most of the time I recognize…