Media Fails Spectacularly At Smearing Rand Paul For Surgery In Canada

By: Joe Concha
The Hill

Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) announcement that he will be traveling to Canada for hernia surgery is one that should be taught in journalism classes of how not to cover a story.

You may have heard that Paul is in need of said surgery after being physically attacked at his home in 2017 by a neighbor. The senator ended up in the hospital for weeks. The neighbor was charged with assault and sentenced to 30 days in prison.

Fast forward to 2019: Paul needs hernia surgery, one of the injuries he suffered in the attack. He chooses a hospital in Canada, leading to the big "gotcha!" moment some in media pounced on.

Lousiville's Courier Journal's lead paragraph: "Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, one of the fiercest political critics of socialized medicine, will travel to Canada later this month to get hernia surgery."

Get it? Paul is against socialized medicine. Yet, when he needs treatment himself, he forfeits his principles.

One has to read down to the sixth paragraph before learning that the hospital performing the surgery, Shouldice Hospital, is privately owned...

Read more at The Hill.

Tax Bill Is Beginning of Formal Debt Criminalization

The noose is tightening on liberty. The United States Congress is steadily headed to a place where those who owe money to the US government shall be treated criminally. This phenomenon is advancing domestically and now, increasingly, internationally. The first shot in this latest campaign took place in 2010 when US President Barack Obama signed into law The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. It demanded, basically, that foreign banks withhold up to 30 percent of the income that an American abroad might earn. This bill isn't working so well because overseas banks are not cooperating (a state of affairs that was certainly expected). Thus, there is a need for something else: Senate Bill 1813, recently introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). This bill, in part, states that taxpayers with unpaid taxes over US$50,000 may find their passports confiscated. This isn't criminal per se, but the IRS has recently made noises about "sharing" information with police a...

Thomas Sowell Returns

By: Thomas Winslow Hazlett Reason

How To Cripple The Real Estate Market In Five Easy Steps

If the government and the banks had just allowed real estate prices drop to market equilibrium, we'd be out of this mess and housing would truly be affordable. But the government is determined to artificially prop up housing prices, whatever the cost to the economy. If you were head of Central Planning (howdy, Ben!) and were tasked with crippling the real estate market, here's what you would recommend. Choke the market and banking sector with zombie banks... Have the central bank (the Federal Reserve) buy up $1 trillion in toxic, impaired mortgages... Lower the rate that banks can borrow from the Fed to zero, and then pay the banks interest on all funds deposited at the Fed... Try to prop up the housing market by giving poor credit risk buyers loans with only 3% down... Load young people up with the equivalent of a mortgage in student loans... OK,let's see how our Organs of Central Planning are doing: check, check, check, check, check: a perfect score! they're...

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