The Shutdown Is The Perfect Time To Finally Abolish The TSA

By: Dylan Housman
The Federalist

Our current government shutdown has no end in sight, with both sides dug into positions their respective bases won’t let them abandon. As this game of chicken drags further on, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has gotten more attention than usual.

TSA workers have started calling in sick, slowing down airport lines, and even prompting some terminals to be closed in major cities. While some pundits have pontificated on the chance that a TSA strike could end the shutdown, hardly anyone else is asking a far more interesting question: Do we even need the TSA at all?

After all, complaining about the borderline sexual harassment we all have to go through to travel is a pastime for Americans of all stripes. The proposal gets more serious, though, when one examines the “success” rates of the TSA as well as its costs. Study after study has shown the TSA to be utterly incompetent and incapable of protecting travelers.

Read more at The Federalist.

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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