California politicians are stupid. Faced with a budget deficit of their own making, rather than make across the board cuts and put a halt on excessive (and in many cases unscrupulous) spending programs, California legislators of both parties have agreed on a massive tax hike to help overcome a $40 billion budget shortfall.
Led by legislative [...]

“Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their losses…in effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to dis-elect them.”
- Ralph Nader
Conservatives hate socialism. We know this is true because they tell us how evil socialism really [...]

Boy oh boy, George W. Bush must be doing the happy dance in the Oval Office this morning as newspapers and media outlets are all chanting the same verse: personal incomes in May rose to the highest levels in 33 years! 
What? I thought we were in some kind of recession. And rising gas prices are [...]

Some things are repeated so often that they become accepted as truth, despite the fact that there is little reality attached to them. In politics, one of these “truths” is that Democrats will always raise taxes and Republicans will always try to reduce taxes. But how true is this really? And maybe more importantly, what [...]

On paper, public transportation is a fantastic idea. You can move more people with less vehicles. You can move more people with less energy. You can keep less vehicles on the road, causing a decrease in emissions and pollution. And you can offer low cost transit to people who can’t afford personal vehicles.
Boiled down into [...]

If I have to listen to another Republican complain about how a new Democratic president is just going to raise their taxes and increase the size of government I might just put my foot right up their ass. After all, it’s precisely because of the Republican party, the Republican Congress, and an asshat of a [...]

As Congress struggles to pass legislation that will keep SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) funded, they once again turn to tobacco taxation as the key. Depending on which bill you look at (House or Senate) the proposed federal tax increase on tobacco would be 45 or 61 cents (per pack of cigarettes).
Tobacco taxation, in [...]

President Bush presented his 2008 budget recently, and the numbers don’t lie- to pay for his massive tax cuts for the wealthy and his ongoing war on whomever he considers a terrorist this week, Bush proposed cuts to programs that actually help the poor, needy, disabled and America’s veterans. How’s that for compassionate conservatism?
In the [...]

The following facts are necessary to understand, as they play an integral part of the following essay.
FACT: Oil is the world’s largest source of convertible energy at the present time.
FACT: Most of the world’s known oil sources lie beneath the sands of the Middle East, specifically in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, in Russia, and [...]

It was 241 years ago today that King George III and the English parliament enacted the Stamp Act on the American colonies, further setting the stage for our eventual Revolution and Independence.
For those who don’t remember high school history (or were never taught it in the first place) the Stamp Act was enacted by the [...]