la liberté avant tout
Everyone has a healthcare horror story. A hidden charge on the hospital bill. A last minute test or scan that ends up costing four figures. Hours spent on the phone with insurance companies to follow up on a claim and get a reimbursement. Prescriptions costing hundreds of dollars. And it’s getting more expensive. Since 2007,…
This week in the nation’s capital, the House Agriculture Committee will decide the fate of various agricultural subsidies and food benefits for millions of Americans. The bill, H.R. 2 , known as the Farm Bill, includes provisions on crop insurance, dairy prices, wetland conservation, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) adjustments, and dozens of other rules and regulations…
By Yaël Ossowski | Washington Examiner For far too long, domestic producers of sugar have gotten a sweet deal from the federal government. Thanks to the U.S. sugar program, sugar beet and sugar cane farmers have had the advantage of minimum prices, cheap loans, and tariffs to keep out competitors — all at taxpayer expense….
To the Trump protectionist hammer, every product imported looks like a nail. On Monday, we learned that President Trump’s trade enforcer, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, announced new tariffs on solar panels and washing machines assembled outside the U.S. For washers and dryers from companies such as Samsung and LG, steep tariffs as high as…
In authoritarian regimes across the world, government control and regulation of the Internet is a given. Here in the U.S., we’ve managed to keep our online world relatively free from any bureaucratic oversight. That changed in 2015, based on a mandate from President Barack Obama, when the Federal Communications Commission voted to classify Internet Service…
By Yaël Ossowski | Washington Examiner With a slew of agenda items in front of President Trump, there is one more which requires the utmost attention: infrastructure. Bridges, highways, electric grids, water, and sewer systems — all of which are aging — have fallen off the national agenda because of gridlock in the Capitol. If…
In scenes straight from a 1984-esque dystopian thriller, armed policemen from the Spanish Guardia Civil descended into the streets of the Catalonian region over the weekend to halt a planned referendum for independence. Clubs were whirled in the air, polling stations demolished, and voters shoved to the ground. At last count, more than 1,300 people…
By Yaël Ossowski | Watchdog.org American uproar over revelations of mass government spying has provoked a significant revision of the actions of U.S. spy agencies across the board. While ire has been focused at the Obama and Bush administrations, such snooping was given the green light by none other than former President Ronald Reagan over 30 years ago. As revealed in testimony during…