The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability recently hosted Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf in a hearing to discuss the agency’s recent blemishes. The Committee’s website stated that “under the Biden Administration, the FDA has stumbled from crisis to crisis.” The amount of “stumbling”—even for a government agency—has been dumbfounding. To list a few examples: In 2022, the US underwent a crippling national shortage of infant formula. While store shelves remained empty, the FDA maintained its mandatory 90-day waiting period for form ..read more

The story of where the Oakland Athletics baseball team will play after they leave the Oakland Coliseum this season has taken some surprising turns. If you’ve been following that story, you already know that as the 2023 MLB season ended, there were real questions about where the team would play its next several seasons. Its deal to play at the city’s stadium had come to an end. Still, it will be years before it has a new stadium built in Las Vegas at the site of the old Tropicana Resort and Casino, which closed in early April 2024. The buildings on the landmar ..read more

This November, Floridians will vote on an amendment that would allow citizens over 21 years old to use and possess marijuana for recreational reasons. Early polls indicate bi-partisan support. However, whether the amendment builds enough support to reach the 60 percent approval threshold in the next seven months is anyone’s guess.  If passed, Florida would become the 25th state to legalize recreational marijuana. Even if it doesn’t, ten other states could legalize recreational marijuana use this year. Over the past twelve years, recreational marijuana legalization has rapidly expanded thr ..read more

Once upon a time—in 2010 to be exact—in the land of D.C., the great and powerful Obama proposed a new law called “Obamacare.” Now, in those long-ago days, despite U. S. debt totaling $13 trillion, most Americans still held the superstitious notion that new federal legislation must include the means to pay for it. Accordingly, the emperor’s courtiers came up with a noble solution: “Eureka! We will take over the federal student loan program, capturing its billions of dollars in profits to cover the cost of Obamacare!” And, in yet another case study of the feds’ financial meddlings, the takeover ..read more

April 17, 2024 marked eight years since my mother, Victoria Billingsley, departed this life at the age of 94. It was also the same day she received a letter from Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare about “the recent cyber incident” affecting local hospitals in the Southwest Ontario region. “We can confirm,” the letter explained, “that, unfortunately, you were included in this group and some of the personal health information that you provided to Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare was stolen by cyber criminals. Based on our analysis of these files, we believe ..read more

FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan should read Shuhart’s article but don’t hold your breath. Apparently, she doesn’t know the sordid history of FTC’s anti-antitrust enforcement. Would you expect Samsung to have been pressing Khan to take on its Apple case? I’d bet on it. Khan should remember as she reads the piece that Shughart actually overstates Apple’s competitive “market share of 35 or 40 percent” by covering only Apple’s external competitors. Its measured share (by the FTC) overlooks that Apple itself is its biggest, most dominant “competitor.” Apple’s iPhone models are “durable,” which means ..read more

The U.S. government borrows an average of $10 billion daily, which means the national debt increases by $1 trillion every 100 days. It is no secret that paying interest on the national debt has become the fastest-growing category of government spending during President Biden’s tenure. That’s the inevitable outcome of combining an oversized national debt with excessive spending and rising interest rates. Already, the cost of paying the gross interest on the national debt exceeds $1 trillion—that’s just the cost of interest on the existing nation ..read more

On April 5, the government of Ecuador made the controversial decision to raid the embassy of Mexico in Quito to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas just hours after Mexico had granted him political asylum. Glas, who was twice convicted on bribery and corruption charges and spent five years in prison, is under investigation once again, this time for the alleged mismanagement of reconstruction funds in the aftermath of an earthquake. In December, he took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito. He was aware that López Obrador, the Mexican president, who, like other Latin American populists, h ..read more

Spending more doesn’t always get you more and that includes money going towards combatting America’s ongoing opioid crisis. But don’t tell that to the Biden Administration. A recent budget proposal by the Republican Study Committee aims to cut federal non-defense spending by 30 percent. This includes funds sent to states to address opioid overdoses and misuse. The proposal specifically targets State Opioid Response grants, which have supplied state governments with the means to purchase about 10 million overdose reversal medication kits since 2018 for reduced funding.  The White ..read more

If approved by the US Postal Rate Commission, the price of a first-class stamp will go up by five cents in July. It would be the fourth stamp price increase since January 2023. America’s state-owned, monopolistic Postal Service, which is in the process of implementing a ten-year reorganization plan to improve its operations, claims that additional revenue is needed to cover the rising costs of delivering the mail. Taxpayers and stamp buyers have heard that excuse before from an agency whose budget is deeply in the red year after year. (The Postal Service lost more than $9.2 billion last f ..read more