In 2008, the State of Oregon inadvertently ran a randomized health insurance experiment. They decided they had just enough money in their annual budget to give Medicaid coverage to an additional ten thousand citizens randomly chosen via a lottery. While there was no improvement in health outcomes, hospital admissions increased by 30 percent, outpatient visits by 35 percent, and ER visits by 40 percent.

In the midst of excessive US economic and geopolitical uncertainties due to rampant inflation and the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 7.7 percent October inflation report comes as a small relief.

Never let a good crisis go to waste. This has been the organizing principle of the political elite during the turmoil, both real and manufactured, of the past couple of years. The federal government, using pandemic-induced fear, expanded tremendously during this time frame (read more on that here and here).

In a city that looks like Paris meets the Iron Curtain, with nice restaurants, city tours, and where I was even able to shoot an AK-47 at a gun range (after going through training and while under supervision), I attended the 2022 Liberty in our Lifetime event in Prague. Last month the “City of 100 Spires” hosted an international gathering of who’s-who of libertarians, Austrians, and others in the free market crowd.

The following is a long-forgotten story regarding the true nature of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s attitude towards free speech. Zelensky has been lionized by the western press since the start of Russia’s invasion, but in the not-so-distant past, many international human rights organizations and concerned Ukrainians were sounding the alarm on dangerous and anti-democratic patterns of behavior exhibited by the President.

Here is what happened…