STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS Showing 3151 - 3200 of 6687
Keep the Tinfoil Handy
June 26, 2015
Critics often deride those wary of government surveillance as paranoid tinfoil hat wearers. We're learning now that paranoia may be entirely appropriate. It turns out the FBI really is watching Americans from the sky. We know this because the FBI itself said so ...
Democracy and Baboons
June 25, 2015
After reading the quote above, our first thought was that baboons already have run for office and even won. This would explain legislative behavior in many democratic countries. Scientists missed the opportunity to study this, however, by focusing instead on fu ...
More Dangerous than ISIS?
June 24, 2015
During the Cold War, American soldiers learned to fear the Soviet Union's advanced weaponry and fanatical communist foot soldiers. Where did we get this fear? Our leaders instilled it in us. As it turned out, the fears were misplaced. We learned in the 1990s th ...
Attention Millennials: Daddy Warbucks Wants You!
June 23, 2015
Ron Fournier of National Journal knows "a better way to fight ISIS." Obviously, Pentagon planners should have consulted him months ago. He has just the ticket to solve their vexing challenge. What is this solution? Give more people "skin in a very dangerous gam ...
On Charleston, Fear and 9/11
June 22, 2015
In a literal sense, the word "tragedy" does not describe what happened in Charleston, South Carolina last week. Storms and earthquakes are tragic. No human summons these events and no human can stop them. Murder, on the other hand, is entirely human. It occurs ...
Peace at Last in the GMO War?
June 19, 2015
The war between those who oppose and embrace genetically modified food crops has almost no middle ground. Those who know what "GMO" means are enthusiastically for or against it. We explained back in April how The Free Market is Solving the GMO Problem. Consumer ...
U.S. Navy: Up to No Good?
June 18, 2015
We saw the Navy's "Global Force for Good" commercials on TV a few months ago, and thought them strange at the time. The service it portrayed bore no resemblance to reality. Instead of carrier-launched fighter jets pursuing terrorists, it showed earnest youngste ...
Top Leaker Invited to Bilderberg Insider Fest
June 17, 2015
The secretive Bilderberg group held its annual conclave at an Austrian mountain resort last weekend. As the Guardian article says, the event was private in every imaginable way. Invited guests only, Chatham House rules, everything off the record and certainly n ...
Stop Blaming Snowden, Start Questioning Obama
June 16, 2015
Newspapers once had journalistic standards, one of which was not to report events as factual without a primary source and a confirming second source. Those standards fell away long ago. The Sunday Times claims National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowd ...
Barron's Handicaps the GOP
June 15, 2015
The quadrennial American presidential slugfest is right around the corner. Our wish here at Chez Gastonne is that all the candidates would lose and the country proceed into the future confidently leaderless. Sadly, that is not one of the options. We took note o ...
Police, Pool Parties and Whiny Bureaucrats
June 12, 2015
News coverage of the McKinney police incident faded quickly once the out-of-control Cpl. Casebolt resigned. Most commentary has been on the racial dimension, but we are more interested in the growing disconnect between the American public and those who are supp ...
Janet Yellen's Crocodile Tears
June 11, 2015
That the Federal Reserve is an insular institution should surprise no one. Nor should the fact that it lets valuable information leak to the benefit of its friends. This time, however, members of Congress are taking an interest in the matter, and the Fed is not ...
The TPP is Not About Free Trade
June 10, 2015
This Reuters opinion article makes some odd claims about China and international trade. It ends by condemning the nascent Trans-Pacific Partnership. There are plenty of better reasons to oppose TPP. The author first blames economic interdependence for China's " ...
Hungry FBI Creating Fake Terrorists
June 09, 2015
The FBI has a problem. Not enough terrorists are plotting to attack the United States, so agents find they must manufacture more of them. The method appears to be working, too. Dozens of FBI-appointed terrorists now sit safely in prison and no longer threaten t ...
Daddy Warbucks Wins Again
June 08, 2015
Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi may be the most honest politician on the planet, at least judging by this one statement. His troops most certainly did "lose a lot of weapons." Let's add this up. Iraqi forces abandoned and/or lost some 2,300 armored Humvees, 40 M1A1 ...
Fishermen Flout Law, Save Lives
June 05, 2015
Government action is necessary, we are told, to solve thorny social problems and keep everyone safe. The Rohingya refugees prove the point wrong. One government drove them into desperation and exile, several other governments refused to help and humble citizens ...
USA Freedom and Obama's Doublespeak
June 04, 2015
Almost everything the president says about the USA Freedom Act is false. He does not at all "welcome" the law's passage. If Obama had his way, Congress would have never even considered this law because the National Security Agency's illegal activities would sti ...
Big Brother is Watching Closer Than You Think
June 03, 2015
There was a time in America when fear of government observation would get one accused of tinfoil-hat paranoia. Those days are gone. Thanks to Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, we know Big Brother is watching. The only question is how close. The newest de ...
The Ominous Warning in Denny Hastert's Downfall
June 02, 2015
Former House Speaker Denny Hastert's indictment is remarkable for several reasons, not least being the way it exposes the U.S. government's inherent corruption. Why is it that former senators and representatives so often become wealthy? It is because they can d ...
War, American Style
June 01, 2015
Misty-eyed Americans who sing of "the rockets' red glare" miss the irony the rest of the world sees. All the evidence suggests we love nothing more than lobbing missiles at countries that resist our will. Daniel Larison, the writer quoted above, references this ...
Lollipops and Marshmallows: Another Reason for Cannabis Legalization
May 29, 2015
Efforts to end prohibition of marijuana use by adults in the US continue to move forward at the state level. Legal sales are already underway in Colorado and Washington State with Oregon, Alaska and Washington DC not far behind. Some limited form of medical mar ...
Paid-for Patriotism in the NFL
May 28, 2015
If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, the National Football League must be something even lower. Those feel-good moments in the pregame are simply nothing more than your tax dollars at work. On the other hand, we all know the NFL is in business to mak ...
State-Run Lotteries: The Desperation Tax
May 27, 2015
As taxes go, state-run lotteries seem like a good idea. No one forces you to pay, they don't infringe on your privacy, and the games raise money very efficiently. The Washington Post writer points out that lotteries prey disproportionately on the poor. People w ...
Central Bank Caught Lying
May 26, 2015
We are not at all surprised that the Bank of England or any other central bank would lie about its activities. Having their own documents prove they are lying is unusual, however. This might have been a major embarrassment for the BOE, but the financial media e ...
Back Door Worse Than No Door
May 25, 2015
Tech industry giants say they are alarmed the federal government would demand back-door access to the encryption built into their products. Are they crying crocodile tears? Maybe, but the point is still a good one. Imagine if, instead of memory chips, we were t ...
American Gestapo
May 22, 2015
Stories like this one aren't new to Daily Bell readers. We think often of the state's outrageous overreach in the War on Drugs. Yet this one strikes a different chord. The victim wasn't slumped in a black SUV cruising through the hood. He was on a passenger tra ...
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Texas Only Pretends to Be Conservative
May 21, 2015
Most limited-government conservatives usually prefer as much local autonomy as possible. When government action is necessary, it should occur at the lowest possible level. They resist centrally imposed, one-size-fits-all laws and policies. That's what they say. ...
Where's All the (Fake) Money?
May 20, 2015
U.S. currency in circulation is now about $11,000 per U.S. household. It was only $7,000 per household in 2008. Years of QE seem to have enlarged the inventory of both electronic blips and paper currency. "Where is all this currency?" asks Barron's. "The Fed ca ...
Free Trade and the Real World
May 19, 2015
Globalization and international trade are in the headlines as Congress considers whether to give President Obama "Fast Track" negotiating authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Opponents say TPP is less about free trade than giving privileges to special i ...
Cuba Has a Cigar Cure
May 18, 2015
More than 50 years of U.S. economic sanctions did not bring Cuba to its knees. Now, with normal relations in sight, we are learning that Cuba not only survived but may have surpassed the U.S. in some respects. If Cimavax truly works as well as the Cubans say, t ...
Freedom From the Grid
May 15, 2015
The pursuit of freedom means more than escaping the government. True freedom requires independence – the state of "not depending" on outside help. In an advanced economy, very few people can claim to be fully independent. We all depend on each other to meet v ...
IRS Enlists in the War on Legal Marijuana
May 14, 2015
If anyone needs another reason to hate the federal income tax and the agency that enforces it, this is a good one. The IRS bans marijuana sellers from deducting most business expenses, even though they are operating in full compliance with all state and local l ...
Digital Money Forging Ahead
May 13, 2015
Evolutionary biologists tells us that humanity itself came from Africa. Now that continent may be leading the world back toward honest money. The EcoCash concept doesn't seem to offer a full escape from fractional reserve banking. The fact that accounts earn in ...
Fight the Fed from the Inside
May 12, 2015
Faux transparency is a favorite tool of entrenched bureaucratic institutions. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's 1980s "Glasnost" is one example. The idea is to divert resistance into a box where it can vent its frustrations without forcing any real change. Ofte ...
The Right to Bear Virtual Arms
May 11, 2015
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. Two centuries later, these rights are colliding. What will we see when the smoke clears? The Framers wisely placed ...
Courts Won't Stop Data-Hungry Feds
May 08, 2015
These two court cases in the same week illustrate the maddening distinctions and hurdles that stand between citizens and any semblance of privacy. The first case involved a criminal conviction made with the help of phone location data given to law enforcement b ...
Another Problem with Fiat Money
May 07, 2015
Once again, NYT misses the point. Yes, Federal Reserve leaks are bad. Authorities should identify the leakers and deal with them. But here is the bigger question: Why is Federal Reserve information so valuable? Fed officials from Janet Yellen on down maintain t ...
Corporations vs. Capitalism
May 06, 2015
In theory, profit-seeking colleges ought to deliver better service at a lower price than state-run institutions. Some probably do, but a tangled web of political influence and regulatory interference makes it hard to know. The Corinthian College's bankruptcy fi ...
Fiat Currencies Are All Funny Money
May 05, 2015
If you've been dying to know whether the Chinese yuan was at fair value, you can finally rest easy. The IMF says it's almost there. This leaves another question, though. By what authority does the International Monetary Fund decide a currency's value is "fair" ...
American Cops are Upgraded Slave Patrols
May 04, 2015
Ask a traditional small-government conservative to define government's appropriate role, and most will list police as a necessary function. We need them to maintain order and stop evildoers. Yet history shows that societies around the globe managed to maintain ...
Market is Solving Climate Change
May 01, 2015
Politicians like Al Gore have made millions whipping crowds into a frenzy over "Climate Change," the newer term for what they once called "Global Warming." Whether or not one believes the world is in peril, fossil fuels are certainly not pleasant. No one enjoys ...
Sunset is Coming for NSA Dragnet
April 30, 2015
The program described in this article is one of the less-intrusive dragnets Edward Snowden exposed, but it is nonetheless unacceptable. Supposedly, it does not give the government the content of phone calls, only the "metadata" such as date, time, location, num ...
If You Encrypt Your Cellphone the Terrorists Win
April 30, 2015
If you value privacy and want to encrypt your cellphone to keep hackers and other snoops from rifling through your personal business then you are aiding terrorists. At least that's what the top prosecutor in New York City said recently when discussing new encry ...
A Tale of Two Borders
April 29, 2015
Publishers like nothing more than to attack censorship. They are right to do so; government attempts to suppress knowledge are always repugnant. Too often, however, the resistance turns into self-righteousness. The NYT leans in that direction when it reports th ...
John Deere's Weird Idea of 'Ownership'
April 28, 2015
Property rights are the cornerstone of a free society. They were already under attack long before John Deere started computerizing farm tractors. Usually the attackers are from some level of government, but large corporations are joining the fun. It's official: ...
Drugs, Sex and Law Enforcement
April 27, 2015
We have to agree with Mr. Adler on one point. Replacing Administrator Leonhart with an animated Canadian Mountie would be a disservice to our country. If we must tolerate agencies like the DEA, they should at least have three dimensional, American management. I ...
Kansas Bureaucrats Kidnap Child After He Speaks About Medical Marijuana
April 27, 2015
A mother who uses medical marijuana to treat a chronic illness had her son taken from her recently after the child spoke up at his school about the health benefits of cannabis. On April 13, respected investigative journalist Ben Swann broke the heartbreaking st ...
News Flash: Citigroup Hates Cash
April 24, 2015
Fractional reserve bankers love money. They don't love cash, in part because it reduces their ability to pyramid loan on top of loan and create new money from which they can extract interest. They have always had to tolerate its existence. Now, with the growing ...
The Free Market is Solving the GMO Problem
April 23, 2015
Monsanto and the other genetically modified seed companies insist their products are safe. A substantial number of consumers have their doubts. The number is large enough to have enticed GMO-free food companies to step up their offerings. Alternatives are often ...
Police Imposing Death Sentence Without Trial
April 22, 2015
In our last commentary on police shootings (see Police Deserve No Sympathy Until the Blue Line Breaks), we said police officers are not different from ordinary citizens. This may not be true in Tulsa. At least one deputy sheriff there cannot hear gunshots fired ...
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