EDITORIAL Showing 1201 - 1250 of 1951
Who is on the Wrong Side of History?
July 07, 2012
Because of the Internet's success, numerous attempts have been made to weaken it and make it less of a problem for the power elite that it is inconveniencing and exposing. We call the process the Internet Reformation and we're creating a society to formalize su ...
Build a Growth Mindset
July 06, 2012
When you think of what you do in your life, how do you think of yourself? If you think thoughts such as, "I'm intelligent," or "I'm talented," or "I'm a failure," you're thinking of yourself in terms of traits. Traits are fixed qualities that do not change much ...
Markets and Generosity
July 05, 2012
A frequent though quite unjustified charge against free markets is that they encourage what Karl Marx called the cash nexus or, as it is also put, commodification, treating people as items for sale. The claim is that when people engage in commerce, they are har ...
An American Declaration of Independence From Big Government
July 04, 2012
The Declaration of Independence, signed by members of the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, is the founding document of the American experiment in free government. What is too often forgotten is that what the Founding Fathers argued against in the Declarati ...
Audit the Fed Headed for the House Floor!
July 03, 2012
Last week supporters of Federal Reserve transparency had a major victory when the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform passed my Audit the Fed bill, HR 459 unanimously with all major audit provisions intact. This clears the way for a House floor v ...
My Fourth of July Reflections
July 02, 2012
For some people the Fourth of July is the most important holiday in America. Sadly, not for all, especially not just now when most of the leadership of the country has made it clear that principles do not matter. What matters is what is expedient or practical, ...
Memento Mori …
June 30, 2012
Sometimes you find yourself in a quiet place and ask yourself questions. Here are some of mine. What if someone set up a society that would first and foremost offer a path to promote self-reliance strategies and positive expectations about life and living? What ...
Gigantic Global Money Supply Expansion Underway
June 28, 2012
We are amidst an economic phase of volatility and sequential recessions followed by quasi-recoveries. We have titled this overall economic scenario a "Reflationary Debt Trap." I expect this scenario to hold for the coming months. In my view, European leaders wi ...
Anticipated Reasoning by the Court
June 28, 2012
A few weeks ago I wrote in one of my columns as follows: "...[T]he discussion of President Obama's federal policy requiring that everyone obtain health insurance has frequently focused on the fact that either an employer or individual would be forced to obtain ...
No Risk, No Fun, No Freedom
June 27, 2012
Those of us over about age 30 can remember the days before America was (at least less of) a Nanny State. Some friends of ours just got back from a mission trip to Tijuana, Mexico. They brought their kids to a park there to play, and saw all the equipment that i ...
Government is Already Too Involved in Healthcare
June 26, 2012
This week the Supreme Court is expected to issue its long-awaited decision regarding the constitutionality of the "Obamacare" law. I recently discussed absurd legal arguments by Obamacare advocates that Congress can compel the purchase of health insurance, and ...
The Distortions Never Went Away
June 25, 2012
I have been reading into Herbert Croly's The Promise of American Life (1909). Croly was the founder of The New Republic, which has remained a foremost middle way publication on the American political scene, a champion of the welfare state, of a half way between ...
Hey, Thanks For All You Do … We Wouldn't Have a Website Without It!
June 23, 2012
Thank you, O mighty State, for protecting us ... Thank you, O mighty Central Bankers, for continuing to create piles of monopoly money to fuel the State's efforts ... And special thanks also to the major media conglomerates who continue to assist their readers ...
The Real Scoop on Public Service Unions – Part II
June 21, 2012
In many states of the country, including California, there is a crisis brewing in the public service employment region. No longer are public service employees expected to be motivated by service, as distinct from their private sector colleagues who are pretty m ...
A Market Alternative to Psychotherapy
June 20, 2012
Psychotherapy, done well, can be a great help to people who need it. For a wide range of psychological symptoms and troubles, or for dealing with a certain range of relationship issues, some time spent with a good psychologist or counselor can be extremely valu ...
Unconstitutional Uses of Drones Must Stop
June 19, 2012
Last week I joined several of my colleagues in sending a letter to President Obama requesting clarification of his criteria for the lethal use of drones overseas. Administration officials assure us that a "high degree of confidence" is required that the person ...
An Ominous Greece Parallel: The 1930s and the EU Today
June 19, 2012
"The Euro Titanic has now hit the iceberg and sadly there simply aren't enough lifeboats." – Nigel Farage, United Kingdom Independence Party Another Greek election and an uncertain outcome will likely continue the corrupt status quo in Greece. The Greek polit ...
The Real Scoop on Public Service Unions – Part I
June 18, 2012
In the wake of Governor Scott Walker's survival of a recall vote, initiated by friends of Wisconsin's public service unions, let's explore again just why such unions are perverse. Bona fide labor unions work within a free-market system where firms compete for c ...
UN Plans to Expand the Phony Water Crisis … 'Smart Water Meters' on the Way
June 16, 2012
UN-Water Survey Examines Water Law Reform ... Twenty years ago this June world leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro for an Earth Summit to develop an action plan for sustainable development. They discussed a wide variety of topics including climate change, altern ...
Is Commerce Decent?
June 14, 2012
It is not a waste of time to revisit the topic of business bashing, especially in light of President Obama's current attacks on wealth creation. He says he prefers job creation, as if the latter were possible without the former. (Well, in a tyrannical system it ...
Worry Less
June 13, 2012
Have you spent more time worrying over the last few years? I know I have. There is plenty to worry about, what with fascism growing, the economy shrinking, the world becoming more dangerous and the media and education establishments in full-on propaganda mode f ...
The CBO Sees the Economic Cliff Ahead
June 12, 2012
Last week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued its annual long-term budget outlook report, and the 2012 numbers are not promising. In fact, the CBO estimates that federal debt will rise to 70% of GDP by the end of the year - the highest percentage since ...
Wealth Versus Job Creation
June 11, 2012
"When you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits," said president Obama recently. He added, "Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about th ...
Hey, Rand Paul … Welcome to the Internet Reformation
June 09, 2012
Rand Paul keeps making news – bombshell after bombshell. Just yesterday, CNN recently ran an article quoting Rand Paul as saying "it would be a great honor to be considered as a vice president for the Republican Party. I think that would be something that any ...
John Maynard Keynes: A Vision for the Future or a Ghost from the Past?
June 08, 2012
The current economic crisis that has engulfed the United States and much of the rest of the world over the last few years, has seen a dramatic revival in the economic ideas and policy prescriptions of the most famous British economist of the 20th century, John ...
Did '96 Bill Force People to Work?
June 07, 2012
As The New York Times would put it, when in 1996 "President Bill Clinton delivered on his pledge to 'end welfare as we know it'...he signed into law a bill forcing recipients to work and imposing a five-year limit on cash assistance." Back then this supposedly ...
Life Lived in the Active Voice
June 06, 2012
If you are a writer and you want to write boring passages that are meaningless to your readers, the best way to go about this is to write in the passive voice: sentences with no clear actor, actions with ambiguous authors. "The car ran off the road." "The food ...
War Drums for Syria?
June 05, 2012
War drums are beating again in Washington. This time Syria is in the crosshairs after a massacre there last week left more than 100 dead. As might be expected from an administration with an announced policy of "regime change" in Syria, the reaction was to blame ...
Seattle, America's Europe?
June 04, 2012
On a recent trip to Seattle, which I visit on and off quite a lot, I found the place to have just the kind of feel I have experienced in Stockholm and Oslo and in cities, big and small, throughout Austria and Switzerland. The main places in the city are very cl ...
Bloomberg's Slippery Slope
June 02, 2012
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is at it again. Not content with attacking cigarette smokers and "transfats," he's now making it impossible for people to order large-size sugary sodas. If people want to drink lots of sugary soda, they'll have to purchase ...
Sandel's Distortions
May 31, 2012
Some people lie without any hesitation. To bring lies to print, however, you need more than liars – you need editors who want the lies to circulate, good and hard. Harvard University political theorist Michael J. Sandel is well known as a critic of the Americ ...
Capital Controls Have No Place in a Free Society
May 30, 2012
The characteristic mark of a tyrannical regime is that it eventually finds it necessary to erect walls to keep people from leaving. This is why we should be troubled by the "Ex-PATRIOT Act," an egregiously offensive bill recently introduced in the Senate. Follo ...
Psychiatry's Hammer
May 30, 2012
You know the adage: When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Psychiatry has one big hammer, psychiatric medications, with which to address a nail: psychological disorders. Without a public that believes in and accepts the use of th ...
Krugman's Apologetic for Government Regulation
May 28, 2012
Paul Krugman, not unpredictably, once again (in The New York Times, Monday, May 14, 2012) went to bat to hit a home run for government regulation of, well, everyone (except the members of his own profession, namely, eggheads). His piece is titled "Why We Regula ...
As Commandos Raid Tampa, US State Dept Demands Power to Declare War?
May 26, 2012
It happened again at the recent Tampa-based conference, "Building the Global SOF Partnership" ... The US military staged a mock drill in violation of 130+ years of the Posse Comitatus Act that bars domestic forces from active use on US soil. It wasn't just the ...
Adversity and Excellence
May 25, 2012
Nobody wants adversity. It is, after all, adverse – antagonistic to what you want. But adversity is also often what makes us who we are, in the best sense. My first year playing water polo at UC Santa Barbara was one of those times for me. I thought for some ...
Business Versus Business
May 24, 2012
One of Karl Marx's less notable mistakes was his belief that people in the world of business would promote their self-interest. If by self-interest we include, as I believe we ought to, the most rational social-political principles in support of a sound human i ...
Choosing the Golden Rule
May 23, 2012
There are several qualities that define our humanity. Today I want to talk about two of them: our capacity for conscious empathy and our ability to consciously redirect our emotional impulses. You have a choice of whether and how you will use these. Empathy is ...
On Indefinite Detention: The Tyranny Continues
May 22, 2012
The bad news from last week's passage of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act is that Americans can still be arrested on US soil and detained indefinitely without trial. Some of my colleagues would like us to believe that they fixed last year's infamous ...
Revisiting the Responsibility of Business Managers
May 21, 2012
People buy stocks, shares in a firm, mainly so as to delegate to the officers the job of securing for them economic prosperity. What else did all the folks who purchased the IPOs of Facebook want? (There is, of course, much more to living a successful human lif ...
If the Euro Ends, So Will the World as We Know It?
May 19, 2012
Robert Chote, the head of the Office of Budget Responsibility for the British Tory regime, claims the "British economy may never quite recover from a severe Euro collapse." According to a UK Telegraph article, "Britain's economy may suffer 'permanent' damage an ...
A Potpourri of Issues, Minor and Not So Much
May 17, 2012
Justice Kennedy's observation that the mandate changes the relationship between government and the individual is doubtful since there really are quite a lot of actions that citizens are forced to take, like it or not. Jury duty, for one; sending one's kids to s ...
Greece: Dump the EU Now For An Economic Recovery!
May 16, 2012
"Attempts to form a government in Greece collapsed on Tuesday, jolting financial markets at the prospect leftists opposed to the terms of an EU bailout could sweep to victory in a June election and nudge the euro zone crisis into a dangerous new phase." – CNB ...
Mastering Happiness is Mastering Life
May 16, 2012
I study, speak about and write about happiness. I do this all the time. It's my life's work. I coach people to help them to live a happier life and I teach groups of people how to do the same. But this is not, objectively, a happy time. We are weaker as a count ...
The Fed: Mend It or End It?
May 15, 2012
Last week I held a hearing to examine the various proposals that have been put forth both to mend and to end the Fed. The purpose was to spur a vigorous and long-lasting discussion about the Fed's problems, hopefully leading to concrete actions to rein in the F ...
Revisiting a Confusion About Basic Rights
May 14, 2012
In his book Basic Rights (Princeton, 1970), Henry Shue argued that there is no valid distinction between negative and positive rights; his argument has recently resurfaced among so-called left-libertarians (otherwise also known as bleeding heart libertarians), ...
Treasuries and Derivatives Blow Up? So Where Do You Go …
May 12, 2012
Here's some interesting news along the lines of "man bites dog." According to a recent Reuters article, US financial advisors are actually growing leery of US Treasury bonds. This is almost unheard of and one could certainly make a case that it is a sign of mos ...
Resilience and Success
May 09, 2012
A happy, successful life does more than make you feel good. It also serves to strengthen you, and to open your mind to options and opportunities that you would otherwise not see. In difficult times, this can make the difference between living in fear and flouri ...
Enduring Commitments Abroad
May 08, 2012
Last week President Obama made a surprise pre-dawn trip to Afghanistan to mark the one year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden and to sign a document further extending the US presence in that country. The president said, "We're building an enduring p ...
The Face of Egalitarianism
May 07, 2012
A few weeks ago they ran the famous Oxford v. Cambridge rowing race on the Thames but a fanatical egalitarian, Mr. Trenton Oldfield from Australia, ruined it for everyone by jumping in the river and blocking the race in the name of resisting the elitism of rowi ...
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