EDITORIAL Showing 1701 - 1750 of 1951
Leak Embarrassments
December 06, 2010
My newspaper carried the AP headline the other day, "U.S. cuts access to files after leak embarrassment," and the body of the article reports that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks is now on a most wanted list in Europe. I do not have the time or even th ...
One Swallow
December 04, 2010
Those who have paid a bit of attention to my writings on public policy probably know that I have always been an opponent of preemptive petty tyrannies of government regulations, the sort that force people to follow certain standards of professional conduct, inc ...
Will the Market Do What Western Leaders Cannot?
December 04, 2010
It's a sign of the times. President Barack Obama's ballyhooed fiscal commission on Friday failed to come up with a plan to curb the US budget deficit. For close to a year, the panel has been laboring on US$4 trillion in cuts that would take place, approximately ...
Radical Muslims Aren't Alone
December 04, 2010
So it turns out that contrary to widespread impression, the American government is just as willing to step all over people's right to free expressions as are governments in what are deemed more tyrannical countries. News has it that the Washington based Smithso ...
Too Politicized to Fail!
December 02, 2010
It may now be assumed that the only people allowed to fail in the world are athletes and some gamblers. Businesses are not. In Ireland, for instance, banks made bad loans and thus lost a lot of dough but no, they were not allowed to go under by the government ...
CUT, Don't Freeze Federal Employee Pay
December 01, 2010
While bankrupt over indebted governments everywhere from Russia and the United Kingdom to Ireland move to cut the number of government employees and reduce salaries, America the leading debt basket case of the world just might freeze salaries for a couple of ye ...
Don't Raise the Debt Ceiling!
November 30, 2010
As of November 7th, the total U.S. public debt outstanding reached an astonishing $13.7 trillion. This means that although Congress just raised the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion back in February, the new Congress will face another debt ceiling vote almost imme ...
The Road to Fascism
November 30, 2010
The usual beef among those who dislike trends in this country's economic policies is that we will soon have a socialist system. And it does appear that with more and more economic issues coming under government supervision and outright control, socialism is the ...
What's so Bad About Exceptionalism?
November 29, 2010
There is nothing amiss with exceptionalism, never mind the slurs against it by the likes of NYU Law Professor Ronald Dworkin (in The New York Review of Books). To regard the United States of America as a country that's exceptional – meaning the likes of which ...
Do We Have a Moral Nature?
November 27, 2010
It is often held, by admirers of modern science (which took off around about the 15th century) that if human beings are parts of nature, there can be no room for morality in their lives. They are then simply complicated machines working as they must, with no po ...
Dogmatism on the Left
November 25, 2010
As a loyal reader of books, articles and columns by members of the American intellectual left, I marvel often at just how blind these folks can be to their own dogmatism. Folks like these routinely charge those whose politics and economics they dislike with thi ...
Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects?
November 23, 2010
The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse ...
Are Corporations People?
November 23, 2010
Much fussing is in evidence from certain circles some heavy hitters, like Professor Ronald Dworkin - about the Supreme Court's recent ruling that protects corporations against government intervention when they make political contributions. The common complaint ...
Introducing the American Traveler Dignity Act
November 20, 2010
Washington D.C. – Congressman Ron Paul Thursday introduced legislation designed to stop abusive TSA practices that treat American air travelers like criminal suspects. "Enough is enough" Congressman Paul declared in a speech before the House of Representative ...
Is Capitalism Cruel?
November 20, 2010
Now these issues must always be dealt with comparatively - is capitalism cruel, harsh, heartless compared to what? Some folks I know have maintained that compared to socialism, capitalism is indeed all these things but I just cannot buy it. Partly it's because ...
The World Shorts the Dollar
November 17, 2010
A remarkable confluence of recent events has brought unprecedented but very welcome attention to both U.S. monetary policy and the global political economy in general. First, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke recently announced that the Fed would emba ...
Private vs. State Schools & Free Speech
November 17, 2010
Much fuss is afoot now about how various schools, especially colleges and universities, are dealing with the airing of controversial topics. Although by my count this isn't some kind of epidemic, in several schools the administrators have decided they do not wa ...
Besmirch & Divert
November 12, 2010
Ever since President Obama took office, his proposed public policies have been defended doggedly by all those who favor an increasing large scope for the federal government. Health care/insurance is just one of these policies but, of course, his way of dealing ...
Entitlement Foibles
November 11, 2010
Gloating as they are too often wont to do, modern welfare state liberals are eager to point out that when it comes to proposing cuts in government spending, many who advocate it will not be specific. Even more telling, the liberals hold, is the fact that few if ...
A Return to the Gold Standard?
November 09, 2010
Over the weekend of November 6-7, 2010, World Bank president, Robert Zoellick , proposed in a column written for the Financial Times that the global economy once more be linked to gold as an anchor to help maintain currency stability and reduce inflationary exp ...
Reject the Welfare/Warfare State
November 09, 2010
Last week's midterm elections have been characterized as a victory for grassroots Americans who are fed up with Washington and the political status quo. In particular, the elections are being touted as a clear indicator that voters demand reductions in federal ...
Tree Hugger Hypocrisy
November 09, 2010
I live in Silverado Canyon, about 7 miles east of Irvine Lake in Orange County, California, and it is a very pleasant place except for the fact that there is a small group of residents who want to dominate the place with their personal life style. They are bent ...
Yes! PBS (and NPR) Ought to Go!
November 06, 2010
ctually, I don't care how Let wing any national medium happens to be, so long as I am not forced to pay even a penny for its upkeep. There are dozens of very prominent magazines with a Left wing editorial policy – The Nation, Progressive, Mother Jones, Utne R ...
Two Cheers for the Gridlock
November 04, 2010
On one of those few occasions that I have managed to rub elbows with a hero of mine, I caught Milton Friedman on a TV program endorsing the gridlock in Washington during a recent administration – I believe it was President Bill Clinton's second term. One poin ...
More Real Bill Fallacies
November 03, 2010
In the first article of my two-part series on the Real Bills Doctrine (RBD), in commenting on the Daily Bell's interview with Professor Lawrence H. White on October 10, 2010, I made the central point that the source of commercial credit is not saving but consum ...
Saudi Arms Deal is About Iran
November 02, 2010
This month the US Administration notified Congress that it intends to complete one of the largest arms sales in US history to one of the most repressive regimes on earth. Saudi Arabia has been given the green light by the administration to spend $60 billion on ...
The Observers
November 01, 2010
Many contemporary intellectuals have a problem. They are theoretically committed to the idea that they can be no more than observers of human life and make no value judgments about it. This is because the philosophical basis for evaluating people, their conduct ...
Real Bills and Gold
October 30, 2010
The Daily Bell published an interview with Dr. Lawrence H. White, Professor of Economics, George Mason University, on October 24, 2010. One of the questions the interviewer asked was this: "Please comment on real bills and how they work." In his answer Professo ...
Equality Is Only a Cheap Dream
October 30, 2010
Two academic researchers, both of them psychologists, have recently rekindled all the fuss about inequality of income in the United States of America. Mostly this topic has been the province of political philosophers, economists and theorists, many of whom have ...
Is There Life After Sudden Death of the International Banking System?
October 28, 2010
The debate on the Real Bills Doctrine (RBD) within the sound money movement is important because the international banking system, financing world trade as well as domestic trade, is facing its greatest challenge in all history. Indeed, it may succumb to the su ...
Charity and Generosity That Aren't
October 28, 2010
In a recent stump speech urging people to keep Democrats in power, President Obama told his audience that America is a country based in large measure on the principle that "we are all our brothers' keepers." This is not true, but even if it were and even if tha ...
Democracy and Human Rights
October 27, 2010
Tim Snyder made a very important observation on democracy and human rights in a recent piece for The New York Review of Books. He wrote, "As important as democratic procedures might be, opponents of communism in Eastern Europe spoke more often of human rights. ...
Government and Job Creation
October 26, 2010
As the current economic downturn shows no signs of lifting, we hear quite a lot of rhetoric from current and potential office-holders about what government can and will do to create more jobs. This is especially disconcerting to those who understand that the be ...
Anti-Intellectualism Among Animal Rights Advocates?
October 26, 2010
It is only a small sample but it comes from a significant corner of the academic community, a law school where I was invited to give a talk on the debate about animal rights. I did deliver such a talk at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, law school on Octob ...
2010 Is Just Deck Chair Politics on the USS Titanic
October 23, 2010
The political consensus is following the 2010 election, the Tea Partiers and the GOP establishment will breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate their victory and our two-party monopoly system of government will continue as before. A GOP House majority will check ...
Why Obama Doesn't Seem to Relate – Emotionally
October 20, 2010
Most of the time when I hear about how President Obama lacks the emotional disposition that most Americans would like to see him demonstrate, I am disinclined to make much of the point. What I want from someone in the role of the presidency is good thinking and ...
More Inflation Fears
October 19, 2010
Inflation fears are heating up this week as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech in Boston on Friday, causing further frantic flight into gold by those fearful of the coming "quantitative easing" the Fed is set to deliver in November. Others who view gold as ...
The Amorality of Macroeconomics
October 19, 2010
In a surprisingly sensible essay in The New York Times, on Sunday October 17, 2010, David Segal gives a pretty good explanation of why macroeconomics is so unsuccessful. It's human nature, stupid. People just aren't predictable – will they do this or that whe ...
In Defense of the Adversarial System
October 16, 2010
Every once in a while I get sucked into defending the way the legal system aims to secure justice in the criminal law. In particular, why do the accused or suspected criminals get to be defended so vigorously, as if they were always victims of perpetuation rath ...
Yes, There Is Gold at Fort Knox
October 16, 2010
Gold reached a record high of $1,376 per ounce last Thursday morning but I'm writing about Fort Knox because of an unexpected conversation I had the day before with a distant friend. We have known each other for 35 years but have only seen each other once over ...
Absurdities of Atomism
October 14, 2010
Individualism has had its foes over the centuries, mainly because it is a bulwark against some people making use of unwilling others. If one is indeed a sovereign individual, with rights to one's life, liberty, etc., others are morally and would in justice be a ...
Rights and the Self
October 13, 2010
Why did this view become so credible even while people, especially those in the business world, are routinely pursuing a course of conduct that advances not just their but everyone else's profit with whom they trade? Why will the silly zero sum game vision of h ...
A Spooked Economy in October
October 12, 2010
The Fed has been wreaking havoc and devaluing our monetary unit steadily since 1913, and greatly accelerating it since the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement in the 1970s. This severing of the dollar's last tenuous link with gold allowed the Fed to create ...
The Times' Phony Integrity
October 09, 2010
In its October 6, 2010, editorial, "Lamentable Speech," The New York Times stood up for a hard line stance on the right to free speech. As the editors wrote, "To the American Nazi Party, Hustler Magazine, and other odious figures in Supreme Court history, add t ...
The Cost of Lack of Trust
October 07, 2010
Over the last couple of days a bunch of announcements came from our government, including warning about travel to Europe where terror plans are said to be afoot by Al-Qaeda. Another warning came from the man convicted of trying to blow up Times Square - he said ...
Free Markets Create Jobs
October 06, 2010
In this struggling economy it is essential for politicians to take a step back and think about what government has been doing to business in this country. In less than 200 years, the free market, property rights, and respect for the rule of law took this nation ...
Kate Zernike's Stupid Outrage
October 04, 2010
In a news report on October 2nd, 2010, titled "Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts," New York Times reporter Kate Zernike tells us that books like Frederick Bastiat's The Law, from 1850, and F. A Hayek's The Road to Serfdom from 1944, are selling lik ...
Rejecting Anti-Natural Rights
September 30, 2010
President Obama's friend and former colleague Cass Sunstein, now apparently on leave from Harvard Law School, would have us believe that our rights are granted to us by government. Sunstein and his co-author Stephen Holmes have argued in their book, The Cost of ...
Healthcare Reform: A Huge Misdiagnosis
September 29, 2010
This week marked six months since Congress passed the healthcare reform bill in what has become all-too-typical legislative chicanery. Those in power crafted a mammoth piece of legislation and rammed it through Congress under a dire sense of emergency. Insistin ...
A Misguided Distinction – or Not?
September 29, 2010
When working out what should guide public institutions and policies in our lives and human communities, those who chime in from ancient to contemporary times have advanced various proposals and they have often been divided into two groups. Members of one of the ...
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