STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS Showing 3101 - 2 of 2
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 ...
Dumping the Euro Isn’t a Cure-All: Easy Money Lets Governments Avoid Free-Market Reforms
June 26, 2015
The Greek drama continues to unfold with the risk of “grexit” becoming increasingly likely. Yet, a large majority of the Greek people want to keep the euro. This, however, would require the Greek government to live within its means — something it has not ...
What Exactly is Racism?
June 26, 2015
I want to look at two words that the State and its hangers-on have employed with much success on behalf of increases in government power. One is racism. The other is equality. What exactly is racism? We almost never hear a definition. I doubt anyone really know ...
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 ...
Charleston and Gun Rights
June 25, 2015
Dylann Roof's racially motivated murders of nine black churchgoers have brought predictable calls for new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. How ironic this is we shall soon see. Advocates of gun rights argue that the best way to prevent such atro ...
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 ...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Violates Free-Trade Principles
June 24, 2015
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) violates fundamental free-trade principles and should be rejected by those who advocate for honest free trade. Free Trade Principles: The essence of free trade is that trading partners should be able to trade lawful goods and ...
Keeping Government Bureaucrats Off the Backs of the Citizenry: The Supreme Court Responds
June 24, 2015
In one swoop, on June 22, 2015, a divided U.S. Supreme Court handed down three consecutive rulings affirming the right of raisin farmers, hotel owners and prison inmates. However, this push back against government abuse, government snooping and government theft ...
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 ...
F.A. Hayek and Why Government Can't Manage Society, Part I
June 23, 2015
This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. On May 8th, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied Powers in Europe. On September 2nd, Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, thus ...
The Catholic Church and the Market
June 23, 2015
The release of the encyclical Laudato Si by Pope Francis last week had the predictable result of winning the Pontiff plaudits and huzzahs in the world’s press, and another round of bewildered head-shaking among observant Catholics. Whether in his formal remar ...
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 ...
Death Penalty: The Ultimate Corrupt, Big Government Program
June 22, 2015
Nebraska's legislature recently made headlines when it ended the state's death penalty. Many found it odd that a conservatives-dominated legislature would support ending capital punishment, since conservative politicians have traditionally supported the death p ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 12
June 20, 2015
Power is always grandiose and self-glorifying. But it is also self-destructive. It is the great error of productive people that they blindly obey power and contribute to its stupidity. Nonetheless, power always seems to hit its limits, where it rots in place an ...
Another Silly Jab at Libertarianism
June 20, 2015
The problem with responding to Alan Wolfe’s feeble attempt to critique libertarianism is that one might appear to be defending the particular people he targets: namely, Rand Paul and Ayn Rand. (Rand Paul was not named after Ayn Rand. At least Wolfe avoided th ...
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 ...
Prohibition Corrupts Character on Both Sides of the Law
June 19, 2015
If you want a recent, vivid example of the corrosive effect the Drug War has on the character of law enforcement, look to the actions of the officers who raided Sky High Holistic, a medical marijuana dispensary located in Santa Ana, California, on May 27th of t ...
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 ...
The Washington Intellectual Gravy Train
June 18, 2015
Intellectuals have long been glorified as champions of truth and defenders of society's highest values. But in Washington, they serve as Leviathan's Praetorian Guard. Intellectuals are thriving in DC thanks in large part to the ruinous policy advice they proffe ...
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 ...
Starvation Is the Price Greeks Will Pay for Remaining in the EU
June 17, 2015
Syriza, the new Greek government that intended to rescue Greece from austerity, has come a cropper. The government relied on the good will of its EU "partners," only to find that its "partners" had no good will. The Greek government did not understand that the ...
Prisons Without Walls: We’re All Inmates in the American Police State
June 17, 2015
“Free worlders” is prison slang for those who are not incarcerated behind prison walls. Supposedly, those fortunate souls live in the “free world.” However, appearances can be deceiving. “As I got closer to retiring from the Federal Bureau of Prisons ...
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 ...
American Progressives are Bismarck's Grandchildren
June 16, 2015
American "progressives" portray themselves as "forward-looking," advocates of a higher and better freedom than the traditional American conception of liberty as freedom from government coercion and control. In fact, they are the intellectual great-grandchildren ...
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 ...
Soros Pushes US Bailouts and Weapons for Ukraine
June 15, 2015
If you look at the track record of the interventionists you might think they would pause before taking on more projects. Each of their past projects has ended in disaster yet still they press on. Last week the website Zero Hedge posted a report about hacked ema ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 11
June 13, 2015
As many of us have noted (loudly and often), centralization is the executioner of liberty and prosperity. That truth is seen very clearly in the history of Rome. Continued from last week… THE ECONOMIC FALL OF ROME This slave economy was a crucial factor in th ...
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 ...
Fact Checking Paul Krugman's Claim To Be 'Right About Everything'
June 12, 2015
"But can the debate really be as one-sided as I portray it? Well, look at the results: again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above. I’m Krugtron the Invincible!" Thus ...
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 ...
Should Freedom of Association Be Conditional?
June 11, 2015
Sir Patrick Stewart, of Jean Luc Picard/Professor X fame, has recently come under fire for defending the embattled North Irish bakery, Asher's Baking Company, that refused to bake a cake with a pro-gay rights theme: "Stewart called the Asher's case "a delicious ...
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 " ...
The Truth About Gurus
June 10, 2015
Reflecting on my life, I find a warm sense of kinship with Forrest Gump. For the handful of you unfamiliar with the fictional Mr. Gump, he’s a cranially challenged individual who by pure happenstance ends up living an extraordinary life brimming with interest ...
Slave or Rebel? Ten Principles for Escaping the Matrix and Standing Up to Tyranny
June 10, 2015
“Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.”—George Orwell. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s a shell game intended to keep us focused on and distracted b ...
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 ...
The Tyranny of Trigger Words and College Safe Spaces
June 09, 2015
The media has been full of stories recently about the new sensitivity on college and university campuses concerning the avoidance in courses or assignments of the use of "trigger words" or phrases that may have a "hurtful" effect on students when thoughtlessly ...
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 ...
Soros Pushes US Bailouts and Weapons for Ukraine
June 08, 2015
Soros is very close to the Ukrainian president, who was put in power after a US-backed coup deposed the elected leader of Ukraine last year. In the email correspondence, Soros tells the Ukrainian leadership that the US should provide Ukraine "with same level of ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 10
June 06, 2015
If you want to analyze a large economic system, the best way to start is by tracking its surplus. Who gathers the surplus? Where does it go? Who decides? And that applies to our modern systems just as well as it does historical systems. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF P ...
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 ...
The National-Security State Lives
June 05, 2015
Sen. Rand Paul accomplished something worthwhile when, almost single-handedly, he saw to it that Section 215 of the Patriot Act expired. For that he deserves our heartfelt thanks. But where does the expiration now leave us opponents of indiscriminate government ...
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 ...
Free Speech, Facebook and the NSA: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
June 04, 2015
“A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy.”—Writers Against Mass Surveillance. THE GOOD NEWS: Americans have a right to freely express themselves on the Internet, including making threatening—e ...
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 Warfare State Strikes Back Against Rand Paul
June 03, 2015
If you're interested in knowing which scepters of power the Warfare State is most unwilling to relinquish, try wrenching a few from its grasp. The volume of the cacophony will let you know just how grievously the beast in DC has been wounded. And it's never roa ...
Ron Paul and the Political Theatre
June 03, 2015
Students in the state's official propaganda institutions learn about the wonders of the ­­democratic process, so called, throughout their years of formal study. But the truth is on full display during a presidential election season. These are not wise statesm ...
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 ...
Keynesian Medicines are Not the Cure for China's Ills
June 02, 2015
Keynesians never seem to learn. Every time an economy slows down or reverses gears and "goes negative," in terms of growth and employment, their only answer is a call for "aggregate demand" stimulus and more government spending manipulation. An example of this ...
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 ...
Ex-Im Bank is Welfare for the One Percent
June 01, 2015
This month Congress will consider whether to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank). Ex-Im Bank is a New Deal-era federal program that uses taxpayer funds to subsidize the exports of American businesses. Foreign businesses, including state-own ...
Showing 3101 - 2 of 2 – Newest on Top

loading