Archive | January, 2004

Americans shell out more than $2 trillion each year to keep our federal government running. The least we should expect in return is honesty. Alas, Washington officials aren’t telling the truth about how much they’ve spent, are currently spending or plan to spend. Consider the omnibus spending bill the Senate will consider later this month. [...]

Sick and tired of hearing about Michael Jackson’s standing in the “black community?” First, the black individuals in America are not a homogenous group of automatons, and second, it used to be racist to refer to a whole group of people based on nothing other that superficial skin pigmentation. Plus there is one other problem, [...]

Paul Atkins this month became the first SEC commissioner to criticize openly a proposal to require companies to treat employee stock options as current expenses. Atkins began by questioning whether the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which has aggressively pushed the change, is truly seeking to address a serious accounting problem. “Is there a significant investor [...]

Supporters of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, aka “Deanie-boppers,” accuse the media of piling on by repeatedly playing his now infamous Iowa caucus “concession speech,” punctuated by his banshee-like “Yeeeaaaaaarggh!” Dean’s admittedly un-presidential behavior gave his opponents, say the Deanie-boppers, a cheap excuse to pound him, causing his sudden drop in the polls and his [...]

The so-called “debates” among the Democratic candidates in the primaries are not really debates — and that is a real shame. In a real debate, opponents could question each other’s statements — and there have been a lot of questionable statements made already in this young political season. Senator John Edwards, for example, has included [...]

Those who vent their moral indignation over low pay for Third World workers employed by multinational companies ignore the plain fact that these workers’ employers are usually supplying them with better opportunities than they had before, while those who are morally indignant on their behalf are providing them with nothing. Some of the more rational [...]

Here’s a question. Suppose you see people lining up for hours, and people willing to pay a month’s salary in bribes, in order to get a $2 a day factory job. What might you conclude? Would you guess there are higher-paying jobs around, but the people are too lazy to look for them? Here’s my [...]

“Low-Wage Costa Ricans Make Baseballs for Millionaires.” That was the headline on one of those New York Times “news” stories that continued its recent tradition of disguised editorials. The headline said it all but the story ran on and on anyway, with details and quotes that added nothing to the familiar story that Third World [...]

I do not think our government is evil, but I do think evil men could be elected to lead our government. It happened in Germany in the 1930s. During the last century, governments given totalitarian powers killed an estimated 169,000,000 people. If you don’t think it can’t happen here, I would remind you of the [...]