Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, energy scholar and economics researcher, wrote recently that the passing of Margaret Thatcher provides “a timely reason to ask: What was the Thatcher Revolution about?” Yergin explains that he tackled that same question 15 years ago and “decided the best way to answer it was by asking Thatcher herself.” [...]
Author Archive | Ralph R. Reiland
The Audacity of Hate: Street Level Anti-Capitalism
It’s not what I signed up for, but I recently got a three hour Marxist lecture while taking a boat ride on the intracoastal waterways of Fort Lauderdale.
Anti-Capitalist Policies, FDR to Obama
Pushing his agenda for higher taxes on “the rich,” President Obama kicked off his December 6 speech in Kansas by saying his Kansas grandparents “shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression.” In fact, the 1929 stock market crash turned into the long-running Great Depression because the counterproductive soak-the-rich policies of [...]
Mud Pies from the Labor Department
The funny thing about the Labor Department’s monthly unemployment report is that the number-crunching bureaucrats act like they’re delivering high carat diamonds when the real worth of what they’re reporting is closer to the value of a mud pie. First, a college graduate with a degree in biomedical engineering who gets a $90,000 job in [...]
Obama’s Class Envy via Bad Numbers
With economic “fairness” the central theme of his re-election campaign, President Obama recently pitched his “Buffett Rule” tax hike to a student audience at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Aimed at those who earn the bulk of their income from capital gains, the plan would double the tax rate on capital gains from 15 [...]
Media Unreliabilty in George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case
Last week, NBC News became truthful, at least partially, when it issued an apology about altering a taped 911 conversation between George Zimmerman and a police dispatcher in the high-profile Trayvon Martin story, a case being linked to racism and profiling. What viewers of NBC’s “Today” show heard was this taped comment by Zimmerman, talking [...]
Obama on Capital Gains: No Winners
“If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes,” asserted President Obama in his State of the Union speech. For those with predominantly investment income, that would effectively double their capital gains tax rate from the current 15 percent rate, producing a triple negative impact [...]
Crony Communism
It’s not like the old days in China when the top guys in the Communist Party at least pretended to be pro-equality. Back then, “poor peasants” were encouraged to denounce and kill “rich peasants” for the crime of being too productive, too individualistic or insufficiently enthusiastic about self-sacrifice. Today in Australia there’s a mansion, overlooking [...]
Wrong medicine for a sick economy
“Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” repeatedly proclaims President Obama, arguing for his proposed $1.5 trillion tax increase over the next 10 years. “That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that.” In fact, Mr. Obama’s statement is anything but straightforward and not hard to argue against. Seeking to reverse his [...]
The American Jobs Act: An Anti-Jobs Jobs Bill
“Pass this bill now,” President Obama is repeatedly demanding, regarding his new American Jobs Act. There’s nothing new in the legislation, just more government spending, more transfers of money from “the rich” to Obama’s political allies, more spending for infrastructure enhancement so we all won’t allegedly be buried by collapsing schools and bridges. And the [...]