Despite improving economic and budgetary news, there is rising pressure to do something about the budget deficit. I expect this pressure to grow rapidly over the next year. By early 2005, I believe such pressure will be irresistible. It’s not too soon to start...
POLITICS
Exporting Jobs to China: California Dreamin vs. Protectionism
I live and work in California, and on Tuesday I witnessed two revolutions here. Both have very bullish long-term implications, and both present significant short-term risks. The first revolution I’m talking about, of course, is the recall of California’s...
Crossing the Line Over Health Care As a Right
Southern California’s largest grocery strike in 25 years offers a clear example of opposing ideas in action; the labor dispute is a fundamental conflict over whether health insurance should be financed by those who want insurance — or by those who hire...
Vouchers and Votes
During a recent visit to Washington, I was told by a high official there that he had posed this question to Democrats: “Why are you so opposed to vouchers?” The reply: “We aren’t going to give you guys a victory.” If you stop and think...
Racial Censorship and the Witch-Hunt Against Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh’s comment on ESPN regarding Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb was: “I don’t think he’s been that good from the get go. I think what we’ve had here is a little of social concern from the NFL. The media has...
Will Israel Save Us Again?
The Iranians are on the verge of building nuclear bombs. If this is not stopped, mass death will result. The situation is not entirely without precedent, although the crisis today is immeasurably greater. By 1981 Iraq had a similar program. Had it succeeded, America...
The Remarkable Bobby Jindal vs. the Liberal Bigotry of the New York Times
The condescension of The New York Times toward minority conservatives is so thick, you need a Cuisinart electric carving knife to slice it. On Oct. 12, Times editorial writer Adam Cohen penned a hit piece masquerading as a profile of Bobby Jindal, the remarkable...
The War Against Success
Name some of the things that make us so much better off than Americans of just a couple of generations ago. One of the most important things are new medicines that not only prolong life but leave us vigorous at ages when old folks used to sit around in rocking chairs....
Kill Bill – To Expand Medicare
From time to time, Congress passes, and the President signs a bill, that forever changes every American’s life. The Medicare prescription drug coverage bill — which President Bush has vowed to sign — is such an event; if passed, this expansion of...
The Case for Off-Shore Drilling
For a small State, New Jersey continues to send a large delegation of mental midgets to Washington, DC to represent it. In the last election, Sen. Robert Torricelli, the man famed for leaking the name of a CIA agent, was yanked off the ticket at the last minute as the...
In Defense of Mutual Funds
A month ago, Eliot L. Spitzer, New York’s attorney general and the scourge of Wall Street, announced that his office had “obtained evidence of widespread illegal trading schemes that potentially cost mutual fund shareholders billions of dollars...
The Irony of California
The California recall election and its surrounding hoopla may have confirmed the suspicions of some people in other parts of the country that Californians are crazy. But not all Californians are crazy — just the most affluent and highly educated ones. Although...
Baby Kim’s Ace in the Hole: Western Moralists
North Korea just announced it is using plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic weapons. How could the United States let this happen? In 1994, when North Korea was on the brink of economic collapse, its new leader Kim Jong Il, following in his...
Great Myths About the Great Depression
They say “truth will out” but sometimes it takes a long time. For more than half a century, it has been a “well-known fact” that President Franklin D. Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That view was never pervasive...
A Sound Dividend Strategy
Earlier this year, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), which is roughly tied with General Electric (GE) as the most valuable company measured by market cap in the world, declared the first dividend in its 28-year history. On Sept. 12, it doubled that dividend from 8 cents a year...
Mahogany, Peru and Poverty: US Firm Fights NRDC’s Eco-Libels
According to the website of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Tahuamanu Rainforest of Peru is a tropical paradise that “until recently, has seen no human impacts beyond those of traditional, sustainable communities.” That is, according to...
Beware of Bonds As The Economy Improves
A month ago, I wrote about the how the Fed led Wall Street bond traders into a billion-dollar trap, by promising to keep interest rates low virtually forever, and then just weeks later, hinting that it would break the promise. You’d think “once burned,...
Where Have You Gone, Isaac Newton?
More and more today, we are inundated with foolishness masquerading as science. Psychic hotlines proliferate, politicians consult astrologers, and people reject their doctor’s advice in favor of “alternative healing” dispensed by quacks. In the past,...
An Open Letter to ESPN on Rush Limbaugh
ESPN Television ESPN Plaza Bristol, CT 06010 October 5, 2003 To ESPN, You forced Rush Limbaugh to resign from his job after his alleged racist comment, yet you routinely allow your other commentators to make race-related comments and champion unquestioningly what are...
P.C. Insanity at the Pentagon
If Osama bin Laden snuck into our country illegally, bought fake immigration papers and changed his name to Osmundo Ben Ladeno, could he join the U.S. military? You betcha! Last week, the Army announced that Pvt. Juan Escalante, a 19-year-old illegal alien from Mexico...
How to Prevent a ‘Quagmire’ in Iraq: End American Appeasement
Voices on the left argue that Iraq will become a “quagmire” because of U.S. “arrogance” and “unilateralism.” They are actually half-right: disaster may indeed be looming–but only because of a lack of self-assertiveness by the...
Israel’s Fence and the Return to the Barbaric Past
Israel’s proposed border fence, a necessary physical separation between a lawful nation and its homicidal neighbors, is a powerful symbol of the political gulf separating the West from the Arab world. When Israel was founded, its inhabitants established the only...
Trashing the Rule of Law
For most of our history, we followed the British system of common law, including laws dealing with tort liability. This heritage has been attacked by courts and plaintiff attorneys so much that it is barely recognizable. One such doctrine of tort liability is the...
Take Back Your Time Day and the Lump of Labor Fallacy
It’s hard work being a left-wing kook these days. On top of anti-globalization demonstrations and antiwar protests, there is always some new issue to organize. This month, it is “Take Back Your Time Day,” scheduled for Oct. 24. Originated by the...
The Best Defense is a Superior Offense
Some say our “War on Terror” should consist mainly of bolstering security here at home, not military action abroad. But “homeland security” is no more the answer to Islamic terrorism than smoke alarms is to arson. Fighting back– not...
Campaign Finance Limits Violate Free Speech
Earlier this year President Bush risked the lives of American military personnel to end Iraq’s tyrannical regime–a dictatorship that not only restricted the actions of Iraqis but also silenced them from speaking their mind. It is ironic that President Bush...
Rush Limbaugh and Racial Censorship
It is one of the sad signs of our times that a furor was created because Rush Limbaugh expressed an opinion as to why a particular quarterback seemed to him to be over-rated. In his view, it was because the powers that be in professional football were anxious to have...
Health By Government: Even Worse than Death and Taxes
It is insulting enough when the government celebrates your death by taxing away your wealth or your business. Much more damaging are the taxes on the money you need to stay alive. Medicare legislation now pending before a conference committee in Washington would...
Saving Mideast Studies
“Intellectual thugs,” huffed Rashid Khalidi, now of Columbia University. “Cyber-stalking,” whined Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. “Crude McCarthyism” sniffed David Bartram of the University of Reading....
Who’s to Blame? Who Do You Think???
At a dinner for local writers who gathered at the home of the president of Seton Hall University, a noted Catholic institution of higher learning, the conversation turned to terrorism and once again I was treated to the “blame America” version of what is...
Find Stocks with Low Price-to-Sales Ratios
If you’re skeptical of what businesses report as “earnings” — their official profits — you have a right to be. Earnings are an artifice of what are called generally accepted accounting principles, and, while GAAP earnings are universally...
Heroism and Doing Your Job
I once argued with my former coworker about firefighters. She didn’t consider them heroes, as they were widely and properly called after September 11, 2001, because on that day, like any other, “they were just doing their jobs,” she said. Obviously,...
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