Shame on the Secret Service. This week, it investigated renowned editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez like he was some left-wing homeless crackpot who had sent President Bush an anthrax-laced death threat -- all because Ramirez drew a provocative cartoon that was...
POLITICS
The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men. – AYN RAND
Measuring Wealth
Recently, I discussed new IRS data showing that the share of total income going to the richest 400 individuals has increased. However, income is an imprecise measure of well-being. That is better measured by wealth. A new study by the Federal Reserve sheds important...
Martha Stewart is Attacked Because of Her Business Success
Why do so many people hate Martha Stewart? How does a home-decorating expert with a wholesome public persona come to be portrayed as a major cultural villain? Consider the latest media frenzy over Stewart's indictment for obstruction of justice. If the arbitrariness...
Random Thoughts for July 2003
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Have you ever heard a single hard fact to back up all the sweeping claims for the benefits of "diversity"? Some people were upset, not by Dusty Baker's off-hand remark that races differ in their responses to hot weather, but by...
Global Anti-Tobacco Treaty
When I served in the Army, the sergeant would say, "Smoke'm if you have'm." Most of us would, too. I am still a cigar smoker. The question is---how long before some storm trooper busts in the front door to tell me I can't smoke any more? Among the many freedoms the...
Weapons of Political Destruction
The Vietnam War showed how dangerous it is to allow a President of the United States to lie us into armed conflict, as Lyndon Johnson did by inflating a minor incident in the Gulf of Tonkin into a means of stampeding Congress into authorizing an escalation of military...
How Did We Ever Make It Before Nanny Government?
Whenever someone says that this or that government program is absolutely necessary, I always wonder, "What did people do and how did they survive before the program?" If someone says food stamps are absolutely necessary for poor people's survival, I wonder how...
Fortney “Pete” Stark: Poster Boy for Democrat Double Standards
Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, D-Calif., is the foul-mouthed poster boy for Liberal Double Standards. There he was on Capitol Hill last week, sounding more like Eminem than an eminent lawmaker, hurling epithets such as "fruitcake" and "c--ks----r" at Republicans during a...
Bush Drug Program = Republican Left
In the old days, miners brought canaries down into the tunnels to detect methane. The birds were more sensitive to the deadly gas and worked as an early warning system. When they died, it was time to get out. For conservatives, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts...
Economics Lesson in a Kit
Who'd have thought an inanimate object could teach a lesson in economics? Yet that's exactly what a first-aid kit did. Several kits, actually, wall-mounted cabinets in the buildings where I work. Now we're not just talking Band-Aids and iodine here. No, these babies...
Lies My Mother Never Told Me About Single-Payer Health Care
The nature of a lie is such that if you repeat it often enough it takes on a life of its own, always at the expense of truth. While some lies--"your hair looks great"--are harmless enough, and lies like "I never had sex with that woman" are laughable, others can be...
Review of the Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators
We've all heard about the alleged "robber barons." For decades the world's successful wealth creators - from Rockefeller to Gates - have been brushed with that smear. But Dr. Locke shows that the smear just can't stick. The wealth creators aren't the dishonest,...
Is High Tech Really Back?
Is high tech really back, or are we headed for Dubble Bubble? Whitney Tilson, venerable and circumspect columnist for the Motley Fool, has no doubts: "Times like these make me sigh, hold my head in my hands, and groan, 'How is it possible that, in less than three...
The NY Time’s 9-11 Scam
The New York Times -- unrelenting champion of the underprivileged, mighty battler against all corporate evils, and vehement opponent of Republican tax cuts for the "rich and powerful" -- lives by a far more self-serving motto: All the corporate welfare that's fit to...
Deficits, Fiscal Policy, Tax Cuts, and Inflation
Last week's announcement that the federal budget deficit will reach $455 billion this fiscal year (which ends on Sept. 30) brought predictable denunciations from the Democratic side of the aisle. It's not so much that Democrats care about deficits -- after all, they...
Foreign Policy and Self-Interest: Liberia Campaign Would Be a Moral Crime
Those who claim that the United States has a moral obligation to send troops on a "humanitarian" mission to Liberia have it exactly backward: our government has a moral obligation *not* to send its forces into areas that pose no threats to America's well- being. It is...
Seven Years Later: Was TWA Flight 800 a First Strike By Jihad Terrorists?
It's been seven years since the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA Flight 800 near Long Island, New York, and the cause remains unknown; the lingering mystery of one of the nation's worst aviation disasters is now a forgotten media spectacle. The $ 40 million federal...
Pass a Law! The Evils of Toy Guns
What would you do if a seven-year-old kid walked into a store where you were working or shopping and brandished a gun and said he was robbing the place? I'd slap his rear and take him home to his mother. Liberals shake in their shoes and misplace their backbones with...
Why U.S. Troops Should Not Be Sent to Liberia
President Bush should not commit any United States troops to an international peacekeeping force in Liberia. At some point in the future an international peacekeeping force could help stabilize Liberia. However, refusing United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's...
Who’s Rich, Part 2
Someone once pointed out that there are at least 50 colleges that claim to be among the top 25 colleges in the country. There is a similar congestion among the 400 "richest" Americans, as shown in data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service. While much of...
Vile 9-11 Vultures
The fraud trial of Cyril Kendall begins this week in New York City. Kendall is a 52-year-old Guyanese national who has apparently used every chance he has had in America, including the September 11 attacks, to scheme and scam. He faces felony grand larceny and forgery...
A Balanced Budget Amendment: A Bad Idea
With federal budget deficits rising, pressure is on once again to enact a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. On June 25, a discharge petition was initiated to force a vote in the House on H.J. Res. 22, the latest in a long line of legislative efforts to...
Insider Trading and Asymmetric Information
Some of us know more about some things than others, and we often exploit that advantage. I know more about my driving habits than my auto insurance company. Borrowers know more about their repayment prospects than lenders. The seller of a car knows more about the...
Who’s Rich?
Congressman Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, recently declared to fellow party members at a Washington night spot, "I don't need Bush's tax cut" and added that he had never worked a day in his life. A number of other rich people have at various times likewise...
Stocks Can Mean Cash
The stock market has been rising impressively, but practically all I hear these days are complaints about low interest rates. Readers lament that they can make only three-quarters of a point in a money-market fund such as Merrill Lynch Ready Assets, or just 1.3...
Numbers Can Be Deceiving
Let's dig deeper into the bull-versus-bear debate that has dominated my last few columns. I've taken the bullish position -- but I'm not rabid about it, and I've discussed the things that worry me, too. I've gotten tons of email from readers along the way -- mostly...
Principles for Peace in the Middle East
In our quest for peace with the Palestinians, three imperatives unite Israelis: Terror must end, our borders must be secure, and the Palestinians must abandon the goal of destroying Israel. That is why we insist that the terror organizations be dismantled, that we not...
WSJ Out of the Money on Microsoft’s Stock Options
The financial press is grave-dancing on Microsoft's decision to no longer award stock options to employees -- and instead to award shares of stock itself. A Wall Street Journal column by Jessie Eisenger crows "Microsoft, once the bullying monopolist, is trying to...
United Nation’s International Criminal Court is an Evil Institution
The international community cried crocodile tears when the United States withdrew its support of the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC). Supporters of the court laughed when the US expressed concern that our soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes. Great...
“The Door of No Return” in Perspective
An Associated Press photo was flashed around the world last week showing President Bush standing in "The Door of No Return," the doorway of a slave warehouse on Goree Island, in Senegal, the place from which millions of able-bodied Africans, centuries ago, chained at...
“A Shot at Peace”: Can the U.S. Enforce the “Road Map”
The goal, everyone needs firmly to keep in mind, is not the signing of more agreements but (short-term) the ending of terrorism and (long-term) the Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.
Summer Reading, Part 2
In an era when so many uninformed people act as if they know it all, it is refreshing to get requests from people who want to educate themselves on particular subjects or just to get the basic education that they feel they missed when they were in school or college....
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