Two reporters relay this anecdote from Thailand: One of the half-dozen men and women sitting on a bench eating was a sinewy, bare-chested laborer in his late 30’s named Mongkol Latlakorn. It was a hot, lazy day, and so we started chatting idly about the food...
POLITICS
War as Social Work?
When President Bill Clinton deployed American troops in places like Bosnia and Haiti, he was criticized for turning foreign policy into “social work” (as Michael Mandelbaum pungently put it). By what authority, many asked in the 1990s, did the president...
Spring Cleaning Your Investment Portfolio
The war is over, the hummingbirds are back, the dogwood’s blooming white and pink. It’s spring, and, after a long, hard winter, it’s a refreshing and comforting change. So it’s time to give your investment portfolio a thorough spring cleaning....
The Failed Education “Reforms”
Sometimes a single incident can reveal the widespread rot that has affected the nation’s school systems as they strive to indoctrinate the children entrusted to their care while neglecting to teach them the Three R’s. In Inverness, Florida, a 12-year-old...
CNN Should Scale Back Chumminess with Cuba
Mohammed Al-Douri, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, left the United States on April 11. After planned stops in Paris and Damascus, he said, “I will be the first to enter my country as a free country.” Before heading out for what may be the...
Business Magazines Go Left-Wing
“Have They No Shame?” screamed the headline of the cover story of one of the magazines, adorned with a picture of five ravenous pigs eating cake amid piles of money. The subhead: “Their performance stank last year, yet most CEOs got paid more than...
Business Magazines Go Left-Wing
“Have They No Shame?” screamed the headline of the cover story of one of the magazines, adorned with a picture of five ravenous pigs eating cake amid piles of money. The subhead: “Their performance stank last year, yet most CEOs got paid more than...
Economic Stupidity
Imagine that you and I are in a rowboat. I commit the stupid act of shooting a hole in my end of the boat. Would it be intelligent for you to respond by shooting a hole in your end of the boat? Or, imagine I were a politician and told you that the Russian, Chinese,...
Portrait of the Greenspan Era
With today’s meeting of the FOMC not likely to generate a lot of surprises, let’s take a moment to look at a chart that offers a remarkable perspective on monetary history. One wants to be careful about taking this kind of analysis too literally, but it is...
Let’s Be Honest About Cuba
Around this time in 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell took it on the chin for opining, “Castro has done some good things for his people.” Last month Powell spoke about the Castro regime much more honestly, stating that the recent crackdown, sham trials...
In Defense of Enemies
There are plenty of otherwise rational individuals in the world who avoid confrontation at all costs, as if getting labeled a “Capitalist” was somehow worse than actually being one. This article is dedicated to them. Sometimes, even I receive hate mail....
The Great Deficit Mystery and Cutting Taxes
Can we afford a big tax cut right now? That’s what the arguments against the president’s $726 billion proposal boil down to, really. The fact that we’ve been at war, that the economy remains sluggish, that we’ve returned to deficit spending...
A Constitutional Republic for Iraq
As the statue of Saddam Hussein came crashing down, President Bush told the Iraqi people, “You deserve better than tyranny and corruption and torture chambers. You deserve to live as free people. And I assure every citizen of Iraq: your nation will soon be...
On the SEC Probe of NYSE “Specialist” Firms: Time Free the Stock Market to Make it More Competitive
The SEC is investigating possible abuses by the “specialist” firms that match buyers and sellers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The probe comes after revelations that the exchange itself had launched an investigation last year that is now...
The Right Kind of Tax Cut
Listening to Washington policy-makers haggle over the size of President Bush’s proposed tax cut — $350 billion over the next decade? $550 billion? $726 billion? — you would think nothing matters much beyond the price tag. Just as important, though,...
Income Facts: Work Pays
Those for whom indignation is a way of life often inform us of the fact that families or households in the top 10 or 20 percent in income make far more money than people in the bottom 10 or 20 percent in income. What they almost never inform us of are how much money...
The United Nations: United In Opposition to the American Ideal of Freedom
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan continues to claim that only the UN can grant legitimacy to the United States’ successful war to topple Saddam Hussein. Rationally, that claim can be viewed as little more than a pathetic, baseless whine from those...
Ending the Double Taxation of Dividends
If President Bush and his team want a great argument to support their proposed elimination of the unfair double taxation of dividends and retained earnings, they should look to an excellent column in the “Week In Review” section of last month’s New...
Why Our Education System Is Failing
Two unrelated events last week provide some clues as to why our education system is failing. First, Canada College in San Mateo, California, held a job fair — for kindergartners! Apparently there is nothing too silly to spend the taxpayers’ money on, even...
A Tax Plan Worse Than Nothing
The Bush administration is rapidly losing control of the tax legislative process. Its unwillingness to acknowledge that its plan needed to be totally rethought once a $350 billion revenue loss cap was imposed in the Senate has created an anarchic situation in...
It’s a Gas
Although he’s in Houston and I’m in Washington without one of those phone cams that the Iraq war made famous, I can see Marshall Adkins jumping up and down with enthusiasm. “Rigs are going to go berserk for the next five or six years!”...
It’s the Iraqi Economy, Stupid!
For years, we have heard about Saddam’s brutal suppression of political freedoms in Iraq where free elections, free speech, and a free press were non-existent. But we have heard little about the absence in Iraq of economic freedom and opportunity. As leader of...
On May Day Celebrate Capitalism
May Day will once again be celebrated by left-wing and environmentalist protestors united by a single emotion: a virulent hatred of capitalism, especially global capitalism.
Punish France by Enlarging American Freedom
Yes, folks, it finally happened. French President Jacques Chirac swallowed his pride and placed a let’s-be-friends-again phone call to President Bush. As well he should have. France’s behavior regarding Iraq has been despicable. In addition to providing...
A Capitalist Takes the Republican Presidential Victory Team Issues Survey
I am a Republican. I chose to be a Republican because in our current political climate, and compared to the alternatives, I judge the Republican Party to offer the best defense of my values. That said, the Republican Party infuriates me. As someone who is...
Letter to Janeane Garofalo: Confusing Free Speech with Nazism
Dear Janeane, You are an idiot of breathtaking proportions. This is incontrovertible based on your recent statement that said: “Hate mail bothers me less than what happens to the Dixie Chicks. There are boycotts and guys driving tractors over their CDs –...
Exempting Dividends from Taxation
President Bush’s plan to eliminate the double taxation of corporate profits, by exempting dividends from taxation, appears to be on life support. Even before his tax package was reduced from $726 billion to $550 billion in the House and $350 billion in the...
The Left’s Intellectual and Moral House of Cards
They take to the streets to paint President Bush as both a dolt and Hitler incarnate, and to demand that the “unjust” war on a terrorist states be stopped immediately. If you disagree with these “peace” activists, they’ll block traffic...
The Naked Hypocrisy of the Dixie Chicks
“Just so you know,” Natalie Maines told a London audience last month, “we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” But in an interview with Diane Sawyer Friday, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks responded to fan...
Repeal Sodomy Laws
A political firestorm is beginning to erupt around Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum over comments he made during an interview with the Associated Press. His comments were in response to a question about the pending decision from the Supreme Court on...
“Right”-to-Health-Care Junkies
A “right” to health care is the new opiate of the masses. And politicians are among the biggest pushers. As with most druggies, America started off with the light stuff. It began in the sixties with the marijuana of socialized medicine, Medicare and...
The Skyscraper: A Gesture to Reason, Freedom and Human Life
As with many inventions, Elisha Otis’s creation proved to have a much more far-reaching affect than just the need it was immediately designed to serve. On April 1, Otis Elevators celebrated its 150th anniversary. Appropriately, it was in New York City that...
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