Upset with President Bush’s tax cut plan, columnist Molly Ivins warns that America’s more well-to-do taxpayers might go out and doing something unproductive if the government seizes a smaller portion of their incomes. “There’s no...
POLITICS
Learn to Earn: Investment Newsletters and Investment Books
For the past 20 years, a newsletter based in Annandale, Virginia called the Hulbert Financial Digest (866-428-6568) has been keeping track of the performance of other newsletters. Of the original ones it monitored, only 17 remain, and, at last count, the model stock...
Dogs of the Dow
When I heard that President Bush was proposing to eliminate the double taxation of dividends, I immediately exclaimed, “Arf!” I was thinking of the Dogs of the Dow, those high-yielding blue chips that gained notoriety nearly a decade ago. If it becomes...
An Idea Not Worth Drafting: Conscription is Slavery
Since the attacks on 9-11, the issue of the draft has sat simmering on the backburner of American politics with intermittent bouts on the front pages of political news. Its latest proponent is Congressman Charles Rangel, a left-darling from New York, whose entire...
The “Diversity” Fig Leaf
As a justification for racial preferences, “diversity” is one of the great fig leaves of modern American academia. It first appeared in 1978 — well after affirmative action had degenerated into the practice of admitting students on the basis of...
Clinton-Era IRS Regulation Threatens Economy and Financial Markets
Three days before President Bill Clinton left office, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) proposed a regulation (No. 126100-00) that would have forced American banks to report the interest they pay on the deposits of nonresident aliens. The IRS openly admitted that the...
A Capital Connection: Deemed Dividend Reinvestment Plans
I haven’t been much of a fan of the proposal to eliminate taxes on dividend income. But a new wrinkle in the Bush administration’s tax plan is making a believer out of me. What our growth-challenged economy needs most right now is a cut in capital-gains...
New York Times Co. Condones Theft
Last December The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism (CAC) issued a report addressing the continuing controversy between the National Council of Women’s Organizations and the Augusta National Golf Club. CAC’s report was not meant to assess...
Israeli Restraint Empowers Terrorists
Even by the grim standards of recent years, the suicide bombings in Tel Aviv last week were horrific. The terrorists, members of the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade (a wing of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization), positioned themselves at opposite ends of a busy...
Bush’s Economic Recovery Plan
President Bush announced an economic recovery plan built on tax cuts. A Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, also faced with national security threats and a big stock-market decline, came to the same conclusion. On Dec. 14, 1962, JFK urged Congress to ”reduce...
McDonalds Made Me Fat!
Aside from the Democrats predictably complaining that President Bush’s tax cut proposal is too pro-rich, the big economic news is that doctors are on strike and McDonald’s isn’t making a dime. It probably doesn’t matter much to Gregory Rhymes...
Who Needs the French, Anyway?
American foreign policy. Ponder the words involved in this term. It doesn’t say “American foreign policy as approved by the world,” nor does it say “American foreign policy as approved by Mr. Chirac.” Yet we are hearing, from all...
Venezuela’s Tyrant Hugo Chavez Must Go
As the general strike against the leftist regime of Hugo Chavez grinds Venezuela’s economy to a standstill, American policymakers worry about disruption of oil shipments from the fourth-largest U.S. supplier and further instability. For the Bush administration...
The Racism of “Diversity”
President Bush faces an ideal opportunity to take a principled position on the issue of racial “diversity.” As his administration ponders whether to support the legal challenge, now before the Supreme Court, to the University of Michigan’s...
George W. Bush Hugged the Third Rail
The shake-up of the Bush economic team has been the occasion for a lot of criticism of the administration’s domestic leadership. Indeed, I’ve been one of the harshest critics. Yet I think the Bush administration has done one thing very, very right when it...
Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
A recent news article described the nationwide strike in Venezuela, in protest against the nascent dictatorship of Hugo Chavez, as seeming “like something from fiction.” Well, yes, it seems very similar to one work of fiction in particular: Ayn...
Forced Volunteerism is an Oxymoron
Last month the Palm Beach County School Board was once again considering mandatory volunteerism as a requirement for graduation from high school. Does no one on the Board understand that forced volunteerism is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms? Does no one on the...
Economics vs. Politics
The familiar chorus of “tax cuts for the rich” has begun to ring out across the political landscape, in the wake of President Bush’s proposals to boost the economy. The time is long overdue to expose some of the fallacies folded up inside that...
To End the [Palestinian] Violence
The Palestinian campaign of terrorism rolls on, with 22 people murdered in Tel Aviv earlier this month. And even without counting minor incidents involving rocks and firebombs, the Palestinians average more than 10 attacks on Israelis every day. Which makes this a...
The Hate America Reflex
It wouldn’t be a war without a barrage of stones coming at America from the Left. In the December 2002 issue of Z Magazine, self-described as a place where “The Spirit of Resistance Lives,” i.e., chiefly a resistance to capitalism, patriotism and...
Standing Up to Racism
The Bush administration is currently debating whether to file briefs in a pair of affirmative action cases now before the Supreme Court. The cases, arising from admissions policies at the University of Michigan, involve that school’s explicit use of race in...
Is John Galt Venezuelan?
On January 1 Venezuela entered into its second month of a national work stoppage. Close to 90 percent of the working population refuses to participate as producers in an economy that supports the regime of Lieutenant Col. Hugo Chavez. In a disorganized and chaotic...
Equal Time at the New York Times
The New York Times reveals its deep anti-capitalism bias even when it purports to offer a little op-ed space to dissenting views. After a week of relentlessly demagoguing the Bush administrations tax plan as a subsidy to “the rich” — both in...
North Korea Must Dismantle Its Nuclear Facilities
On the contrary, North Korea demonstrates the value of preemption–it demonstrates why other hostile regimes must be preempted before they acquire the capability to deter the United States.
The Future of the US-South Korean Alliance
The time has come to ask the question, does America’s troop commitment to South Korea make the United States more secure today or less secure? Do our ground forces with South Korea help us to defend our interests, or do they hamper our ability to pursue our...
Grotesque Cynicism on the Draft
Charles Rangel, a Congressman strongly opposed to the war against Iraq, is introducing legislation to bring back the draft. How can this be? Ultraliberal congressmen like Rangel quite openly loathe the military, just like our former President Clinton once admitted....
A Veteran Comments on Re-instating the Military Draft
There can never be a national emergency that legitimizes the violation of individual rights.
Investing Advice for 2003
A year ago I told investors to sell technology stocks and reinvest in long-term Treasury bonds. That bet turned out very well on both sides: The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index is down more than 30% in 2002 while the total return for 10-year Treasurys has been about 18%...
Zoning and the The “New” Property Rights
Last Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in the case of George Washington University v. District of Columbia, upholding the District’s zoning restrictions on GW’s land use. The case was by no means a landmark...
Markets, the Dollar, and the “War on Terrorism”
Investors should expect continued weakness in the dollar over the coming months and year, by 8-12% against most major currencies. Dollar weakness this year already has exerted a bearish influence on U.S. stocks and will continue to do so with a lag. If, as we expect,...
Pulling Racism Out of a Helmet in the National Football League
When the regular season of the National Football League concludes and coaches are fired and replaced, an annual tribalist ritual accompanies these activities. It involves advocates of “diversity” crying that there are too few black head coaches, and that...
“Affirmative Action” Quotas on Trial, Part II
When the case for affirmative action in college and university admissions is argued before the Supreme Court this year, the justices are likely to hear many theories, many assertions — and little evidence. People who are for or against affirmative action are...
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