His nomination isn’t even official yet, but the knives are already out for Gerald Reynolds, the former president of the Center for New Black Leadership whom President Bush has tapped to run the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights. His crime? He...
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
Questions & Answers On Privatizing Social Security
Aren’t most people too unsophisticated to manage their private account? This is a valid concern, but there are simple solutions that have worked well over twenty years with 401(k) plans, and they could easily be applied here. First, rudimentary investment...
Intel Crushes AMD: Will Cisco Join Them?
As we continue through the slow and painful process of building a bottom after the great techwreck of 2000/2001, we have the opportunity to crash-test a great investment thesis from the irrationally exuberant era of the late great bull market — “gorilla...
Relief for America’s Health Care Titanic
Over the past few months, congress has been trying to make it easier for employees to sue their employers if they are not happy with their health insurance plans. Yes, you read that correctly. Liberal-socialist-statists want to hold employers responsible for the fact...
The Green Party vs. American Capitalism
The Green Party has 362 candidates running in 39 States. If they can tap into the uncertainty and resentment of voters, they are likely to draw votes from Democrats in the mid-term elections. Political analysts believe Ralph Nader’s run for the presidency in...
A Cost Benefit Analysis on Privatizing Social Security
In my commentaries this week, I’ve discussed the transcendent importance to the economy and the markets of the potential for restructuring Social Security, to include individually managed private accounts. I’ve talked about some of the myths about Social...
Liberty’s Greatest Advocate: Frederic Bastiat
June 30 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederic Bastiat. If one were to list the top 10 advocates of liberty, French philosopher-economist Bastiat would rank high on that list. He’d easily outrank any one of the founders of our nation. I’m...
Lessons from Chile on Social Security
This week I’m focusing on the myths that will keep investors from grasping the risks and opportunities on the road ahead as President George W. Bush pushes for restructuring Social Security — probably with the introduction of private accounts that could be...
Privatizing Social Security is Good for the Economy
We may be on the brink of a once-in-a-decade investment opportunity, a rare chance to catch a huge environmental change in the economy and the markets. And it’s still early on this one — you can still catch this one before it becomes part of the...
Apartheid for Native Hawaiians
Some people will do anything to get their hands on federal wampum. Across the country, scam artists claiming to be oppressed “indigenous peoples” have used dubious family histories, altered documents or shady land claims to win government recognition as...
Foundry Networks
Foundry Networks reported better than expected earnings and revenues for the second quarter (July 25, 2001). The company reported revenues of $88.6 million, up sequentially by 7.3%, and $16 million above consensus forecasts. Earnings per share were $.07, which was...
A FED without Alan Greenspan
Does the market ever go up on a day when Alan Greenspan talks? I can’t remember when it ever has. On July 18, 2001, the markets gapped lower on the opening. They tried to recover in the first hour, but as soon as the prepared text of Greenspan’s testimony...
Where Does America Stand?
Gao Zhan has seen the cruelty of the Chinese dictatorship firsthand and up close, as a native of China and through the last five and a half months of captivity under trumped-up accusations of spying. But she has emerged unbowed. Here are her words upon returning to...
Daring to Question the Welfare State
Did Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill commit a “gaffe” of epic proportions? Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich certainly thinks so. In an interview with Financial Times, O’Neill said, “Able-bodied adults should save enough on a...
Racial Double Standards
A measure of accommodation is accorded children because they are not adults and thus not to be held to the same accountability standards. But should that same accommodation be accorded to a race of people? In the March 2001 edition of The American Enterprise magazine,...
How to Lie with Non-Statistics
“Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled.” Did you know that? It is just as well if you did not, because it is not true. It takes no research to prove that it is not true. If there had been just two children in...
Public Education: The Department of Embezzlement
President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” school reform proposal passed in the House last week. Considering what a colossal black hole the U.S. Department of Education has become, the $24 billion plan would be more appropriately dubbed: No Dime Left...
Timid Old World
The clones are coming! Lock your doors, hide your wives and children — or, better yet, hold congressional hearings and pass a law. Angry villagers in academia and on Capitol Hill are crusading for a ban on human cloning — a ban potentially so sweeping that...
Death Among Children: Tragedy at Tommy Lee’s
A 4-year-old boy died last weekend at the Malibu home of rock star Tommy Lee. How any right-thinking parents could entrust their child to a drug-addled celebrity who pled no contest to kicking his ex-wife (actress Pamela Anderson) while she held their newborn baby is...
Liberty for Cuba
“Our goal is not to have an embargo against Cuba; it is freedom in Cuba.” Thus spake President Bush last month, at a White House ceremony marking the 99th anniversary of Cuban independence. “The sanctions our Government enforces against the Castro...
Bill & Hil & Bob & Ted’s Fugitive Pal
Who is Mark Jimenez? More importantly: Where is Mark Jimenez? And why doesn’t anyone in Washington care that this fugitive businessman — indicted in 1998 on 17 counts of illegal campaign contributions to Democrats — remains at large, defiantly...
“Trade Imbalances”: The Seen and Unseen
I buy more from my grocer than he buys from me. I buy more from my auto dealer than he buys from me. The trade imbalance doesn’t stop there. My grocer and auto dealer both buy more from their wholesaler than the wholesaler buys from them. These are examples of...
Straw Men vs. Capital Punishment
Two days after Timothy McVeigh’s execution, The New York Times published eight letters to the editor discussing the event and expressing an opinion on the death penalty. Six of the eight were against executing murderers, one was in favor, and one was in favor in...
Once Upon a Rhyme
Limp Bizkit lyrics. Beeper numbers. TV jingles. Carson Daly’s vital statistics. Such is the stuff that clutters the minds of American boys and girls. It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, students had their heads crammed full with poetry by great...
McVeigh and the Death Penalty
The execution of Timothy McVeigh has again raised the issue of capital punishment. Much of the case against capital punishment does not rise above the level of opaque pronouncements that it is “barbaric,” by which those who say this presumably mean that it...
Moral Compromise: Why There is No Peace in Palestine
The Palestinians, you may have noticed, have changed their tune. When the current orgy of violence against Israelis began last fall, the explanation out of Gaza City — faithfully echoed by most of the Western media — was that it was all Ariel...
The Legacy of Slavery Hustle
Today, there are increasing numbers of black professionals and scholars advocating reparations for slavery. New York Times staff writer Tamar Lewin, in her June 3 article “Calls for Slavery Reparations Getting Louder,” says that a team of black lawyers...
In Search of…an Energy Crisis
I had this column all figured out. “Good news,” I was going to begin. “Gasoline prices are up. And why is that good news? Because it means more gasoline is on the way — and more gas means cheaper gas.” I intended to explain that prices...
Gary Davis’ Political Masterpiece in California
Some people were surprised when California’s Governor Gray Davis hired two Democratic Party operatives at $30,000 a month to serve as spinmeisters during the current electricity crisis. But all indications are that they are well worth their money. Think about...
Inept Teacher Training
American education will never be improved until we address a problem seen as too delicate to discuss. That problem is teacher philosophy and incompetency. If we were serious about efforts to improve public education, we’d shut down schools of education. Why?...
EPA Games
What doesn’t Carol Browner want us to know about her zealously activist reign at the Environmental Protection Agency? Six months ago, on her last day in office, Bill Clinton’s former eco-chief oversaw the destruction of her computer files — in clear...
How CNN Creates The News
How many families do you know that live in a “compound”? My dictionary defines a compound as “an enclosed area used for confining prisoners of war.” But in the liberal media handbook, “compound” means any dwelling where God and guns...
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