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
Since it has long been known that the best defense is a good offense, it should not be surprising that politicians who have created an economic mess should begin loudly denouncing somebody else as the cause of the public's problems. Last year, the problem was a sharp...
Last week, a quarter of a million Californians had their power cut in a new wave of rolling blackouts. As one official admitted, "This is the situation everyone feared. Here it is May 7, and we already have rolling outages." This is only a warm-up for the summer, when...
The world's biggest retailer proves the New Economy isn't just for tech companies. To be at the leading edge of the New Economy, a company doesn't have to make semiconductors or optical networking components, or even map the human genome. As much as anything else the...
Publisher's Note: This is the third in a series of personal finance columns on the subject of being the executor of an estate. These columns are based on my own personal experiences in this regard. Individuals should consult a professional advisor and take their own...
Jack Welch, the retiring CEO of General Electric, may be the greatest corporate manager of all time. I'm not comparing him to inventors or entrepreneurs who created great things out of nothing, but as a manager who can run a business, develop talent and consistently...
Author's Note: This is the first in a series of personal finance columns on the subject of being the executor of an estate. These columns are based on my own personal experiences in this regard. Individuals should consult a professional advisor and take their own...
A week ago I wrote here that the NASDAQ's highs of Wednesday, May 2, marked the closing bookend of the NASDAQ's fabulous bull run that carried it 35.6% from the bottom on April 4. So far I've been right. From May 2 through yesterday's close, the NASDAQ has dropped...
President Bush's speech on ballistic missile defense (BMD) is a reaction to "the Kyoto complex," where he made a big (and the right) decision (getting out of the protocol) without consultation. Now on BMD, he's all consultation and no big decision. Acting much like...
Talk about quick. It would take more time for a missile to get here from North Korea than it took critics to fire off the same tired arguments against missile defense following President Bush's recent speech at the National Defense University. What those arguments...
Once again we're faced with a market that doesn't want to go up, but doesn't want to go down either. Since last Wednesday's high on the NASDAQ -- which I said was the closing bookend on the NASDAQ's spring rally -- the markets have all been in consolidation. Yes, the...
Here in the US, opposition to national missile defense (NMD) falls into four categories. Critics complain about its potential cost, its alleged unworkability, its putative damage to international relations, and its supposed irrelevance to the real threats to the US....
For the past few years, telecom companies have been working diligently to provide us with pseudo-broadband internet connections over copper (DSL) and cable (cable modem). I use the term "pseudo-broadband" because the existing telecom infrastructure can only provide...
Normal human beings would blanch at the thought of staging an athletic event at the site of an infamous massacre. But China's Communist rulers, who are bidding hard to host the Summer Olympics in 2008, are not normal human beings. So it comes as no surprise that they...
Just like old times. Cisco beat by a penny. It was easy, too. All they had to do was lower expectations far below anything you would have dared to imagine in your worst nightmares a year ago. And according to CEO John Chambers, it'll be a snap to grow revenues at 30%...
Author's Note: This is the second in a series of personal finance columns on the subject of being the executor of an estate. These columns are based on my own personal experiences in this regard. Individuals should consult a professional advisor and take their own...
When the Berlin Wall collapsed, one would have expected the poisonous Marxist ideology of class warfare to disappear along with it. But this year's tax debate has shown the politics-of-envy is alive and well. Demagogues are vilifying President Bush's plan to lower tax...
Just a quick note this morning, to try to illuminate the nature of the cusp at which the markets find themselves. On Thursday the markets made it clear they didn't want to go higher. And on Friday they made it just as clear they didn't want to go lower. Friday was a...
When eBay, a small Internet auction company based in San Jose, California, sought venture capital, it had to pass an informal test administered by the venture guys before they would consider making an investment: Was there a reasonably good likelihood that the...
I would like to begin today's column tangentially, by admitting to the world that I did something incredibly stupid yesterdaythis past Tuesday Allow me to explain. There is a delightful yiddish phrase, kayn ein hora (pronounced "kinna herra" or "kunna hurra") that has...
It was only a passing news item when the financial information service Standard & Poor's lowered the rating it gave to bonds issued by the state of California. But it has big implications and it also shows the big difference between economics and politics. At the...
"Can I please have some more arsenic in my water, Mommy? More salmonella in my cheeseburger, please." So begins a Democratic National Committee commercial attacking George W. Bush's policy on arsenic levels in water. In the commercial, a cute little girl fills a glass...
Sometimes market moves begin and end with perfectly matched catalysts -- bookends, if you will. It's strange, but a single piece of news can first ignite a rally, and then later virtually the same news can extinguish it. And that's what just happened to the NASDAQ....
As a health care provider, here is my proposal for a patient bill of rights: 1. The right to enter voluntary, contractual relationships with doctors -- without paternalistic interference on the part of federal and state governments. For example: laws mandating that...
If we had to single out one American institution that stands at the forefront of modern-day racial discrimination, deception and contempt for fundamental principles of liberty, it would be America's universities. Under the euphemisms of affirmative action,...
It may sound healthy, this debate we're hearing in Washington over a "Patients' Bill of Rights." But it's like listening to prisoners clamor for better food and more yard time. No matter what the outcome, they're still prisoners. What they should be angling for is...
Here are some of the racial epithets I've been called in my lifetime: Chink. Gook. Jap. Nigger. Slant eyes. Dog-eater. Those are just the printable ones. I'm an American of Filipino descent, but have been mistaken for everything from native Hawaiian to Caribbean. I've...
Q: What about the Libertarians? They seek the same role for government as people such as yourself. You cannot complain that there is not a party that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal when the Libertarians are present. A: Yes I can. Because the...
American know-how can surmount virtually any obstacle. Yet we're to believe that missile defense is impossible? Baloney. To hear some critics tell it, America's planned missile-defense system is based on the B-movie fantasies of former actor President Reagan. It'll...
No wonder the California Teachers Association was howling. Ray Haynes actually wanted them to practice what they preach. Haynes, a Republican state senator from California, recently introduced legislation in Sacramento that would have required public school teachers...
Companies are usually rewarded when they do a good job. They make more money. They gain more customers. They even win awards from their peers. But apparently that's not the case when a company's business is improving big-city education. In too many cities across the...
As the guarantor of regional security in Asia, the United States should be paying closer attention to the military buildup and strident anti-Taiwan rhetoric of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Other nations may be able to dismiss these threats as just another...
In a CNN interview on April 16, 2001, [Pat] Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition and head of the Christian Broadcasting Network, was asked how he reconciles his support for close ties with China with Beijing's ruthless one-child policy, which has forced...
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