Most politicians and economists do not recognize capitalism's crucial characteristic. Given the state of the world today it's easy to see why. In his widely acclaimed speech of September 20, 2001, President Bush said, "Terrorists attacked a symbol of American...
POLITICS
Fidel’s Fig Leaf for A “Useful Idiot”
Fidel Castro loathes anyone who champions freedom and democracy, but for Vladimiro Roca, who was freed this week after nearly five years in prison, he harbors a particular hatred. Roca is a scion of Cuba's communist elite. His father was Blas Roca, a founding father...
Trading Places on Taxes: Russia and the United States
Eleven years ago, the Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship, an "evil empire," in the words of President Reagan. But today, the Cold War is a fading memory, and the nation that used to represent international socialism has junked its "progressive" income tax for a...
The New High Plateau: The Valuation Conundrum
The best reasons for the current era of high equity valuations aren't very good. Just a few weeks before the great stock market crash of 1929, America's first celebrity economist, Irving Fisher, made one of history's worst market calls when he said, "Stock prices have...
An America President in Communist Cuba
Two major stories emerged last week regarding Cuba; one story you probably know -- Jimmy Carter was in Cuba -- and the other you probably do not. The contrast represents the complete inversion of what really matters. An American president in Cuba, current or former,...
Analyze This
For the past 10 months, the attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has been investigating Merrill Lynch & Co. Although he hasn't charged anyone with a crime, he has accused the firm of misleading customers by hyping stocks to win investment-banking business;...
“Reporting” on Taxes
The Associated Press ran a rare article explaining exactly who pays the federal income taxes. They state that the top 5 percent of income earners pay more than 55 percent of the total federal income taxes. (To be eligible for the top 5 percent, one must have an annual...
Expel Arafat Now
The Bush administration has fielded a great deal of criticism for its handling of the Middle East crisis. Many have focused on questions of timing and tone: Should White House officials have stepped in sooner? Should they have put pressure on Israel to pull back...
Political Correctness Imprisons Speedy Gonzales
From Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, to Wile Coyote's Roadrunner-catching Acme ingenuity, Warner Brothers' hilarious Looney Tunes have filled generations of Americans with innocent childlike laughter. Unfortunately, political correctness run amok is depriving future...
“World Opinion” Can Go To Hell When It Supports Suicide Bombers
Europe has been at peace for an unprecedented nearly six decades. Why? It surely is not because of peace treaties between enemy states, and it's surely not because of disarmament. All that was tried before and failed. The best explanation for Europe's unprecedented...
Crack Down on Criminal Aliens
Attorney General John Ashcroft is making sense. This week, he ordered the deportation of a Haitian nanny who was convicted of second-degree manslaughter in the beating death of a 19-month-old boy in 1995. Ashcroft's decision reverses a bleeding-heart ruling by three...
The Mixed Economy Monster
Six months after the collapse of Enron, the left is still sputtering in violent outrage at the company, and with good reason. This display of wrath is the only way to keep people from noticing the real emotion underlying the Enron feeding frenzy: elation. The...
A Lesson for GOP Panderers on Illegal Immigration
The Republican Party needs to hire Andrew Smith to help shape its message on immigration. At 18, this senior at Novato High School in Marin County, Calif., has more common sense and cojones than the hapless panderers in the GOP who have thrown their principles to the...
The Thong Reaction
We live in the Age of Exhibitionism. Underwear is outerwear. Gauze is a coverup. "Bare midriff" is redundant. Earlier this spring, the red-carpet parade at the Academy Awards exposed more sagging flesh than an aging nudist colony. Did you see actresses Gwyneth Paltrow...
The Los Angeles “Rodney King” Riots: Ten Years Later
A riot is a strange thing to commemorate. But many in the media and in politics have commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots that erupted after policemen who beat Rodney King were acquitted. The passage of time gives us all an opportunity to rethink...
Compromise: The Bush Administration’s Bankrupt Approach to Peace in the Middle East
What's the instinctive response to failure? Redouble your efforts, of course. Lost on the road? Don't admit it - you'd have to stop to figure out where you went wrong, maybe even suffer the humiliation of having to ask for directions. Instead, just step on the gas and...
America’s Accommodation of Evil
In perusing through a recently published book on American politics, the following statement caught my eye: "[The spectre] our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face is that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and appeasement does not give you a choice...
CAIR: The NAACP for Islamic Terrorists
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations presents itself as just another civil-rights group. "We are similar to a Muslim NAACP," says spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. Its public language - about promoting "interest and understanding among the general public...
Japanese Stock Growth?
A visitor to Tokyo just can't believe that this is what a decade of stagnation looks like. Restaurants are full, shops are bustling, construction cranes are all over the place. Yet on Thursday, a government report showed that Japan's economy had "contracted by a real...
Suffer the Palestinian Children
I spent my 21st birthday, in 1973, in Jerusalem, months before the Yom Kippur War. As part of the college junior semester abroad, I lived and traveled in Israel for nearly five weeks. In preparing a thesis called "U.N. Resolution 242 and the Viability of an...
Shakedown at Abercrombie & Fitch: White and Wong Profiteers
Abercrombie & Fitch tried to sell some silly T-shirts with Asian caricatures a few weeks ago. One showed a pair of slant-eyed Chinese men with the phrase, "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White." Some very loud, wired and whiny Asian-American...
Conference in Cloud Cuckoo Land
On Thursday, the Bush administration announced that it would join with the United Nations, the European Union and Russia to host an international peace conference to settle the conflict in the Middle East. No location was announced for this meeting, but I can suggest...
Secession or Nullification
A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed Loyola University (Maryland) professor of economics Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln," a book that presented abundant evidence that most of the Founders took the right of state secession for granted. Despite that evidence, some...
Israel or the Palestinians? Making the Moral Choice
As the Israeli military stomps Palestinian gunmen and levels their lairs, the chorus of voices chanting "restraint!" has unfortunately been joined by the Bush administration, albeit with less gusto than the Europeans. But its detractors notwithstanding, Israel is...
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