Telling a friend that the love of his life is a phony and dangerous is not likely to get him to change his mind. But it may cost you a friend. It is much the same story with true believers in Barack Obama. They have made up their minds and not only don’t want to...
POLITICS
The Alleged Absence of Depressions Under Totalitarian Management
Many socialist authors emphasize that the recurrence of economic crises and business depressions is a phenomenon inherent in the capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, they say, a socialist system is safe against this evil. As has already become obvious and...
In Defense of the “Barbarous Relic”: Why The Enemies of Capitalism Smear The Gold Standard
Given the state of affairs created by the U.S. Central Banking system this classic on Free Banking and the Gold Standard by Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) is all the more relevant today . Excerpted from his book “Human Action: A Treatise on Economics”...
Faith-Based Politics Costs Colorado Republicans
Colorado is known for its Western values of independence and economic liberty. So why do Republicans, the supposed champions of those values, keep getting trounced? Republicans can blame wealthy Democratic donors, but in large part Republicans have beaten themselves...
Political Monopoly Power
The Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, is the document most frequently referred to when trying to get a feel for the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. One such intention is found in Federalist 56 where...
Negative Advertising
One of the oldest phenomena of American elections– criticism of one’s opponent– has in recent times been stigmatized by much of the media as “negative advertising.” Is this because the criticism has gotten more vicious or more personal?...
Was the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis Caused by Lack of Regulations?
Did lack of regulation create the subprime mortgage crisis? I am asked this all the time. The short answer: Of course not. Nowhere close. Not a chance. Here is the long answer. What regulations have we had? The mortgage originator (your local bank or mortgage broker)...
Bill Maher’s Movie Religulous
“Religulous” is a funny, sometimes serious, skeptic’s tale of religion. And I mean the true meaning of “skeptic.” Bill Maher does a good job of slicing and dicing religion. He travels to the Vatican, Utah, and Israel. Maher identifies the...
Lessons From the Bailout
In my more cynical moments, I think that we Americans deserve what we get from our politicians, many of whom can be generally described as nothing less than loathsome. You say, “Williams, that’s a pretty heavy putdown.” My question to you is how else...
The Real Obama on Education
What about those “real issues” that Barack Obama’s supporters in the media say we should get back to, whenever some new unsavory fact about his past comes out? Surely education is a real issue, with American school children consistently scoring below...
The Real Obama
Critics of Senator Barack Obama make a strategic mistake when they talk about his “past associations.” That just gives his many defenders in the media an opportunity to counter-attack against “guilt by association.” We all have associations,...
In Defense of Speculators and Short-Sellers
Everywhere today government bureaucrats and media pundits blame unwanted price movements on speculators and short-sellers. If prices are “too high”–it’s the fault of greedy speculators; if prices are “too low”–it’s the...
The Financial Panic and the Only Proper Answer to It
One fact is absolutely clear: most of the blame for the current financial panic is utterly misdirected. Rather than hold accountable the irrational government policies that encouraged irresponsible lending and mountains of homeowner debt (and those who supported these...
Monetary Policy and the Return to Sound Money
Excerpted from Chapter 23, Part IV of Mises classic The Theory of Money and Credit (1912). The people of all countries agree that the present state of monetary affairs is unsatisfactory and that a change is highly desirable. However, ideas about the kind of reform...
Government Bailout Crack
Every few days we hear that another leading financial institution has written down billions more on subprime investments gone bad. Nearly every major financial institution, it turns out, had a hand in loans to low-credit borrowers–borrowers whose ability to pay...
Destroying Liberty
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the...
Economic Freedom in America: What is Economic Freedom?
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred,...
Penny-Wise Politics: Class Envy and CEO Pay
Congress is never more ridiculous than when it tries to look like it is serious. In the midst of a major national financial crisis, what was one of the first things Congress zeroed in on? The pay of Chief Executive Officers of financial institutions. If all those CEOs...
An Open Letter to Members of Congress on the Financial Mess
Dear Members of Congress: On September 16 [2008] I sent a letter to my congressman, and to other senior US government officials, that consisted of three sentences: “I oppose all bailouts of financial institutions by the US government. Government...
Key Points on a “Rescue” Plan From A Healthy Bank’s Perspective
Here is a letter by John Allison, President & CEO of BB&T, that was sent to every member of Congress. Dear Senator/Congressman/Representative: BB&T is a $136 billion multi-state banking company. We have 1,500 branches throughout the mid-Atlantic...
Single-Payer Health Care: Immoral and Hazardous to Patients’ Health
In “Fact and Fiction: Debunking Myths in the US Healthcare System”[1], Sarpel et al presume “an obligation to provide healthcare to those who need it.” This faulty moral premise underlies all forms of socialized medicine (including the...
Congress and the Politics of Bailouts
Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis. Among the Congressional “leaders” invited to the White House to devise a bailout “solution” are the very people who have for years created...
EPA Fascism versus America: The Descent into Dictatorship (7 of 7)
This is the last in a seven part series detailing our objections to plans by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to claim unlimited power over the life of every American. Those plans were laid out in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), dated...
Who Buried Capitalism?
A journalist wrote me the following: “I always say both Democrats and Republicans want to transfer wealth. Democrats want to take from the rich and give to the poor. Republicans want to take from the poor and give to the rich. This [proposed government bailout]...
EPA Fascism versus America: The Failed Predictions of the Environmentalists (5 of 7)
This is the fifth in a seven part series detailing our objections to plans by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to claim unlimited power over the life of every American. Those plans were laid out in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR),...
EPA Fascism versus America: There is No Natural Evidence for Man-made Global Warming (3 of 7)
This is the third in a seven part series detailing our objections to plans by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to claim unlimited power over the life of every American. Those plans were laid out in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR),...
EPA Fascism versus America: The EPA Plans are Immoral (2 of 7)
This is the second in a seven part series detailing our objections to plans by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to claim unlimited power over the life of every American. Those plans were laid out in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR),...
Scaring Us to Death
There is a H.L. Mencken quotation that captures the essence of this year’s politics: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of...
EPA Fascism versus America (1 of 7)
This article details how the EPA intends to claim unlimited power over the life of every American.
A Political “Solution” to the Current Financial Crisis? (Part 2)
Estimates of how much money a government program will cost are notoriously unreliable. Estimates of the cost of the current bailout in the financial markets run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and some say it may reach or exceed a trillion. Many people have...
A Political “Solution” to the Current Financial Crisis? (Part 1)
Who was it who said, “crack-brained meddling by the authorities” can “aggravate an existing crisis”? Ronald Reagan? Milton Friedman? Adam Smith? Not even close. It was Karl Marx. Unlike most leftists today, Marx studied economics. Is the...
Dealing with Russia
On Aug. 8, Russia decided to rewrite the rules of post-World War II European security. It repudiated the Helsinki Pact of 1975, which recognized the sanctity of borders in Europe, and violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of NATO aspirant Georgia, whose...
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