The first rule in government, as in medicine, is the Hippocratic one: Do no harm. Unfortunately, Congress is about to do severe harm to the U.S. economy if it fails to act in the next few months to stop three huge automatic tax increases. Let me shift metaphors. The...
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
“The New White Flight”
“The New White Flight” was the title of an eye-opening article in the November 20th issue of the Wall Street Journal. It was about a high school in Cupertino, California, where a growing Asian American student population is causing rising academic...
President Bill Clinton is Wrong on Pragmatism
“Sooner or later you figure out that pragmatism and compromise are principles in a democracy. It’s not selling out your convictions.” This, according to former President Bill Clinton in a major speech several days ago. President Clinton is wrong....
Human Organs for Sale?
The organ-transplant tragedy at UC Irvine Medical Center, where according to the Los Angeles Times “more than 30 people died awaiting liver transplants . . . as the hospital turned down scores of organs that might have saved them,” illustrates the terrible...
French Family Values Revisited
Princeton University professor and columnist Paul Krugman deservedly won Forbes.com’s “Dunce of the Week” award for his New York Times column “French Family Values” (July 29, 2005). Krugman asks, “But are European economies really...
Terrorists and Banning Torture
Some people seem to see nothing between zero and infinity. Things are either categorically all right or they are categorically off-limits. This kind of reasoning — if it can be called reasoning — is reflected in the stampede to ban torture by Congressional...
Palestinians Taste a Dose of Their Own Medicine
A suicide bombing in Hadera, Israel, on October 26 that killed five people inspired the usual Palestinian joy: some 3,000 people took to the streets in celebration, chanting Allahu Akbar, calling for more suicide attacks against Israelis, and congratulating the...
How To Cure Inflation
Last month, President Bush nominated Dr. Ben S. Bernanke, currently chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, as chairman of Federal Reserve Board to replace the retiring Alan Greenspan. Alan Greenspan’s replacement comes at a time of...
Price Controls
I first became aware of the law of gravity as a small child when I pedalled by tricycle off the porch and crashed into the yard. Gravity was of course operating all along, whether I was aware of it or not. Economics is a lot like that. Many people who are completely...
Defining Gasoline Price ‘Gouging’
A newspaper headline — “Lawmakers Struggle to Define Gasoline Price ‘Gouging'” — shows how phony the current Congressional jihad against the oil companies is. “Price gouging” is one of those phrases that evoke strong emotions...
What Causes Unemployment?
Many people are blaming the riots in France on the high unemployment rate among young Muslim men living in the ghettoes around Paris and elsewhere. Some are blaming both the unemployment and the ghettoization on discrimination by the French. Plausible as these...
The Rest of the Story on Paul Harvey: Still Panning For Gold After 87 Years
“May I have your undivided for just a moment,” veteran radio newsman Paul Harvey will say, before announcing what “this day’s news of most lasting significance” is. As Harvey frequently notes, it probably isn’t found on the front...
Jarhead: Heroes Do Not Exist
In 1987, Time magazine ran an infamous cover that consisted of a marine in his dress blue uniform–with a blackened eye upon his face. The cover was intended to depict the shame befallen the marines after the Clayton Lonetree spy scandal and it was met with...
Global Warming, Melting Ice Caps and Rising Sea Levels
One of the great fears generated by global warming is that the ocean is about to rise and swallow our coasts. These concerns have been heightened by the substantial uptick in Atlantic hurricane activity that began in 1995. The frequency of really strong storms...
Interview: Dan Yergin on Energy Prices and Policies
James Glassman: Energy prices have been rising sharply, partly because of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. We decided to talk to probably America’s number one expert on energy to try to separate some of the hysteria and the myths from the truth. Dan Yergin...
Understanding the Paris Riots: Multiculturalism and the Self-Liquidation of Europe
On November 9, 1938, the Nazi government launched a vicious pogrom in which thousand of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, while bands of young Nazi thugs smashed the windows of Jewish homes and shops. Kristallnacht–the “Night of Broken...
“Windfall Profits” and the Price of Gasoline
In the wake of high gasoline prices and high oil company profits, House Speaker Dennis Hastert demands that oil companies explain why they are making so much money and what they plan to do to bring down the cost of gasoline. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has introduced a...
Riots in France: The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris
Riots that began on the outskirts of Paris have spread into the center of the French capital and to other communities in other parts of the country. Thousands of cars have been set on fire and the police and even medical personnel have been shot at. Like many other...
Cut Federal Spending and Put Medicare Prescription Drugs on Hold
Republicans in Congress are now struggling to carve some spending cuts out of their recent vast increases in the Federal Budget. Democrats, while critical of deficit spending, are helpfully suggesting even more spending increases. The best quick fix would be to delay...
Iran’s Final Solution Plan
“Iran’s stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [i.e., Israel]. We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.” No, those are not the words of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,...
Civil Rites Rights
While giving my office at home an overdue cleaning up — “operation Augean stable,” as my wife and I call it — I uncovered in the paper jungle a 2005 calendar. Since there was not a lot of 2005 left, I was about to throw it out when I read its...
Do We Really Care About Children?
I cringe with disgust when I hear politicians say, “We’re doing it for the children.” What’s worse is so many Americans mindlessly fall hook, line and sinker for the hype. Judging by our actions, Americans could not care less for future...
“Windfall Profits Tax ” Will Increase the Price of Oil
“An angry public wants quick relief from high prices” at the pump, says Business Week. That’s hardly a surprise. Over the past year, the Energy Department reports, a gallon of regular gasoline has gone from $1.86 to $2.96. But even at less than...
Lewis Libby: A Fishing License Indictment
We have been hearing for a long time what a terrible thing it is to reveal the name of a covert C.I.A. agent — and it is a terrible thing because that can be a life-and-death situation for the agent exposed and a devastating setback for this country’s...
Ammunition for Poverty Pimps
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans, President Bush gave America’s poverty pimps and race hustlers new ammunition. The president said, “As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this...
Ostracism
Earlier this year, when the Ward Churchill essay became news, my initial reaction was that he should be charged with a crime such as ‘treason’ or ‘aiding and abetting the enemy’. But through discussion with friends, I realized my reaction was wrong, and that his...
The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire
Did J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie really make their fortunes as “Robber Barons” exploiting the common man? Was the Great Depression really caused by greedy businessmen and investors? Did the socialist Soviet Union actually surpass...
Rosa Parks: Pursuit of Profit vs. Racism
The death of Rosa Parks has reminded us of her place in history, as the black woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of Alabama, became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and...
Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It (Chapter 2, Part 3 of 3)
Adapted from Chapter 2 of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It by Craig Biddle. According to Hume, if you see a man raping a woman, you cannot say that what you are witnessing is factually immoral; you cannot say that as a matter of...
Stocks Will Shine Again
Two weeks ago I suggested that investors sell Exxon Mobil and use the proceeds to buy Wal-Mart Stores. If you’d made the trade that day, then you’d be ahead 11% overall — Wal-Mart is up 3.6%, and Exxon Mobil is down 7.4%. I imagine most people...
Random Thoughts: October 2005
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Neither the depth of despondency nor the height of euphoria tells you how long either will last. We are so easily deceived that many people think that the Senate Judiciary Committee is acting nicely if the Senators wear a genial...
Spoiled Brat Politics, Part 2
The idea that what I want overrides what you want has increasingly become part of our thinking, our policies and even our laws. There is literally a federal case before the Supreme Court over the fact that many colleges and universities refuse to allow military...
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