The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that it’s perfectly legitimate for a local government to seize private property, pay a below-market price and hand it over to another private citizen or company that claims it can do more with the property — i.e.,...
POLITICS
“Mainstream” Judges
Recent shocking Supreme Court decisions may at least wake up those people who have been saying glibly that the Senate has been spending too much time fighting over judicial nominees, instead of getting back to the “real” issues. What is more real than the...
Government Confiscates Property
Last week’s U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 ruling in Kelo v. New London helps explain the socialist attack on President Bush’s nominees to the federal bench. First, let’s look at the case. The city government of New London, Conn., has run upon hard times,...
Property Rites
You may own your own home and expect to live there the rest of your life. But keep your bags packed, because the Supreme Court of the United States has decreed that local politicians can take your property away and turn it over to someone else, just by using the magic...
No Apology to Indians
American Indians should refuse to be regarded as a race of helpless victims entitled to a collective apology from their fellow citizens.
75 Years Old
Three-quarters of a century! It is hard to believe that I am that old but arithmetic is uncompromising. This means that I have lived through nearly one-third of the entire history of the United States. The changes in my life — and still more so in the life of...
Refining Your Oil Strategy
On Thursday afternoon crude oil futures hit $60 a barrel, and investors hit the panic button. Apparently $59 was fine. $60, for some reason, was a big problem. There’s nothing fundamental about $60 a barrel. There’s no reason to think that the economy will...
Healthcare Nightmare: Controlling the Cost of Cost Control
The cost of health care will continue to rise for a number of good reasons. We are living longer, and the retirement of the baby boom generation will increase demand on health care. Cutting-edge technology and new drugs will improve the quality and length of...
Prescription Drug Advertising is Good for All of Us
When you see a commercial for a new car, a new movie, or a new brand of breakfast cereal it’s because the manufacturers of those products want to incur as much advertising expense as possible so they can pass the cost along to you. Then you can’t afford to...
“Public” Use vs. Property Rights
In another heavy blow to property rights, the Supreme Court has ruled against the homeowners in the New London, Connecticut, eminent domain case, and further entrenched the legal principle that government can seize an individual’s property for “public...
Summer Reading
Summer vacations are used for many things. Some parents use the long summer vacation from schools and colleges to get their children to read books that are different from the steady diet of a liberal-left view of the world that they get during the school year. These...
We Are All Budweisers
Back in the days of the Hapsburg Empire, there was a town in Bohemia called Budweis. The people in that town were called Budweisers and the town had a brewery which produced beer with the same name — but different from the American Budweiser. Like many...
Why Canadians Purchase Private Health Insurance
America’s socialists advocate that we adopt a universal healthcare system like our northern neighbor Canada. Before we buy into complete socialization of our healthcare system, we might check out the Canadian Supreme Court’s June 9th ruling in Chaoulli v....
Stocks vs. Bonds: Stocks Win
Here are two investments I’d like you to consider. The first is a Treasury bond maturing in 10 years. The second is the Standard & Poor’s 500. Think you already know everything there is to know about them? Think again. Let’s start with the bond....
The Sky Isn’t Falling
A generation of investors has been converted to the gospel of equities: Stocks may rise or fall over the short term, but over many decades a diversified portfolio will be the ticket to retirement heaven. The chief prophet of this belief has been Wharton professor...
Hedges Are About to Roll
Hedge funds are the new “dumb money.” At least that’s what so many of my institutional clients are telling me. And they should know, considering they’re hedge funds themselves. Don’t get me wrong. My clients are the larger hedge funds...
The World Trade Center Memorial — A Platform for America’s Enemies?
From The Wall Street Journal: The Great Ground Zero Heist; Will the 9/11 “memorial” have more about Abu Ghraib than New York’s heroic firemen? by Debra Burlingame: The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in...
Click It or Ticket: The Immorality of Mandated Seatbelt Usage
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an office within the U.S. Department of Transportation, just finished its annual campaign to get us to wear our seatbelts under a program called “Click It or Ticket.” States receive federal...
Congress Should Repeal the Byrd Amendment.
Have you heard? There’s a war on. No, not the war against terror. Everyone’s heard of that. But we’re also in the midst of a trade war — and chances are it’s affecting your wallet. Last month, Canada slapped a 15 percent tariff on several...
Judicial Activism, Marijuana and the Interstate Commerce Clause
The Supreme Court’s recent decision saying that the federal government can prosecute those using marijuana for medical purposes, even when state laws permit such use, has been seen by many as an issue of being for or against marijuana. But the real significance...
Unhappy Birthday Hawley-Smoot
Only a few economic historians are likely to notice that June 17th marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill, and even economic historians are unlikely to be nostalgic about that disastrous legislation. Why not leave the bad news of the...
Supreme Court Made The Wrong Decision in the California Medical Marijuana Case
The bad news is that the Supreme Court made the wrong decision on the constitutionality of California’s law allowing people with certain illnesses to use marijuana for medical purposes. By a 6 to 3 vote, the Court declared the California law unconstitutional,...
Liberals and Class, Part 3
Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of “menial work” or...
Economic Inequality: Intellectuals Ignorance On Capitalism Masked By Envy
Intellectuals overcome with envy cannot tolerate the thought that in capitalist society other whom they regard as their intellectual and cultural inferiors, mere businessmen and capitalists, earn so much more and live so much better than they do.
Meandering into Mediocrity
Now that my time in the Clark Country School District is coming to an end, both as a student when I graduated from Cimarron-Memorial High School in 2001 and as a Substitute Teacher as of June 9th, there are some alarming trends which I think someone must address....
Victimhood: Rhetoric or Reality
If you listened to the rhetoric of black politicians and civil rights leaders, dating back to the Reagan years, you would have been convinced that surely by now black Americans would be back on the plantation. According to them, President Reagan, and later Presidents...
Liberals and Class, Part 2
Someone once defined a social problem as a situation in which the real world differs from the theories of intellectuals. To the intelligentsia, it follows, as the night follows the day, that it is the real world that is wrong and which needs to change. Having imagined...
Liberals and Class, Part 1
The new trinity among liberal intellectuals is race, class and gender. Defining any of these terms is not easy, but it is also not difficult for liberals, because they seldom bother to define them at all. The oldest, and perhaps still the most compelling, of these...
Looking Back
We may look back on some eras as heroic — that of the founding fathers or “the greatest generation” that fought World War II — but some eras we look back on in disbelief at the utter stupidity with which people ruined their economies or...
Theatre of the Absurd: Koran Abuse
The story of Koran abuse at the prisoner camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is perhaps the most ridiculous example of media idiocy I have seen in some time. The critique is not that we have codes of conduct for a book some crackpots have some mystical affinity for, but that...
It’s About Time
The market is full of mysteries. Here we are with the yield on 10-year Treasurys falling below 4%, and everyone’s saying that’s because the bond market is predicting a recession. Yet — Friday’s reversal notwithstanding — stocks have just...
How Your Government Wastes Your Money
This year, Washington will spend an eye-popping $22,039 per household. That is the highest inflation-adjusted total since World War II, and $5,000 per household more than Washington spent just four years ago. With difficult decisions ahead, government waste should be...
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