If anything’s likely to boost support for the flat tax, it’s the annual nightmare of tax season. Imagine junking all the paperwork the current system requires and replacing it with two simple postcard-sized forms that tax income only once and at one low...
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 Freedom To Move as an International Problem
There are extensive tracts of land, comparable to those in Europe, which are sparsely settled. The United States of America and the British dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and so on, are less heavily populated, in comparison with their...
Health Care on April 15: How Taxes and Government Damage Your Health
As you raise a pen to sign your tax return this year, you will undoubtedly regret that the United States Treasury is taking so much of your income. You should also ask why so much of the income you have left is spent on health care and health insurance. The two...
College Admissions Voodoo
Every year about this time, high school students get letters of admission — or rejection — from colleges around the country. The saddest part of this process is not their rejections but the assumption by some students that they were rejected because they...
Stupid Airport Security 2
Hundreds of readers responded to last week’s column about airport security. These were letters from Americans who fit no terrorist profile — airline pilots, mothers traveling with children, disabled people, elderly and other law-abiding Americans —...
Social Security: There is No Trust Fund, Only IOU’s
On Tuesday, President Bush had the most bizarre cabinet meeting any president is ever going to have. It was a meeting with an actual cabinet. A filing cabinet. A filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W. Va., to be precise. Strange? Yes. But then again this is a very...
How Washington Will Spend Your Taxes In 2005
The April 15 tax deadline provides taxpayers the opportunity to examine how their elected officials will spend their hard-earned tax dollars. Washington will spend $22,039 per household in 2005 — the highest inflation-adjusted total since World War II, and...
United Nations Scandal: Kofi Annan Aide Shredded Thousands of Documents
“Hell no!” was Kofi Annan’s bullish response when asked last week if he would resign over the oil-for-food scandal. The UN secretary-general’s office was in full spin mode following the release of the eagerly awaited Volcker Interim Report on...
Amtrak is Anti-American
Right after the November 1994 election, I wrote that “the way to tell how serious Republicans are about cutting federal spending is to watch
Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez: Castro’s Mini-Me
‘One darned thing after another’: That’s how former Secretary of State Dean Acheson once defined foreign policy. The latest “darned thing” for the United States is Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez. For no apparent reason, the...
China Threatens U.S. Alliances
While the Bush administration continues to push and celebrate significant successes for democracy in the Middle East, China is on an opposing mission in Asia, where it continues to block the spread of freedom. The most recent target of Chinese diplomatic pressure is...
The Hypocrisy of Modern Liberalism
Liberals may think of themselves as people who believe in certain principles but, if you observe their actual behavior, you are likely to discover that most liberals have a certain set of attitudes, rather than principles. Liberals may denounce “greed,”...
Who is a Liberal and Who is a Conservative?
Sometimes something trivial gives you a clue about something serious. A tempest in a teapot has been stirred up about the zoning laws and New York’s famed Plaza Hotel. By some fluke, half of the Plaza’s ballroom is zoned for commercial use and the other...
Stupid Airport Security
For most of my professional life, I’ve traveled frequently — sometimes boarding a commercial flight two, three or four times a month for lucrative speaking engagements. Over the past three years, the frequency has fallen to an average of once or twice a...
Wal-Mart: A Business We All Can Look Up To
Wal-Mart is the world’s largest business. Its $250 billion in annual sales makes it bigger than legendary giants like Exxon, General Motors, and IBM. How did Wal-Mart get so big? In a market economy, success goes to those businesses that best serve consumer...
Trickle-Down Ignorance
As much as I enjoy most of the messages from readers, there is no way that I can answer more than a small fraction of them. The messages I don’t reply to at all are those from obviously ignorant people who offer insults instead of arguments. However, a recent...
April Fool’s Party
“This is your eyewitness news team, reporting from the big, posh April Fools’ Day party at the Dewdrop Inn out at Moot Point, overlooking Dyer Straits. Everybody who is anybody is here. “There’s the karate expert Marshall Artz, timber heiress...
A Culture of Living Death
Religious conservatives are calling the death of Terri Schiavo a betrayal of “the sanctity of human life.” We must, they say, replace our existing culture with a new “culture of life.” “It should be our goal as a nation,” proclaims...
The Law or “Good Ideas”?
Here’s my question to you: Should we be governed by good ideas? You say, “Williams, what do you mean?” Here’s an example: I regularly bike for fun, cardiovascular fitness and, hopefully, for a longer, healthier life. In my opinion, that’s...
Time To Strengthen The Freedom of Information Act
Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub says the FEC has no interest in regulating political speech on the Internet. She opened a recent hearing by saying no one at the FEC has sought to manipulate it “as a vehicle for shutting down the right of any...
The Essential Conflict: Freedom Versus Dictatorship
We have the military power; we have the moral right. The defense of our lives only requires that we properly identify our enemies and eliminate them.
Death to “Diplomacy” with Iran
The widely hailed diplomatic effort led by Britain, France and Germany is touted as a reasonable way to settle the dispute over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program without any losers. By enticing Iran to the negotiating table, we are told, the West can...
Why Social Security Should Not Be Saved
The new report by the Social Security trustees, claiming that Social Security will go broke in 2041, is bound to fuel the nationwide debate over Social Security. One side, led by President Bush, says the system is in crisis and must be saved via “partial...
Minimum Wage, Maximum Folly
Senators Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rick Santorum, R-Pa., both introduced proposals to increase the minimum wage from its current $5.15 an hour. Sen. Kennedy’s proposal would have raised the minimum wage to $7.25 in three steps over 26 months, while Sen....
Random Thoughts March 2005
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Nolan Ryan’s baseball career was so long that he struck out seven guys whose fathers he had also struck out. (Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonds, for example.) Why do some people use a fancy mathematical term like...
President Bush’s Deadly Iranian Concession
In return for Iran’s agreement to temporarily cease the work needed to produce a nuclear bomb, President Bush has agreed to allow Iran to buy civilian airplane parts, and to drop opposition to Iran’ s membership in the World Trade Organization. These...
Which Privileges for Islam?
Throughout the West, Muslims are making new and assertive demands, and in some cases challenging the very premises of European and North American life . How to respond? Here is a general rule: Offer full rights — but turn down demands for special privileges. By...
Anti-Intellectualism at Harvard
Dr. Larry Summers, Harvard’s president, remains under siege for remarks (www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html) made in his Jan. 14 address to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Dr. Summers suggested that there might be three major...
Do-Gooders: Cynicism Exposed
Back in the 1980s a White House staffer told about a revealing incident on Capitol Hill. The staffer was walking down the corridors of one of the buildings on the Hill when a Senator motioned to him to step inside his office. “I’m going to make a speech...
Bush’s Speech on Freedom
This past Tuesday, President Bush gave an important, and generally excellent, speech on our foreign policy re the middle east. He reiterated, and further explained, his Forward Strategy of Freedom. The highlight of the speech was this remarkable passage, strategically...
Social Security Reform: A Cost-Benefit Analysis
In a recent report, humorist Andy Borowitz writes, “in an effort to confuse the insurgents, President Bush said the U.S. will begin airdropping copies of his Social Security plan over Iraq.” Social Security is a complicated program, so attempting to reform...
The Abu Ali Case and Balancing “Civil” Liberties and Security
For a free people in the age of terrorism, what is the proper balance between civil liberties and national security? This debate wracks every Western country. Looking at America, the “united we stand” solidarity that followed September 11, 2001, lasted...
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