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 reasons...
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
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 next week,...
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 it can...
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 just some...
Good Riddance to Dan Rather
Ordinarily, the retirement of a TV newsman would be something to be more or less passed over in silence by friend and foe alike. But the retirement of Dan Rather as anchorman of CBS news has caused so much spin in the media that some of this spin may become...
Debating Social Security
In a romantic mood, I was reading "Anna Karenina" flying down here and stumbled across one of Tolstoy's brilliant insights. At a party at the home of his friend Prince Oblonsky, Konstantin Levin, the philosophical farmer, muses about the futility of dinnertable...
More Social Security Deceit
A fortnight ago, I explained some of the congressional deceit that has become part and parcel of Social Security. One was the 1936 promise of maximum wages subject to Social Security tax of three percent -- $3,000 -- which, controlling for inflation, comes to roughly...
Saudi Venom in U.S. Mosques
Those of us following the development of Islam in America have for years worried about the unhealthy influence of Saudi money and ideas on American Muslims. We watched apprehensively as the Saudi government boasted of funding mosques and research centers; as it...
AARP Invests in Hypocrisy
The President has made fixing Social Security his number-one domestic objective, but the fight won't be easy -- in part because of fierce opposition by the AARP, the seniors' lobby, with 35 million members. The AARP is using an old strategy: trying to scare the wits...
Social Security’s Demographic Tsunami
"Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. Social Security. It's Time for E*Trade." That's the message on a San Francisco billboard. It's saying that stock trading on the Internet provides a better shot at a secure retirement than depending on the government. House Minority...
Free Broadband From Socialism
Should municipalities be allowed to build and operate broadband networks in competition with private companies? States around the country are considering laws making it difficult for cities to do so. Informed, honest debate over municipal broadband is rare. Advocates...
Are CEOs Overpaid?
In the wake of the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals, the purveyors of envy have found another opportunity to preach about what they consider the evils of high CEO salaries, retirements and bonuses. After all, according to them, evil must be afoot when a corporate...
President Bush’s Prescription Drug Benefit Program
The prescription drug benefit is a monster that should be killed before it is hatched.
Iraqis Should Look To American Founding Fathers When Writing Their Constitution
On December 15, 1791, 213 years ago, the American Bill of Rights was ratified. Thus ended a long and difficult process by which the American people first liberated themselves from tyranny and then established the first government in history founded on individual...
“60 Minutes” Wacky Piece on Black/White Adoptions
"60 Minutes" strikes again. Earlier this month, the program broadcast a segment on international, "transracial" (black/white) adoptions involving American-born babies. It turns out, according to "60 Minutes," a growing number of families living out of the country now...
Healthcare To Die For in Britain?
In "Die in Britain, survive in U.S.," the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine, James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain's universal healthcare system. Among women with breast cancer, for example, there's a 46 percent...
Social Security Deceit
President Bush's call to allow Americans to take a portion of the money they pay as Social Security taxes to set up private retirement accounts has to be a good idea. Why? The more of what a person earns that's in his pocket and under his control, the better off he...
Random Thoughts February 2005
Random thoughts on the passing scene: How many other species' members kill each other to the same extent as human beings? How can you be an "insurgent" in someone else's country? Yet despite the fact that the wave of terrorism in Iraq is led by an outside terrorist...
Who’s Really to Blame for High Gasoline Prices?
Gas prices are on the rise again. While no one has begun to complain yet (at least not too loudly), gas prices are still higher than they need to be. Many think oil companies are to blame for high gas prices. In fact, in May 2004 a poll showed that 77% of Californians...
Social Security Reform: The Capitalism Alternative
The end of Social Security and its diversion of funds into government consumption—the return to private, individual saving and provision for the future—will mean a great increase in saving and the accumulation of capital, because the savings of individuals will be invested, not squandered.
Drug Safety vs. the FDA
As studies continue to be released that explore the cardiovascular risks of Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, and other pharmaceuticals, the FDA has come under widespread criticism for failing to protect the public from "unsafe" drugs. The lesson commonly drawn from the...
Tainted Media
The recent resignation of CNN's news director, Eason Jordan, after his outrageous remarks about our military at an international forum were reported on the Internet, is only the latest in a series of media scandals, of which Dan Rather's forged documents were just...
Bush’s Budget: The Welfare State Lives
Get ready for the interest groups and beneficiaries to squeal, scream, cry and ultimately demean. The issue? Why, President George W. Bush's "lean" 2006 budget. Americans want their welfare state. The president's budget, excluding defense, homeland security and...
Thwarting America’s Energy Needs
Editor's Note: This editorial was originally attributed to Tom DeWeese. The actual author is Alan Caruba.Well of course you want the entire shoreline of the East and West Coast to be filled with windmills producing insignificant amounts of energy. Nothing better than...
Dishwasher Economics
With TV cameras in tow, Channel 11 stopped at our restaurant last Tuesday to ask the afternoon kitchen crew how it felt about the new $52 occupation tax. Not surprisingly, no one liked it. Also not surprisingly, not much of the half-hour of filming ended up on TV,...
Do Corporations Have Social Responsibility?
On Jan. 20, 2005, J.P. Morgan Chase announced that it had completed research to determine whether it had any links to slavery. Its website (www2.bankone.com/presents/home/) announced: "Today, we are reporting that this research found that between 1831 and 1865 two of...
Letter to the Editors: February 2005
Who is against human values? Dear Dr. Lewis, I am doing a paper on the topic of "What does a soul or center, if we have one, have to do with human values? I am taking the position of having a soul to be important and as a need in today's society. I will use Plato's...
Professor Ward Churchill, The First Amendment and Free Speech on Campus
Because the comments he made shortly after September 11 have come to light, obscene comments in which he vilifies the World Trade Center victims as "little Eichmanns" and lauds their killers as "humanitarians," Professor Ward Churchill has resigned as chairman of the...
“Academic Freedom”
Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado seems to be enjoying his 15 minutes of infamy for his childish rants against people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Others of course resent his cheap shots at the dead, and some are trying to get him fired....
The Kind of “Freedom” Religion Brings
It appears increasingly likely that the U.S. backed government in Iraq will lose by a landslide, in favor of--surprise, surprise--Muslim fundamentalists. There will be official public statements from the U.S. government in coming days and weeks that the U.S. can work...
Social Security: Saving Failure
It’s wrong to force people to pay into a coercive retirement system, run by the government at a poor return rate, when they could be making better and more profitable decisions on their own.
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