Doug Casey expoes a lie told by your Econ professors
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Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Masterfleece Theater
David Harsanyi - The Denver Post: "The King James version of the Bible runs more than 600 pages and is crammed with celestial regulations. Newton's Principia Mathematica distilled many of the rules of physics in a mere 974 pages.
Neither have anything on Nancy Pelosi's new fiendishly entertaining health-care opus, which tops 1,900 pages.
So curl up by a fire with a fifth of whiskey and just dive in."
Neither have anything on Nancy Pelosi's new fiendishly entertaining health-care opus, which tops 1,900 pages.
So curl up by a fire with a fifth of whiskey and just dive in."
Monday, November 2, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Suit alleges brutality by Smithers police officers
CHARLESTON - A Fayette County man is alleging he was brutalized for no apparent reason by two police officers following a traffic stop in Smithers last year.
Michael Wallace filed suit against the city of Smithers on July 7. In his complaint filed in Kanawha Circuit Court, Wallace alleges that he was attacked, and later beaten by Smithers police officers W.R. Callison and A.E. Roberts in January 2008.
For more on this story, go to The West Virginia Record
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Judge limits request for medical records in Kinser lawsuit
CHARLESTON -- Though a judge quashed a subpoena for a Kanawha County woman's entire medical history in a personal injury suit she filed against WVU Tech, he ordered she'll still have to turn over records related to treatment for her alleged injury.
Kanawha Circuit Judge Louis H. "Duke" Bloom on May 1 accepted the April 23 recommendation of Bruce Freeman that a subpoena WVU Tech's lawyers sent to Charleston Area Medical Center requesting the medical charts of Marilyn L. Kinser from her date of birth until March 6 be quashed. Bloom appointed Freeman as a special commissioner to conduct discovery on March 16 after Kinser's attorney, Shawn R. Romano, filed a motion to quash three days earlier.
For more on this story, go to The West Virginia Record
Kanawha Circuit Judge Louis H. "Duke" Bloom on May 1 accepted the April 23 recommendation of Bruce Freeman that a subpoena WVU Tech's lawyers sent to Charleston Area Medical Center requesting the medical charts of Marilyn L. Kinser from her date of birth until March 6 be quashed. Bloom appointed Freeman as a special commissioner to conduct discovery on March 16 after Kinser's attorney, Shawn R. Romano, filed a motion to quash three days earlier.
For more on this story, go to The West Virginia Record
Friday, June 19, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
'White African-American' Suing N.J. Med School for Discrimination
Can a white guy be African-American?
Paulo Serodio says he is.
Born and raised in Mozambique and now a naturalized U.S. citizen, Serodio, 45, has filed a lawsuit against a New Jersey medical school, claiming he was harassed and ultimately suspended for identifying himself during a class cultural exercise as a "white African-American."
"I wouldn't wish this to my worst enemy," he said. "I'm not exaggerating. This has destroyed my life, my career."
For more on this story, go to ABCNews.com
Monday, May 25, 2009
The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
The War Prayer was first written by Twain in 1905 following the Philippine-American war. However, when submitted to Harper's Bazaar for publication, it was rejected as "not quite suited for woman's magazine."
In a letter written eight days later to his friend, Daniel Carter Beard, Twain said, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." Twain's prophecy proved correct as The War Prayer was first published in an anthology of his works by his official biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, in 1923, 12 years after Twain's death.
An animated version of The War Prayer can be found on YouTube.
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
The War Prayer was first written by Twain in 1905 following the Philippine-American war. However, when submitted to Harper's Bazaar for publication, it was rejected as "not quite suited for woman's magazine."
In a letter written eight days later to his friend, Daniel Carter Beard, Twain said, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." Twain's prophecy proved correct as The War Prayer was first published in an anthology of his works by his official biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, in 1923, 12 years after Twain's death.
An animated version of The War Prayer can be found on YouTube.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
'Thought crimes' bill advances in Congress
by Nat Hentoff
Why is the press remaining mostly silent about the so-called "hate crimes law" that passed in the House on April 29? The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed in a 249-175 vote (17 Republicans joined with 231 Democrats).
These Democrats should have been tested on their knowledge of the First Amendment, equal protection of the laws (14th Amendment), and the prohibition of double jeopardy (no American can be prosecuted twice for the same crime or offense). If they had been, they would have known that this proposal, now headed for a Senate vote, violates all these constitutional provisions.
For more on this commentary, go to Cato.org. Also, to keep updated on the status of H.R. 1913, refer to the widget on the left galley of The Free Press.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Colleges Flunk Economics Test as Harvard Model Destroys Budgets
by Yalman Onaran
On a Thursday morning in March, the $32 million School of Management building at Simmons College in Boston is all but deserted. Three students lounge in armchairs facing floor-to-ceiling windows that look over the quad with its winding walkways and greening lawn; another makes photocopies.
“This building is always empty,” says Raya Alazzouni, a sophomore from Saudi Arabia who’s studying graphic design and taking courses in the management school.
Simmons, home to 4,700 students, opened the 66,500-square- foot (6,200-square-meter) center in January, two months before the U.S. stock market hit its lowest point in 12 years. Even before the ribbon cutting, enrollment in the management school had been dropping.
Now, the vacant halls are reminders of the new math confounding U.S. colleges. Students, pummeled by scarce loans and savings plans that have fallen as much as 40 percent, are heading for less expensive schools. The perks designed to lure them during boom times -- from hot tubs to dorm-suite kitchenettes, to in-room cable TV -- are crushing universities with debt. Even projects like Simmons’s “green” management building, with its rain-absorbing roof patio and toilets with two flushing modes, can turn into burdens as schools struggle with rising expenses, plummeting endowments and needier applicants.
For more on this story, go to Bloomberg.com
On a Thursday morning in March, the $32 million School of Management building at Simmons College in Boston is all but deserted. Three students lounge in armchairs facing floor-to-ceiling windows that look over the quad with its winding walkways and greening lawn; another makes photocopies.
“This building is always empty,” says Raya Alazzouni, a sophomore from Saudi Arabia who’s studying graphic design and taking courses in the management school.
Simmons, home to 4,700 students, opened the 66,500-square- foot (6,200-square-meter) center in January, two months before the U.S. stock market hit its lowest point in 12 years. Even before the ribbon cutting, enrollment in the management school had been dropping.
Now, the vacant halls are reminders of the new math confounding U.S. colleges. Students, pummeled by scarce loans and savings plans that have fallen as much as 40 percent, are heading for less expensive schools. The perks designed to lure them during boom times -- from hot tubs to dorm-suite kitchenettes, to in-room cable TV -- are crushing universities with debt. Even projects like Simmons’s “green” management building, with its rain-absorbing roof patio and toilets with two flushing modes, can turn into burdens as schools struggle with rising expenses, plummeting endowments and needier applicants.
For more on this story, go to Bloomberg.com
Sunday, March 1, 2009
'Cowards' aplenty in academia
by Walter E. Williams
Attorney General Eric Holder said the U.S. is "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race relations. In one sense, he is absolutely right.
Many whites, from university administrators and professors, to schoolteachers, to employers and public officials, accept behavior from black people that they wouldn't begin to accept from whites.
For example, some of the nation's most elite universities, such as Vanderbilt, Stanford and the University of California, have yielded to black student demands for separate graduation ceremonies and separate "celebratory events."
Universities such as Stanford, Cornell, MIT and Cal Berkeley have, or have had, segregated dorms.
If white students demanded whites-only graduation ceremonies or whites-only dorms, administrators would have labeled their demands as intolerable racism. When black students demand the same thing, these administrators cowardly capitulate.
For more on this op/ed, go to Investor's Business Daily
Monday, January 26, 2009
Atlas Shrugged: From fiction to fact in 52 years
by Stephen Moore
Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.
For more on this commentary, go to The Heartland Institute
Thursday, January 22, 2009
FIRE's open letter to Pres Obama on speech codes
January 20, 2009
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Sent via U.S. Mail and Facsimile (202-456-2461)
Dear President Obama:
I write to you on this historic day to offer my heartfelt congratulations on your inauguration. Your achievement is a testament to the enduring promise of our great democracy and the constitutional ideals upon which our nation was founded.
As President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), I write also to request your assistance in ending abridgements of free speech on our nation's college campuses. Because you have taught constitutional law, you are particularly attuned to the importance of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. We therefore sincerely hope that you will help to eliminate censorship on college campuses and restore respect for robust expression in higher education.
Like most Americans, you likely would be surprised to learn how often the right to free expression is violated at our nation's colleges and universities, despite the fact that the vitality of these institutions relies upon the free and open exchange of ideas. In just the last year, FIRE has defended basic constitutional freedoms in some truly remarkable cases at both public and private schools.
To read the rest of this letter, go to FIRE's Web site
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Lincoln may not have welcomed Obama's election
by Leonard Pitts
On Tuesday, Barack Obama will stand on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and take an oath making him the nation's first president of African heritage.
The statue of Abraham Lincoln, which sits facing the Capitol in a temple two miles away, will not give two thumbs up. Neither will it weep, commune with the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. or dance a Macarena of joy.
The point is obvious, yes, but also necessary given that when Obama was elected in November, every third political cartoonist seemed to use an image of a celebrating Lincoln to comment upon the milestone that had occurred. Lincoln, they told us, would have been overjoyed.
For more on this commentary, go to McClatchy Newspapers
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Sweatshops offer world's poor hope, not despair
by Nicholas D. Kristof
Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.
This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.
The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.
For more on this commentary, go to The New York Times
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Surviving the Great Depression II? Yes, we can!
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
For years, many of us puzzled about how something so stupid and destructive as the New Deal could have happened. The stock market crashed because it was over-inflated. That's nothing new. History is filled with credit-filled bubbles that pop. Resources are reallocated to reflect economic reality and we move on.
The New Deal was different. It actually began under Hoover, who initiated new spending programs and jobs programs, and tried to inflate the money supply and bail out the banks. He was blasted by FDR for his big government policies, and FDR won the election. Once in power, FDR went nuts, instituting a program of central planning that combined features of the Soviet and Fascist models.
For more on this commentary, go to LewRockwell.com
The bankruptcy of mainstream economics
Banks, home builders, and auto manufacturers are not the only ones going belly-up these days. If we may credit Louis Uchitelle's January 7 report in the New York Times, mainstream economists have, in effect, declared their intellectual bankruptcy. According to Uchitelle,
Frightened by the recession and the credit crisis that produced it, the nation's mainstream economists are embracing public spending to repair the damage – even those who have long resisted a significant government role in a market system. . . . Hundreds of economists who gathered here [in San Francisco] for the annualmeeting of the American Economic Association seemed to acknowledge that a
profound shift had occurred. At their last meeting, ideas about using public
spending as a way to get out of a recession or about government taking a role to
enhance a market system were relegated to progressives. The mainstream was
skeptical or downright hostile to such suggestions. This time, virtuallyeveryone
voiced their support, returning to a way of thinking that had goneout of fashion
in the 1970s.
At this point, one cannot help but recall Proverbs 26:11: "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly."
Modern economics suffers from a variety of weaknesses and defects, among which faddishness ranks high. The chronic pursuit of fads, however, springs from a more serious problem: the mainstream profession's faulty epistemological foundation – positivist presumptions that lead economists to believe that by aping nineteenth-century physicists they are acting as "scientists." Laboring under this grave misconception, they are destined to be blown erratically by the winds of changing events. So tenuous is the contemporary appreciation of economic verities that the slightest apparent breakdown of the economic order completely befuddles the economists and sends them running about wildly in search of a new model that will predict better than the old, now discredited one.
For more on this commentery, go to LewRockwell.com
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Alan Greenspan - The real culprit of the current economic crisis
by Stefan Karlsson
With no one denying anymore the obvious fact that America is in a deep slump, the discussion has instead shifted to why it happened. The Austrians (including me) who predicted these problems based on Greenspan's low-interest-rate policy know of course that the main cause was that low-interest-rate policy, with his numerous bailouts of failed financial institutions also creating a moral hazard that encouraged risky behavior.
But non-Austrians who for various reasons seem determined to exonerate the central bank have instead offered various other explanations. I will not here answer them all here. Instead, I will simply comment on the most common alternative explanations and the various arguments used for the explicit purpose of exonerating Greenspan.
For more on this op/ed, go to Mises. org.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Ga. Tech ordered to pay $200K in speech-code case
In March 2006 two brave Georgia Tech students, Orit Sklar and Ruth Malhotra, launched a challenge to several unconstitutional policies at the school. These policies included a speech code, a restrictive speech zone, discriminatory student-fee regulations, and a program of state religious indoctrination called "Safe Space" that explicitly compared those who have traditional views of sexual morality to slaveowners. (Full disclosure: Ruth and Orit are represented by the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom, and I am lead counsel in the case.)
Despite the fact that, if successful, Orit and Ruth would restore the First Amendment rights of every single student, they were immediately subjected to the most vile threats on campus and dishonest reporting off campus. The university's own campaign of disinformation aided and abetted the students' enemies.
For more on this story, go to Phi Beta Cons, David French's higher education blog on National Review Online
Thursday, January 1, 2009
New Year's Substitutions
by Gary North
Well, it’s that time of the year again. All over America, smart people are sending out last-minute charity donation checks to get their income tax deductions for 2003, making sure they get stamped, dated receipts from the Postal Service (this costs an extra 37 cents).
Other smart people are making last-minute sales decisions on investments that did well, offsetting the capital gains tax by selling investments that did poorly.
But most people aren’t this smart. They are spending their time looking forward to New Year’s Eve parties and the bowl games (husbands, anyway) on New Year’s Day. College football teams that nobody outside of the home town paid any attention to three months ago will fight it out for mythical second through tenth place, which will entitle them to be forgotten by January 2nd. One team will wind up number one. The public will remember which one until at least Super Bowl XXXVIII, just as they remember the winners of Super Bowls past: Packers, NFC (I), Packers, NFC (II), Jets, AFC (III: Joe Namath > Earl Morrall/Johnny Unitas) . . . ?
This op/ed piece was originally published on Dec. 31, 2003 on LewRockwell.com where it can be read in full.
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