539 QuickLinks

Sunday, November 29, 2009
Can Obama force you to buy health insurance?
Nothing in the Constitution allows the individual mandate he proposes.

Sunday, November 29, 2009
Obamacare Is Unconstitutional | Gene Healy
As Harry Reid's health care bill moves to the Senate floor, the debate over Obamacare finally begins in earnest. Shouldn't the Constitution be part of that debate? By what authority, after all, could Congress force all Americans to buy health insurance?

Friday, November 27, 2009
Giving Thanks to the Market | by Anthony Gregory
Neglected by most official hosannas sung for those whom we presumably owe our loudest thanks are the greatest public servants of them all. I am talking about the merchants, the farmers and truck drivers, the waiters and waitresses, the storeowners and bag boys. I'm referring to the businessmen and businesswomen, the producers and sellers, the investors, the stockholders and brokers.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Inconsistent Conservatives and Progressives by Sheldon Richman
The problem is that conservatives and progressives fail to see that their arguments can legitimately be applied to government activity across the board, including activities they like. If each side were consistent, it would oppose many things it now favors.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Senate health care bill: the five paragraphs you must read
(1 comments) Buried in the Senate's 2,074-page health reform bill are provisions that undermine your health freedom and privacy.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Obama, Teabaggers, Foreign Policy and Asia
As Obama and the Democrats contemplate a new strategy for Afghanistan they should consider integrating fiscal discipline and limited government into their decision-making on this central foreign policy issue. After all, reducing and not expanding U.S. military in Afghanistan (and Iraq, and Korea, and Japan, and") would help control the spending by the federal government and reduce the deficit.

Monday, November 23, 2009
The Pro-War, Anti-Gun Wing of the GOP | by Jerry Salcido
Save Those Bullets for the Monsters

Saturday, November 21, 2009
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming'?
The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.

Saturday, November 21, 2009
Iraqi Freedom
One of my correspondents has said that from what she's heard, the Iraqis appreciate the freedom that the US military is "providing" them. If that's so, they have an interesting value system.

Friday, November 20, 2009
DDT: The Silent Killer...Only When It Was Gone
The chemical that saved the most lives in history is DDT.

Friday, November 20, 2009
Did Hitler Inspire the U.S. Post-9/11 Tribunal System? by Jacob G. Hornberger
I don't know how President Bush and the Pentagon came up with the idea of establishing a new judicial system for trying terrorists, but there is the distinct possibility that they got the idea from German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

Friday, November 20, 2009
Ron Paul's Amendment Passes Committee!
The House Financial Services Committee earlier today rejected Representative Mel Watt's attempt to hijack Audit the Fed by voting 43-26 to pass Ron Paul's amendment to the financial regulatory reform bill.

Thursday, November 19, 2009
Arianna's PC Delta Force by David Nathan
Another of the media's enforcers of Acceptable Opinion was unleashed the other day, this one at the Huffington Post. There Sam Stein exposed the terrible extremists—including Tom Woods, Charles Goyette, and Thomas Naylor, the three I focus on here—who have been featured on the Glenn Beck television program.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Do We Need Stricter Gun Control Laws? (Video)
Nightline Twittercast:Panelists debate gun control in the wake of Fort Hood

Monday, November 16, 2009
Let's Ignore Congress
The first condition to be conformed to before a legislature can be established without violating the law of equal freedom, is the acknowledgment of the right now under discussion — the right to ignore the state.

Monday, November 16, 2009
Pelosi's new payroll tax
A whip for socialized medicine

Saturday, November 14, 2009
Origins of the Federal Reserve by Murray N. Rothbard
The Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913, was part and parcel of the wave of Progressive legislation on local, state, and federal levels of government that began about 1900. Progressivism was a bipartisan movement that, in the course of the first two decades of the 20th century, transformed the American economy and society from one of roughly laissez-faire to one of centralized statism.

Saturday, November 14, 2009
The Triumph of Socialism by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
It comes as something of a shock twenty years after the collapse of socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe revealed what this system had created: backward societies with citizens who lived short and miserable lives. Then there is the China case, a country rescued from bloody barbarism under communism and transformed into a modern and prosperous country by capitalism.

Friday, November 13, 2009
YouTube - Police State - The Militarization of the Police Force in USA
Sometimes the police are more heavily armed than some Army units.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Predictions of climate change induced natural disasters falling flat
What if you predicted global natural disaster catastrophes and they didn't happen? Does that invalidate your entire message? This is the conundrum faced by climate change alarmists as many of their predictions begin to fall flat. Recent empirical evidence indicates that despite increasing carbon dioxide temperatures are decreasing and there has been no increase in climactic related events at all.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Obama's Betrayals by Sheldon Richman
Obama has been doing a lot of “growing” in office. That's the term the establishment uses when a candidate who apparently holds maverick views gets into office and abandons those views in favor of views more congenial to the permanent ruling elite.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Healthcare Reform Is Economic Malpractice | by Ron Paul
More government intervention and bureaucracy injected into healthcare will take a flawed system and make immeasurably worse.

Monday, November 9, 2009
Fort Hood Mystery by Michael Gaddy
The facts as presented by the Army and the media reference the shooting at Fort Hood just don't compute. While I routinely dismiss any "facts" disseminated by the Army and the state's propaganda wing, sometimes referred to as the mainstream media (MSM), there are some glaring inconsistencies in what has been reported about this tragedy.

Monday, November 9, 2009
The 'costs' of care
Nothing is free from the government

Sunday, November 8, 2009
In Afghanistan, the Pentagon Digs in | by Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt
In our day, the American way of war, especially against lightly armed guerrillas, insurgents, and terrorists, has proved remarkably heavy. Elephantine might be the appropriate word. The Pentagon likes to talk about its "footprint" on the geopolitical landscape. In terms of the infrastructure it's built in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps "crater" would be a more reasonable image.

Sunday, November 8, 2009
Was Fort Hood Killer On Psychotropic Drugs?
Despite clear link between anti-depressants and mass shootings, media fails to ask if Hasan was on serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

Sunday, November 8, 2009
Child Labor and the British Industrial Revolution
Child labor was relieved of its worst attributes not by legislative fiat but by the progressive march of an ever more productive capitalist system. Child labor was virtually eliminated when, for the first time in history, the productivity of parents in free labor markets rose to the point where it was no longer economically necessary for children to work to survive.

Saturday, November 7, 2009
Fort Hood Tragedy | Christine Smith's Blog
Following the shooting at Fort Hood yesterday, there was discussion of the incident on Colorado's

Friday, November 6, 2009
A Gun-Free Zone at Ft. Hood by Jacob G. Hornberger
With the massacre at Ft. Hood, we once again see the consequences of gun control.

Friday, November 6, 2009
Marriage License & Registration, Please by Steve Bierfeldt
It is not pertaining to fishing or starting a business that the most curious aspect of licensing arises however. Instead it is the practice which the vast majority of Americans take part in at some point in their lives, the institution of marriage. What if you applied for a marriage license, and the government said, "No"?

Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Food Among the Ruins
The most intriguing visionaries in Detroit"were those who imagine growing food among the ruins.

Monday, November 2, 2009
Murderous idealism - Paul Hollander
There is little public awareness of the large-scale atrocities, killings and human rights violations that occurred in communist states, especially compared with awareness of the Holocaust and Nazism (which led to to far fewer deaths).

Saturday, October 31, 2009
Politicans Are NOT Prostitutes " They Are Pimps
Some people trust prostitutes more than elected officials. But the prostitution analogy is inaccurate.

Friday, October 30, 2009
The Gold Standard and the Great Depression - Robert P. Murphy
It makes no sense to say that the major dislocations of the world's economies in the 1930s could have been solved simply by printing up pieces of paper. When we closely examine the graphical evidence that apparently proves this strange claim, we see it falls apart. Krugman and Friends need to convince us, first, that their history is accurate, and second, that their charts really prove what they claim.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Libelous Leftist Lynch Mobs by Thomas DiLorenzo
(2 comments) The American Left throws all morals out the door when it comes to any challenges to their secular "religion" of welfare statism and socialism.

Monday, October 26, 2009
“National Emergency” Declarations | Christine Smith's Blog
Obama has declared a “national emergency” over the H1N1 “swine” flu. The main threat I see is government"not flu. But that's the way it's often been with “national emergencies.” I view this latest “crisis” as yet another excuse for big government to come in and supposedly save the day. Predictable, but nonetheless ominous, in my opinion.

Sunday, October 25, 2009
Is Adulation of the Military Really Patriotic?
The nation's founders would roll over in their graves at what patriotism has become. After their bad experience with British colonial military abuses and seeing European citizens paying with blood and treasure for the frequent wars of their monarchs, the founders feared standing armies for undermining liberty. The U.S. Constitution rejected European militarism.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Wall Street Journal Defends the Predator State - Robert P. Murphy
(1 comments) The conventional dichotomy between 'liberal' and 'conservative' newspapers is spurious: all major news organizations support the welfare-warfare State.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Peace and the "Peace Prize" - Ben O'Neill
Obama's credentials as a champion of peace have been focused almost exclusively on his foreign policy and military operations. To the extent that domestic policies are mentioned at all, they are policies such as domestic surveillance, wiretapping, and other matters associated with the prosecution of war abroad. Peace requires not merely the absence of large-scale military conflicts, but also the absence of aggression at home.

Monday, October 19, 2009
Is Timothy Geithner A Roadblock to Regulatory Reform?
Financial disclosure forms revealed last week that some of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner's closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for top Wall Street firms. Also, Geithner's phone records showed that the Treasury Secretary has had Wall Street firms on speed dial for the duration of the crisis.

Monday, October 19, 2009
Let's Make Health Care Inexpensive Again by Harry Browne
The politicians are pushing to raise the cost of your health insurance again.

Monday, October 19, 2009
Why Liberals Kill
The left may be pressuring President Obama to exit Afghanistan. But their heroes—from FDR to JFK—promoted U.S. involvement in more wars than all modern GOP presidents combined.

Sunday, October 18, 2009
Climate Change, Socialized Medicine and Population Control by Adam Murdock, MD
In a final sick twist, as Holdren and Obama are able to indirectly restrict the number of children through climate taxation and dispose of the elderly through health care rationing so will they have, unbeknownst to the majority of the rest of us, accomplished their original eugenics inspired population-control dream.

Sunday, October 18, 2009
Warren Harding and the Forgotten Depression of 1920 by Tom Woods
The experience of 1920—21 reinforces the contention of genuine free-market economists that government intervention is a hindrance to economic recovery. It is not in spite of the absence of fiscal and monetary stimulus that the economy recovered from the 1920—21 depression. It is because those things were avoided that recovery came.

Saturday, October 17, 2009
Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears
(2 comments) Significant organs of the mainstream media are now officially abandoning one-sided man-made global warming fear promotion and alleged claims that the "debate is over." The stunning media reversal has accelerated in recent weeks as top UN scientists have raised the specter of continued global cooling.

Friday, October 16, 2009
Frustrating Michael Moore
If Michael Moore would study a little political economy he might turn into a potent champion of individual liberty. As we see in Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore is offended by some truly offensive things: banks engaging in wild speculation without concern for the risk, taxpayer bailouts for banks and other businesses, cozy relations between Wall Street and Washington

Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Real Problem With ACORN
(2 comments) It wasn't just an accident that the women in ACORN offices were willing to hand out advice on how to set up a brothel and dodge income taxes by claiming underage Central American prostitutes as dependents. ACORN simply doesn't produced good citizens. The organization is saturated with the sense that the world is one big shakedown and that anything you do to increase your share is justified.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Does More Federal Spending = Better Education? (video)
More money spent on education has not yielded better results. Shelly Roche explains.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Government health care runs up against costs too -- and political solutions can be nasty
Americans aren't yet ready to face the hard choices that are made by politically run health care systems. That's why we get one unexplained denial after another -- or "villainous" physicians refusing to accept underpayments -- instead of hard limits on care as a matter of policy.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Corporatist Pigs! - Pia Varma
Goldman Sachs may well deserve its share of blame for the financial crisis, but shouldn't we also take a quick gander at the hidden hand of government? Corporatism may have failed, but true free-market capitalism has never even been given a chance.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Obama and the Nobel Prize: WhenWar Becomes Peace, When the Lie Becomes the Truth
When war becomes peace, When concepts and realities are turned upside down, When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction. When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor, When the killing of civilians is upheld as "collateral damage," When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as "insurgents" or "terrorists."

Monday, October 12, 2009
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize | Christine Smith's Blog
If Obama was a man of peace, he could have done much to end the U.S. imperialism worldwide already, rather he escalates wars and the misery that comes as a result. The Obama body count continues.

Saturday, October 10, 2009
Scenes From a Crackdown
A number of disturbing images, videos, and witness accounts have come out of Pittsburgh, as well as from similar high-stakes political events in recent years, that reveal the disquieting ease with which authorities are willing to crush dissent—and at the very sorts of events where the right to dissent is the entire purpose of protecting free speech, events where influential policymakers meet to make high-level decisions.

Friday, October 9, 2009
Doug Casey on Global Warming
Global warming is the most prominent form of mass hysteria raging across the world today. Kids in school these days are almost afraid to breathe, because it will "increase their carbon footprint." It's quite amazing, the way carbon, the element all life is based on, has replaced plutonium as the enemy-element. It's as if the chattering classes are making war on the periodic table of the elements.

Thursday, October 8, 2009
Arctic Ice Thickens: NYT Environment Writer Commits Global Warming 'Heresy' Again
Remember the artificial panic pervading the CBS "Early Show" just a little over a year ago that, for the first time in history, the North Pole may not be covered with ice sometime during the summer of 2008? Well, not only did it not happen but evidence now shows that Arctic ice has been thickening substantially this year.

Thursday, October 8, 2009
Robocops Come to Pittsburgh by Mike Ferner
No longer the stuff of disturbing futuristic fantasies, an arsenal of “crowd control munitions,” including one that reportedly made its debut in the U.S., was deployed with a massive, overpowering police presence in Pittsburgh during last week's G-20 protests.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009
This is what the thuggish redistribution of wealth looks like
(2 comments) A group of red shirt-wearing Chavista thugs show up at a farm and seize the farm in the name of the government, under the pretext that the 103 hectare farm is “idle land” and that the law allows them to take it over for “food production.”

Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Markey Pushes New Net Neutrality Regulations (Video)
Rep. Markey wants to regulate the internet. Never mind that he's been bought and paid for by the communications industry.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Iran Fidgets in the Middle East: World War III Anybody?
Something's got to give in the remaining three months of 2009. My guess is that attention will shift overseas for a while. This will not be due, as many probably think, to a cynical effort by the government to divert attention from the financial fiasco, but because the intrinsic tensions in the Middle East are reaching the snapping point.

Monday, October 5, 2009
The Anatomy of Blue-State Fascism by Anthony Gregory
We've had something resembling fascism under both parties going back to at least the Second World War. The ideological apparatus constructed by the modern American state relies on a false dichotomy of left and right, and so have the fascist impulses of the American people been channeled into both parties, with different rationales underlying each statist program.

Saturday, October 3, 2009
Even Europe Knows Tax Cuts Work
(4 comments) As economic numbers continue to plummet in the United States, some countries of the European Union have seen the errors of their ways and are now returning to free-market capitalist principles.

Friday, October 2, 2009
A Free-Market Guide to Fixing Healthcare
It's a near-universal assumption of the healthcare debate that the current system is a market system and it is broken, and hence we should try a government system. The people who assume this aren't considering the last 100 years of healthcare policy. Government is deeply involved at all levels, from medical licensure and patents, to direct subsidies and provision, to employee mandates and insurance-pooling controls.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009
What the Fed Doesn't Want You To Know About US Debt
(2 comments) The Fed will have to sacrifice stocks or the US dollar. If the Fed does in fact end Quantitative Easing in October, then we'll see what the market REALLY thinks of US debt as an investment class. It's clear that foreign holders want higher rates (yields) in order for them to start buying more heavily. However, as I've stated before, the Fed CANNOT afford higher interest rates without blowing up US banks.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Hilda Molina in Buenos Aires
A few weeks ago, Hilda Molina, a delicate, soft-spoken neurosurgeon, obtained an improbable victory against Cuba's regime when she left Havana and joined her son and grandchildren in Argentina. Listening to her story in a Buenos Aires restaurant, I could not keep from thinking that the real measure of the Caribbean tyranny is not how it treats its enemies but its friends.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Venezuela bans Family Guy cartoon
(2 comments) Authorities in Venezuela say they will punish TV stations if they continue to broadcast episodes of cult US animation Family Guy.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The Health-Insurance Market Is Not Free - Anton Batey
Anyone who claims that the high costs of health insurance originated in the "free market" is either severely mistaken or lying.

Monday, September 28, 2009
Unemployment: The Gathering Storm
(2 comments) Officially, 14.9 million Americans are unemployed. That number will double.

Monday, September 28, 2009
Exclusive Smoking Gun: The Fed On Gold Manipulation
How did the Federal Reserve perceive and manipulate gold in the post Bretton-Woods world? Was gold, freed from its shackles to the dollar, once again merely a symbolic representation for money? Zero Hedge presents the smoking gun that may provide responses to all the open questions, courtesy of a declassified memorandum, written by none other than the then Fed Chairman, addressed to the president of the United States

Sunday, September 27, 2009
The Price of Pretense in Pittsburgh by Peter Schiff
While admiring the pageantry, chuckling at the awkward group photos, and parsing the joint communiqués like newly found Dead Sea scrolls, the overwhelming majority of observers will miss the meeting's dominant theme: hypocrisy.

Saturday, September 26, 2009
Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely
(1 comments) President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.

Saturday, September 26, 2009
Bastiat in Poland
Politics: The art of seducing people to cooperate in their own exploitation.

Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Afghan Disaster - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
The answer now, as it was under Bush and will be forever with government programs, is more force, more death, more money, more determination to win. The private sector can't do this, which is precisely why all the stuff that makes life worth living is produced privately, and all that the government does is slow down the progress of civilization and bring destruction and disaster wherever it goes.

Saturday, September 26, 2009
This Crisis Just Appetizer for Total Breakdown: Marc Faber
(2 comments) The crisis the world went through is just an appetizer for a future one because the weaknesses that created it have not been addressed

Friday, September 25, 2009
Audit the Fed by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
The superstitious reverence that Americans have been taught to have for the Federal Reserve is unworthy of the dignity of a free people. The Fed enjoys a government-granted monopoly on the creation of legal-tender money. It is not an unreasonable imposition for Americans to demand to know about the activities of such an institution. It is common sense.

Friday, September 25, 2009
Hamilton's Betrayal by George C. Leef
There is a tendency among Americans to think of the nation's Founders as a group of wealthy white men who owned property, didn't like British rule, and all thought pretty much alike. But it's certainly not the case that they all thought alike. Two of the most famous among them, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, held to profoundly different visions of the path the nation should take.

Friday, September 25, 2009
The Horrible Conundrum Facing The Fed
(2 comments) The damage will be severe, but that is in fact precisely why we must accept it now: it has only gotten continually worse since the 1980s as we have continued to hide rather than accept this damage, and those who have claimed to be able to prevent and reverse the damage have repeatedly, over a 30 year time span, been proved wrong.

Thursday, September 24, 2009
BLS Jobs Numbers Contradict BLS Jobs Numbers - Jeff Nielson
It should therefore not be a big surprise to regular readers that the BLS's recent, state-by-state numbers have absolutely zero correlation with their aggregate reports. To use less technical language, not only do the state-by-state numbers not add up to the aggregate national numbers, there is simply no relationship between the two sets of numbers.

Monday, September 21, 2009
Audit the Federal Reserve - HR 1207 Up for Vote THIS WEEK
Will they allow some light to shine on the secretive Federal Reserve System?

Sunday, September 20, 2009
Strategic Default Data Suggests Foreclosure Prevention Tactics Useless
An interesting report in the Los Angeles Times shows that a person with super-prime credit scores is more likely to walk away from an underwater mortgage than a person with a subprime credit rating.

Sunday, September 20, 2009
Swedish govt, eyeing 2010 vote, to cut taxes again
Sweden's government said on Saturday it would cut income tax by a total of 10 billion Swedish crowns ($1.45 billion) from next year, a move it said would boost employment.

Friday, September 18, 2009
Dalrymple: There Is No ‘Right' to Health Care
(4 comments) If there is a right to health care, someone has the duty to provide it. Inevitably, that “someone” is the government. Concrete benefits in pursuance of abstract rights, however, can be provided by the government only by constant coercion.

Friday, September 18, 2009
Operation Northwoods and the 9/11 Truthers by Jacob G. Hornberger
(4 comments) Given Operation Northwoods how can anyone, especially the Pentagon, be surprised that there are people willing to believe that the federal government is capable of staging such horrible things as 9/11?

Monday, September 14, 2009
Health Care Economics Interview with Radio Free Market
Michael McKay and Meghan O'Toole of RadioFreeMarket.com conversed with Jake Towne about health care economics with an Austrian school, free-market perspective on September 5th.

Monday, September 14, 2009
Green Revolution's Borlaug Dies at 95
(2 comments) From the 1970s until his death, he increasingly took the politically incorrect view that environmentalists were hampering world food production by indiscriminately attacking the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Monday, September 14, 2009
What ‘right' to health care?
(10 comments) If I have a “right'' to health care, someone else must be compelled to provide or pay for that care. Compulsion comes in different forms - higher taxes, insurance mandates, health-care rationing, intrusive regulations - but the bottom line is the same: a right to health care would leave society less free.

Sunday, September 13, 2009
ObamaCare: Status Quo on Steroids
The so-called health-insurance companies deserve little sympathy. As they exist today, they are very much creatures of the State. In fact, there's a sense in which it can be said that if we didn't have health-insurance companies, we wouldn't need them.

Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Credit Rating Firms Are Running Scared - It's About Time
The stock market decline wiped out $7 trillion in shareholder wealth. Some of the key culprits behind this financial mess were the credit-rating firms like Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service, which assigned top-tier “AAA” ratings to investments that were actually backed by subprime mortgages and other toxic debt.

Saturday, September 12, 2009
How Long Does The Recession Have To Last Before Keynesians Admit They're Wrong?
(2 comments) It's been 21 months since the economy officially tanked and yet policy makers seem unwilling to admit their favorite policy prescription--Keynesian stimulus spending--just isn't working.

Thursday, September 10, 2009
Anatomy of an Economic Ignoramus - Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
We all encounter more than our share of foolish blog posts. Most of the time you simply have to let them be. You could spend the rest of your life correcting drones and automatons who will never have an original or unconventional thought no matter how much you prod them. Once in a while, though you let loose with a full-blown response.

Thursday, September 10, 2009
Forcing insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions is immoral
(21 comments) President Obama could lead a more honest debate by proposing a welfare program for those who can't get coverage – and paying for it with new taxes.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Audit the Fed Will Get Hearing in House Committee!
Thanks to the Campaign for Liberty members who have tirelessly dedicated themselves to spreading the word, gathering petitions, and putting continuous pressure on Congress by calling, writing, and faxing, Congressman Ron Paul informed C4L today that House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank has agreed to hold hearings on HR 1207! The hearings are tentatively scheduled for Friday, September 25 at 9:00 am.

Sunday, September 6, 2009
From 1944 to Nineteen Eighty-Four
(2 comments) I'm inclined to think of George Orwell and F. A. Hayek at the same time. Both showed great courage in writing the truth, undaunted by the consequences awaiting them. Both valued freedom, though they understood it differently.

Friday, September 4, 2009
Health care reform means more power for the IRS
Under the Democrats' health care proposals, the already powerful — and already feared — IRS would wield even more power and extend its reach even farther into the lives of ordinary Americans, and the presidentially-appointed head of the new health care bureaucracy would have access to confidential IRS information about millions of individual taxpayers.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
David Swanson, Bush's Third Term? You're Living It
This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Sure It's Legal" But Is It RIGHT?
Ever since the Financial system started imploding in July 2007, I've heard countless folks talk about liquidity, bull markets, bear markets, the dollar, bailouts, etc. But there's one thing I've heard virtually NO ONE talk about. That is: MORALITY or ETHICS.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Legacy of Progressivism
(2 comments) Progressive “solutions” to our current set of economic problems are no solutions at all; they are the cause of the economic downturn. From the Fed to the staggering weight of government spending and debt, we can see that Progressivism truly has run its course. Unfortunately, while it runs its course, Progressivism is running this country into the ground. The solution is not more government power. The solution is liberty.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Gene Healy: Afghanistan may be Obama's Vietnam
Obama has made Afghanistan a "liberal war;" ironically enough, it may also be a war from which only liberals can disentangle us.

Monday, August 31, 2009
Health Care Through Central Planning: AHelpfulAnalogy by Karen Kwiatkowski
If we get more governmentized and centrally managed health care, one thing we can look forward to is even more waste and misallocation in the industry – and both of these eventually find a home in black and gray markets, which in turn foster increased distrust and delegitimization of government.

Sunday, August 30, 2009
Health Care Reform by John Mackey
As you are probably aware, I wrote an Op/Ed piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week on health care reform, one of the biggest and most emotional issues facing our country. I was asked to write an Op/Ed piece and I gave my personal opinions. While I am in favor of health care reform, Whole Foods Market as a company has no official position on the issue.

Saturday, August 29, 2009
YouTube - IT AIN'T AMERICA NO MO'!
This video was taken on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at Rep. Jim Moran's (D-VA) Town Hall meeting on Obama Deathcare. Many people were left outside when the school filled to capacity. School security officer Cheeks did not like the anti-Obamacare poster which used one of the gone-viral "Joker" graphics and ordered it removed. When said to Officer Cheeks, "This used to be America!" his response was: "It ain't no more, OK?"

Friday, August 28, 2009
Desperate for Capital, the FDIC Backs Away From Tougher Rules Governing Private Equity Purchases of Failed U.S. Banks
A new Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) plan to offload busted banks to vulture investors strikes an uneven balance between private equity players and public taxpayers and may inadvertently sow the seeds for another round of bank failures.

Friday, August 28, 2009
Pajamas TV - InstaVision With Glenn Reynolds - Wrong Door Raids and the Injustice of the Justice System
Radley Balko interviewed about the evil of paramilitary police tactics

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Did You Hear the One About... by Floy Lilley
(2 comments) Did you hear the one about bobbing heads on Sunday agreeing that the cause of the Great Depression was the absence of government guidance? "The Great Depression would never have happened if there had been any economic regulations," agreed the policy wonks. Oh, really? So you think a free society generated that monstrosity?

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The Political Phase and the Death of Nations
The United States is in the third and fatal stage of a great country's life-cycle – the political stage. In this stage, money and power migrate from the financial community to the political community. The politicians get away with taking trillions out of the productive economy and spending them on their pet projects and private corruptions.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Federal Reserve Loses Bloomberg FOIA Lawsuit, Sensitive Disclosures Forthcoming
(1 comments) The Federal Reserve must make public reports about recipients of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers under programs created to address the financial crisis, a federal judge ruled.

Monday, August 24, 2009
Election Fraud? Elections Are a Fraud!
The fraud is built into the very foundation of democratic politics. The notion that one individual, elected by majority vote, can in any way be said to “represent” the entirety of a constituency based on mere geography is absurd on its face.

Sunday, August 23, 2009
Small Government Caused Our Current Problems?
We continue to see one example after another of what suspicious readers may be tempted to view as the Big Lie that deregulation or other obliging government measures caused the present economic mess.

Sunday, August 16, 2009
Treasury, FDIC And More: How Many Lies? - The Market Ticker
Remember that we were told when AIG (and the banks) were bailed out that "the taxpayer is unlikely to lose any money, and may even make a profit." Bernanke said this, Hank Paulson of Treasury said this, indeed, it was the mantra of the administration. It was also untrue.

Saturday, August 15, 2009
Is Wall Street Ready for Obama's Fall? by Rick Ackerman
(1 comments) Obama will become a lame-duck president after less than a year in office, leaving the country rudderless at a time when the economy and financial system are desperately in need of a firm hand or at least the appearance that someone is in command.

Friday, August 14, 2009
Hotlined
"Just seconds earlier, Korrin and I had been confronted on our doorstep by two very nice, well-dressed women who informed us that an anonymous "child endangerment" complaint had been filed with the Child Protective Services."

Thursday, August 6, 2009
State Mandates & Health Insurance: Find out what you're paying for (and don't need) video
State mandates on health insurance are a major factor in the high cost of coverage.

Sunday, August 2, 2009
Venezuela silences radio stations
(1 comments) The Venezuelan government has ordered the closure of 34 radio stations. How much longer will progressives continue to support this dictator?

Sunday, August 2, 2009
Recession Is Over: Long Live Depression
(2 comments) Because of the continued profligacy of the government and Federal Reserve, the imbalances that caused the current recession have actually worsened. We are now in an even deeper hole than when the crisis began. Rather than wrapping up a recession, we are actually sinking into a depression. If things look better now, it’s just because we are in the eye of the storm.

Saturday, August 1, 2009
Why Bernanke Is in Panic Mode by Gary North
For the first time since 1914, there is a public debate in Congress over the Federal Reserve's power. Never before has a majority of the House of Representatives called for what should always have existed: Congressional scrutiny over the FED's money. Bernanke says that Ron Paul's bill to audit the Federal Reserve is a bill to audit Federal Reserve policy. Yet the bill says nothing about auditing policy.

Friday, July 31, 2009
NYSE Embraces a Ruinous Idea
Sadly, another venerable American institution has lost its way: the New York Stock Exchange. We read the other day that the Exchange is building a fast-trade hub in northern New Jersey that supposedly will help secure its future in an increasingly electronic world. The Exchange will be installing in its new facility some very sophisticated computing equipment that will allow hedge funds to engage in high-frequency trading.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Should They Risk Missing a Payment?
You can see the fine hand of government at work in the homeowner rescue package that has been struggling to get off the ground since its inception last spring. Some homeowners are being told they cannot receive help unless they fall behind on their payments. But if you were struggling yourself to stay on track, would you take the risk of skipping a payment or two just to qualify?

Saturday, July 25, 2009
Montgomery County, PA Sheriff's Office: Self-Defense is a Privilege, not a Right | George Donnelly
(2 comments) Montgomery County, PA Sheriff's Office: Self-Defense is a Privilege, not a Right

Thursday, July 23, 2009
Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature
(16 comments) That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the Southern Oscillation Index of 5–7 months earlier shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.

Thursday, July 23, 2009
PROMISES, PROMISES: Do Obama deals break pledge? By Sharon Theimer, Associated Press Writer
Obama health care industry talks echo Cheney energy task force

Thursday, July 23, 2009
Bernanke Sidesteps the Three Big Questions, Again by Gary North
The FED still faces three problems. (1) If it deflates, the financial markets will collapse. (2) If it does nothing, there will be mass price inflation if banks start lending, making use of the FED's doubling of the monetary base. (3) If banks don't start lending, the recovery will not appear. The FED wants to avoid all three.

Monday, July 20, 2009
1000 Page Healthcare Bill a Job Killer, Threat to Small Business - NO ONE wins!
Instead of looking at ways to reduce costs so more Americans could afford coverage, their knee-jerk reaction is to tax our businesses to fund their $2 trillion "plan."

Saturday, July 18, 2009
Government Creates Human Suffering
(2 comments) In a free market there is no unemployment that persists that isn't chosen by the workers themselves. That's because the price of labor is continually fluctuating based on supply and demand. Everyone who wants to work can work, simply because we live in a world in which there is always work to do. Only artificial interventions can generate the unemployment problem we have today.

Friday, July 17, 2009
Healthcare "Reform" Will Increase Costs, CBO Says
The health-care measures being drafted by congressional Democrats would increase rather than reduce public spending on health care, potentially worsening an already bleak federal budget outlook, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Thursday.

Friday, July 17, 2009
JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Profit Surge is an Accounting Mirage, Not a Sustainable Sector Trend
These profits are merely a mirage created by an obscure accounting rule that allows banks to transform "toxic debt" on their balance sheets into income.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick
(5 comments) James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that 'anthropogenic global warming' is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a 'first-world luxury' with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book

Tuesday, July 14, 2009
HR 1207 / S 604 to Audit the Federal Reserve - We Won't Be Stopped (No Matter How Hard They Try)! (video)
Our political "leadership" has made it clear they DON'T WANT an Audit of the Federal Reserve. Unfortunately for them, they work for US, and WE DEMAND AN AUDIT (and that's just the start of the trouble we're going to cause them...)

Monday, July 13, 2009
If mom can't pay, adult child must
This one's going to blow baby boomers' minds. It concerns a little-known law dating to Elizabethan England suddenly being enforced with gusto in Pennsylvania. The law can force adult children to pay their parents' health-care costs.

Thursday, July 9, 2009
Minimum Wage Increase Will Send Teenage Jobless Rate to a Record High
(8 comments) The current (June) unemployment rate for teenagers of 24% is within 1/10 of a percent of the all-time high of the 24.1% teenage jobless rate set back in November and December of 1982 (see chart above). The teenage jobless rate of 24% is more than double the national average of 9.5% for June, and for African-American teens the unemployment rate was almost 38%. These rates will rise with the scheduled minimum wage increases.

Monday, July 6, 2009
Christina Romer's Faulty Depression History
Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Obama, recently wrote an ode to Keynesian deficit spending as a method for curing severe recessions. Yet a simple glance at the big picture shows that the Keynesian story makes no sense.

Monday, July 6, 2009
America's Fiscal Train Wreck
(2 comments) America's long-awaited fiscal train wreck is now underway. Depending on policy actions taken now and over the next few years, federal deficits will likely average as much as 6% of GDP through 2019, contributing to a jump in debt held by the public to as high as 82% of GDP by then - a doubling over the next decade.

Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Extraordinary Evil of Bernie Madoff
Madoff should be pressed into service as the next head of the Federal Reserve after Ben Bernanke's term expires in December. With Madoff in the big office, there would be no longer any illusions about what sort of bank the Fed is running.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Colorado Government Forces Those in Love To Help Those Who Aren't
The current cost of a marriage license is $10, but as of July 1, 2009 it will be $30. And to what can citizens owe this $20 hike? Seems the state will now force those in love to pay for those who aren't. That's right. That extra $20 taken from couples getting ready for their special day is to be put toward a government program called the Colorado Domestic Abuse Fund

Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Bernanke is a Total Failure Unsuited for Role as Fed Chairman
(2 comments) Bernanke is a disingenuous liar with a memory problem. He is also an economic dunce who does not understand the cause of great depression nor could he spot a housing/credit bubble visible to nearly every blogger in the country. However, like his mentor Greenspan, Bernanke believes that every problem can be cured by throwing money at it. Finally, he is a creative, political power grabbing hack

Tuesday, June 30, 2009
CEI Releases Global Warming Study Censored by EPA
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.

Friday, June 26, 2009
Ideas Have Consequences
(7 comments) There is a direct line from Marx and Engels to Hitler and the Holocaust; to Lenin and Stalin and the liquidation of the Kulaks and the extermination of the Ukrainians; to Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz, and to Kolima, Vorkuta and Karaganda.

Thursday, June 25, 2009
Monsanto to cut 900 jobs as profit falls
Monsanto Co. said Wednesday that it plans to cut 900 employees across the company as part of a restructuring to be completed in fiscal 2010. The global agricultural products company (NYSE: MON), based in Creve Coeur, Mo., also announced it's creating a separate division for its Roundup and other herbicides business.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Take the "Replace Roundup" Challenge! (video)
Monolithic agribusiness & biotech corporations like Monsanto are gaining more and more power over our food supply, thanks in part to Congress creating policies that give them competitive advantage while harming small farmers & competitors, but also because we consume their products every day, without knowing it. Want to do something about it? Watch this video, then accept the challenge.

Saturday, June 20, 2009
In Venezuela, Land 'Rescue' Hopes Unmet
Socialism fails again: Farmers Struggle on Expropriated Plots

Saturday, June 20, 2009
Obama's Impossible Healthcare Reform Promises
Examining the Realities of the Public Option

Friday, June 12, 2009
H.R. 1207 Passes 218 Co-sponsors
Historic news - Dr. Paul's Audit the Fed Bill has passed the 218 co-sponsor benchmark, and now sits with 222.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009
(video)Bernanke is worried! HR 1207 to Audit the Federal Reserve is Gaining Momentum FAST!
We're almost there! 207 co-sponsors for HR 1207 to Audit the Federal Reserve. Join our call-a-thon to push it over the top and give Bernanke a few sleepless nights.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Showdown In Caracas
(1 comments) A group of foreign writers, academics and politicians was invited here to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Cedice, a Venezuelan think tank that promotes liberal democracy and the market economy, both of which President Hugo Chavez wants to destroy. The government's thuggish reaction turned the visit into a public showdown that helped expose what Venezuelans are going through these days.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Iceland's Banking Crisis: The Meltdown of an Interventionist Financial System
The current focus on the causes of the crisis continually misidentifies its true source, resulting in prescribed cures that fall short of the necessary actions

Sunday, June 7, 2009
Police Beating of Schizophrenic Caught on Tape
Bar Video for Criminal Activity Catches Alleged Police Brutality

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Video: "No Guns for Negroes" or Why We Need to Stay Armed
(1 comments) Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership's movie, "No Guns for Negroes", exposes the racist history of American gun control laws. Every person who supports gun control laws must be shown this film or gun ownership will cease to exist in America.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Will Small Food Producers Suffer the Same Fate as Small Toy Makers? CSPIA, Food Safety & the Destruction of Small Busine
Congress is at it again, with a new draft food safety bill expected to go to legislative hearing June 3rd. While the details have yet to be worked out, it's looking very similar to HR 759, which suffered from the usual one-size fits all approach coupled with overly broad language.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Reagan Did What? The Fantasies of Paul Krugman
(2 comments) Financial deregulation was not a creation of "pro-free market" Republican administrations. Instead, it began in the late 1970s, being pushed by entities like one of Krugman's employers, the New York Times, which editorialized against Regulation Q, which put caps in the amount of interest that banks could offer in savings accounts. Ted Kennedy was the main force behind the deregulation of trucking, railroads, and airlines

Monday, June 1, 2009
The Costs of Carbon Legislation
Whether you are a "denier" or whether you think carbon dioxide emissions need to be sharply reduced very quickly, you should be extremely skeptical of the process now unfolding in Washington. This isn't about saving the planet; it's about money and power.

Monday, June 1, 2009
Banks Over-'Compensating' on Your Dime
Some things just never change -- especially in the banking industry, where there's a whole lot of the "same old, same old" taking place once again. The U.S. government is a major shareholder in banks today -- financial institutions that came crawling to the U.S. government to be bailed out when they were injured. The government has repeatedly commanded these institutions to stop excessive executive pay and bonuses

Friday, May 29, 2009
Oklahoma State Trooper Assaults, Attempts to Arrest EMT Headed for Hospital
(3 comments) Emergency Medical Technician Maurice White, Jr., a paramedic with the Creek Nation EMS in Oklahoma, was shuttling a patient to the hospital when he was stopped by a State Trooper. White hadn't noticed that the trooper had been behind him with lights flashing; when the trooper zoomed by, he made radio contact and snarled at White that he "should consider checking [his] rear view mirrors."

Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa Harassed by Venezuelan Police State
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, on his way to a conference on democracy and free enterprise in Venezuela, was detained by its authorities for two hours. Thankfully, his call to the media made them back off for now.

Saturday, May 23, 2009
(Video)"Tragic Accident": New Euphemism for Nearly Lethal Police Assault
A recently released surveillance video shows Deputy Paul -- obviously much larger and heavier than Harris -- throwing a body-check into Harris, sending the man tumbling head-first against a wall. Harris's head snaps forward sharply as his body slams against the pavement. Not surprisingly, Harris spent a long period in a coma, and remains in critical condition.

Saturday, May 23, 2009
As the U.K. Goes, So Goes the U.S.?
We have $11 trillion debt and GDP around $14 trillion. So debt is already 80% of GDP and it's going higher. Overall, we're just seeing how incredibly strained governments all around the world are. From England, to the U.S. to the state of California.

Saturday, May 23, 2009
Medical Misunderstanding
The Bad Economics of Health Care Reform

Friday, May 22, 2009
Obama's Betrayals
Presidents come and go, with little obvious effect on foreign policy, no matter what they say during their campaigns. Republican and Democrat, right and left - those terms are more about style than substance. In subtle ways and with staunch corporate media support, the system maintained by the ruling elite ensures that no successful national candidate will deviate too far from its plumb line.

Thursday, May 21, 2009
Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan
President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a "preventive detention" system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.

Thursday, May 21, 2009
Barack Obama: Son of a Gipper
The cost of elevating appearance above substance is never worth the price. I said it under both the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Ronald RayGun. I am now saying it about the presidency of Barack Obama. We have elected a clean, well-spoken flim-flam man who is in reality just another house servant of the military/industrial/media complex.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
(audio) My Radio Interview/Commentary on the Freedom Works! Radio Show
A lively discussion of torture and the war on terror.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Obama Warfare Budget
Although the U.S. is not in imminent danger of attack from any country, President Obama's first budget further expands the Pentagon's already dominant global operations.

Monday, May 18, 2009
Justifying Iraq with Torture
(2 comments) U.S. officials tortured detainees to force them to disclose a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The evidence includes an allegation that the enhanced interrogation program's "principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda."

Saturday, May 16, 2009
Know When to Walk Away
(2 comments) Instead of sending more troops to Afghanistan, the new administration should admit that we can do nothing except allow our soldiers to be killed. It is too late to capture bin Laden. It is time to fold and walk away. The longer we stay, the more occupying soldiers will die. In addition, we will kill dozens of Afghans, many women and children, for every one of our soldiers lost for this folly. This truly is a lose-lose war.

Thursday, May 14, 2009
(Video) The End of the Internet? Cybersecurity Act gives Obama power to shut down internet, ignore laws
Shelly Roche reports in on a new Cybersecurity bill that would grant the President unprecedented power to shut down the internet and ignore privacy laws.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Question Authority (Unless I Say Not To)
Citizen: But the experts have been all wrong! Shouldn't we question them? Shouldn't we listen to the people who had a clue? Commissar: Let us hear no more of this anti-social talk about your betters. Stay away from the fringe, citizen. Listen to the experts.

Thursday, May 7, 2009
Free Ashton Lundeby!
"This is like something out of a Third World dictatorship where the people in power just do whatever they want to anybody they choose. I want my son back, and I'll do anything I can to free him. But people need to know that if this isn't stopped now, any of us at anytime can be treated the same way. The next time it will be your house they visit in the middle of the night, and your children they take away."

Thursday, May 7, 2009
Report: Merck published fake medical journal
(1 comments) In its efforts to sell fatally flawed drugs, Merck produced and published a fake journal, the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine.

Thursday, May 7, 2009
The End of Small Farms, Part II - HR 759 is in committee, worse than HR 875 (the Monsanto bill)
"Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people" - Henry Kissinger Our food freedom is under attack! HR 759 has eclipsed HR 875 as a danger to America's small farmers. Currently in committee (and more likely to pass), NOW is the time to act to stop this threat to our freedom to buy, grow and eat real foods. A vote is expected by Memorial day.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009
The Socialist-Syndicalist Plan for GM
General Motors has announced a plan for a new ownership structure. The US government will swap debt for equity and take at least half ownership in GM. This amounts to socialization of a large part of the domestic means for automobile production. The UAW will swap debt for equity to cancel out the debt "owed" by GM to a union-run trust. Worker ownership of 39% of this company is syndicalism, plain and simple.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Oppose the Creation of Spiritual Heritage Week
The resolution, H.RES. 397, would put Congress on record as "recognize[ing] the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation's most valuable institutions and form the inseparable foundation for America's representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures."

Sunday, May 3, 2009
(Video) Peter Schiff: Currencies and Chrysler
Gold, stocks, commodities, the Dollar, and the Chrysler madness

Sunday, May 3, 2009
Jailed for exercising the right to remain silent
Why has Sam Dodson been held indefinitely, on $10,000 cash bail, without access to legal council for 19 days, in an unsanitary jail cell in the Cheshire County Correctional Facility in Keen, New Hampshire, since April 13th? Answer: because he had the audacity to exercise his Miranda, Constitutional, and big government-hugger right to remain silent.

Sunday, May 3, 2009
White House threats in Chrysler episode
"One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House, and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal, under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy his reputation if it continued to fight..."

Friday, May 1, 2009
Chavez Takes Charge: A Venezuelan chronicles his president's evolution from democrat to dictator
The recent indictment brought against Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales is a good example of why, despite his unrelenting popularity, El Comandante will ultimately be remembered as another addition to Latin America's long list of bombastic dictators.

Thursday, April 30, 2009
When Government Replaces God and Family
(4 comments) Americans are a people whose subservience to their "leaders" results in a form of worship. Standing ready to receive their adulation are scores of political "saviors" promising much while abusing the power of the office entrusted them. Nationalism has become like a religion whose followers swear by the state, condemning fellow citizens as traitors if they resist, reject, or condemn the aims and actions of the government

Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The American Gestapo and the Dog that Didn't Bark
It is time for Americans to begin thinking for themselves. The Republican/conservative Democrat/liberal dichotomy is a false one. The two parties are a myth. They are fully under the control of the globalist conspirators whose goal is the destruction of America as we know it.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The US Should Cut Military Spending in Half
If we decided to avoid Iraq-style occupations and fight only to defend ourselves or important allies, we could cut our ground forces in half.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Philadelphia Rally to End the Fed - 4/25/09
This past Saturday 4/25/2009, thousands of people across the country held rallies at every Federal Reserve Bank. Here's what happened in Philadelphia.

Sunday, April 26, 2009
The Impossibility of Healthcare Reform
The race to provide every American with health insurance is leading to a medicine chest that is bare. The Administration in Washington has fashioned an unproven plan to improve the efficiency, coordination, convenience, accessibility and affordability of health care but miserably fails to demonstrate any successful means to improve the health quotient of Americans.

Sunday, April 26, 2009
Best of April - Liberty Recommendations
I found these 6 articles to be particularly powerful, and important to share with others. Though I comment only briefly upon each, they are some of the best of this past month packed with logic, reason, and facts.

Sunday, April 26, 2009
Drug Prohibition: Law Enforcement Is The Problem
The problem is not the War on Drugs, that is merely the symptom. The problem is that the government has the means to enforce laws like the drug prohibition.

Thursday, April 23, 2009
What Tea Parties are and are not
(1 comments) The Tea Party movement is so much more, and so much less, than what all the politicians and media pundits want it to be. Our system of government and those who live in that political world have drifted so far away from America that they are incapable of recognizing what is really happening. It is simply this: a rapidly growing number of Americans are fed up. That's it. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Thursday, April 23, 2009
Free Sam Dodson!
Sam Dodson is being held captive in a cage in Keene, New Hampshire by armed and apparently violent people who work for something called "government". He is refusing to cooperate with these thugs.

Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Upside-down World of John Maynard Keynes
(3 comments) John Maynard Keynes often employed flowery language like "animal spirits" and "liquidity trap" to describe things he did not understand. He was, after all, more of a bureaucrat than an economist. In fact, he would best be described as an anti-economist because he eschewed things like supply and demand and held the opinion that government could run the economy.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
I'd Like My Money Back
Rather than my usual practice of remitting taxes to you on this, your high holy day of April 15, I am this year writing to request a return of all monies previously remitted, for non-performance of services promised.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Banks May Be Forbidden to Return Bailout Money
(2 comments) They need permission to pay it back?

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Case against "Smart Taxes" on Carbon
Those who blame global warming on human activity see taxation as an effective and desirable means of preventing environmental global catastrophe. In a recent publication, former Bush advisor Greg Mankiw has extended an "open invitation to join the Pigou club" by embracing the idea of regulating greenhouse gases with corrective taxes.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Inflation Tsunami
US private-sector debt is shrinking as banks remain fearful of lending. However, the US government (along with other nations) is borrowing and creating gigantic sums of money and this should cause prices to rise for the next 3-4 years.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Jefferson Muzzle is awarded jointly to the Democratic and Republican National Parties
For their deafening silence over the severe restrictions on, and actions taken against, protesters at their respective conventions, a 2009 Jefferson Muzzle is awarded jointly to the Democratic and Republican National Parties.

Monday, April 20, 2009
The Tea Parties: We've Seen It All Before
The Tea Party movement is clearly a "Conservative" movement in its membership and core philosophy, and therefore it is not surprising that many of the very same people who now loudly claim to oppose government spending and taxation, were the very same people who, for the last eight years, had been cheerleaders for one of the most profligate administrations in American history.

Monday, April 20, 2009
Bullies bearing badges
Law enforcers in Dallas and Ft. Worth recently made the North Texas Metroplex proud with their high profile high idiocy high jinx in a span of 14 days.

Saturday, April 18, 2009
Phoenix police raid home of blogger whose writing is highly critical of them
In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department. Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

Saturday, April 18, 2009
Why I Fired My Broker
(2 comments) We were children of the bull market. Even at its top, my investment portfolio was never anything to write home about. Its saving grace was that it was mine. And I imagined that when we did cash out, at 60 or 65, I would pass my time buying my wife semisubstantial pieces of jewelry and going bass fishing like the men in Flomax commercials. Well, goodbye to all that. I took a random walk down Wall Street and got hit by a bus.

Saturday, April 18, 2009
The Waco Butchers Are Back
(4 comments) Sixteen years ago we were reminded of the deadly danger of having the left-liberals in charge of the police state. The largest massacre of American civilians by the US government since Wounded Knee climaxed on April 19, 1993. The siege that had begun on February 28 with a botched ATF publicity stunt ended when the Branch Davidian church and home went up in flames

Friday, April 17, 2009
Peter Schiff's advice on fighting inflationary depression
Amid an "inflationary depression" in the U.S., Peter Schiff, president and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, sees opportunities in the maelstrom. Facing a massive redistribution of wealth, he advises investors to act quickly and "divest U.S. dollar assets into physical precious metals, other currencies and equities outside the United States."

Friday, April 17, 2009
The Memos Don't "Shock the Conscience" of Obama
(1 comments) Though the interrogation techniques described obviously didn't "shock the conscience" of the Bush and Obama administration, I believe it certainly shocks the conscience of any spiritually sane objective reader, and I certainly think it will be perceived as such by the rest of the world, further fueling the rage against our nation.

Friday, April 17, 2009
Long, Dark Teatime of the State?
The Tea Party movement must make itself thoroughly anti-political and anti-state. Else it will be stillborn ... or end up actually fueling the growth of the state. If the movement falls into the trap of standard political thinking, the jaws of that trap will close around it and make it ineffectual.

Thursday, April 16, 2009
Obama's Blackwater? Chicago Mercenary Firm Gets Millions for Private "Security" in Israel and Iraq
(1 comments) Federal records obtained by AlterNet reveal a multi-million dollar contract for a private U.S. paramilitary force operating out of Jerusalem.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009
About Those Conservative Tax Protesters
Remember that this April 15th we are still suffering the burden of Bush's leviathan government. We are filing for 2008, the last year of Republican rule. We will long be enduring the cost of Bush's wars, spending and bailouts. We should be wary of letting the Republicans co-opt the anti-government spirit of these protests and turn them into a platform to shill for GOP statism.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009
How Could I Live Without Filing Taxes?
(1 comments) Funny song about that most wonderful tax-filing time of the year. Bonus: Chimpanzee spinning on a wheel.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Stimulating Anachronism, Stifling Innovation
The government is tying up capital trying to prop up the gigantic and inefficient "Big Three" car companies that were in some ways the iconic firms of the mid-20th century. These resources are being wasted: they could be used more efficiently and more profitably, and therefore more effectively, by firms like Tesla that are producing the products of the 21st century.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
One-way mirror
Here is Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) - who informs us that in conflicts between Wall Street and Main Street, he "sides with Main Street" and always has - expounding on the governing party's new notion of "transparency" in hyperregulatory bailout capitalism

Monday, April 13, 2009
The war on home-based businesses
(3 comments) Many potential businesses are already forbidden to entrants without extensive resources due to prohibitive licensing requirements, a subject much examined by the Institute for Justice as they try to remedy the various laws that prohibit people from working their way out of poverty.

Friday, April 10, 2009
Bad Regulation Drives Out Good
A "flawed" but achievable arrangement is set against an (alleged) ideal, though it is left unestablished whether the ideal can in fact exist. The problem with this form of analysis should be obvious. If the ideal is not available, then the comparison is invalid and yields no practical information. If the rejected arrangement were compared to other achievable-that is, imperfect-alternatives, it might well be judged superior.

Friday, April 10, 2009
Bailout Bonds?
The Obama administration is cajoling investment companies to create bailout bonds. These would be similar to the bonds that wartime presidents created to find sucker-investors for their wars. Americans were browbeaten into buying them as a patriotic duty. So too those who say "yes, we can" to the bailouts will be asked to do their patriotic duty, and buy the debt of loser companies.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Administration's Plan to Expand Financial Oversight Could Add New Risks
The Obama administration's plan for a sweeping expansion of financial regulations could have unintended consequences that increase the very hazards that these changes are meant to prevent.

Monday, April 6, 2009
Socialist Obama Speaks
(4 comments) Did you hear Obama after the G-20? It is obvious what this man desires, and it is far from the America our founding fathers envisioned. Our place in the world, as it has already become, and worse yet as Obama envisions it, is becoming a place of tyranny, a place where liberty is not valued, a place where the "collective" replaces the individual American. It is a place we must not allow our nation to devolve farther into.

Monday, April 6, 2009
Binghamton massacre: death by government?
In Binghamton, New York, a "suspect" shot up an immigration center as people took their citizenship exam, killing at least 13. These are the facts of the story, but there are many more facts not covered in the mainstream media which have an impact on this tragedy. The main question ignored: Why do nearly all of these mass murders occur in places where law-abiding citizens (or immigrants) are disarmed by government regulation?

Sunday, April 5, 2009
The Threat of Hyper-Depression
At this stage nothing is certain, but the country is currently headed straight into a period of very rapid price hikes and a very bad recession. It would not surprise me at all if the national unemployment rate and the annualized rate of consumer price inflation both broke through into double digits by the end of 2009.

Saturday, April 4, 2009
Che's Dead, Get Over It
(14 comments) Che Guevara was Fidel Castro's executioner. How did he, a monstrous mass murderer, responsible for the blood curdling murders of thousands of teenagers, women and men, become a popular cultural figure embraced by the t-shirt industry, college students and hollywood directors? It's not like we walk around proclaiming Charles Manson a brilliant & kind revolutionary.

Friday, April 3, 2009
Audit the Federal Reserve
(1 comments) Tell your Congressman to co-sponsor Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill.

Friday, April 3, 2009
What the Airport Detention of CFL's Steve Bierfeldt Tells Us
Our very own Steve Bierfeldt was detained for half an hour at the St. Louis Airport and police station. His crime? Why did he arouse the TSA's suspicion? The officials said it was because he was carrying cash on his person. Perhaps. He was also carrying Campaign for Liberty and Ron Paul materials, and we wonder if the TSA had gotten the infamous MIAC report and not yet heard it has been retracted by the Missouri government

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
reason.tv - Videos > Barack W. Bush?
Amongst liberals, libertarians, and even some conservatives, there has considerable "hope" that a Barack Obama presidency would radically transform Bush administration policies regarding the "war on terror." But were Obama's executive orders banning torture and closing down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, signed on his first two days in office, just a head fake?

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
YouTube - FBI Unbound (Part 1/2)
How National Security Letters Violate Our Privacy. The 26-minute video explores the repercussions of the FBI's power to demand hundreds of thousands of Americans' private records without any oversight by a court or Congress. Two former Department of Justice officials, Lisa Graves and Bruce Fein, share their views on how the expanded, unchecked power threatens Americans' privacy and diverts resources from genuine threats.

Monday, March 30, 2009
The End of Small Farms? What you should know about HR 875, HR 759, NAIS and Monsanto-YouTube Video
Libertarian opposition to the corporate take over of the US.

Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Indefensibility of Political Representation
In every modern state, some group of people - usually a fairly small group of people - purport to have the authority to command the mass of the population to do this or that or to refrain from doing this or that. By what right, then, do they claim the authority to command us, to make laws for us that govern many, if not most, of the significant aspects of our lives?

Saturday, March 28, 2009
Soros on Main Street and Wall Street
(1 comments) George Soros recently made two predictions. First, commercial real estate will decline by 30% in the United States. "It is inevitable, it is written, everybody knows it, there are already some transactions which reflect and anticipate it, so we know, they will drop at least 30 percent." Second, when banks finally begin to lend, the swollen monetary base will lead to serious price inflation.

Saturday, March 28, 2009
Rahm Emanuel's profitable stint at mortgage giant
Freddie Mac stay made him at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint that required little effort.

Friday, March 27, 2009
The Real Recovery Plan
Is it possible to move from the socialistic dream (and nightmare for the people) we're experiencing into a future of prosperity and peace?

Friday, March 27, 2009
Who Is Arming the Mexican Drug Cartels?
(10 comments) The state, Mexican authorities and their US propaganda arm, known in most circles as the Mainstream Media, have recently embarked on a huge disinformation campaign to demonize the American gun owner as the supplier of weapons to the Mexican drug cartels.

Thursday, March 26, 2009
Global Warming: The Backlash Begins
Environmentalists and their allies in the Administration were stunned by the news last week that skepticism about the effects of global warming is growing. With complete domination of both the mainstream media and the political institutions by true believers in global warming, the news from Gallup that 44 percent of Americans believe that global warming has been exaggerated must have come as a shock.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009
"The Zombie Ideas Have Won" - Paul Krugman on $1 Trillion Geithner Plan to Buy Toxic Bank Assets
(1 comments) Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is preparing to unveil a plan today to purchase as much as $1 trillion in troubled mortgages and other assets from banks. The government is reaching out to hedge funds, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds to help buy the toxic assets. The Obama administration has described the plan as a public-private partnership, but most of the actual money will be put up by the government.

Monday, March 23, 2009
FDA ONE STEP AWAY FROM DECLARING DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS DRUGS
President Barack Obama has appointed two experts, one in food the other in drugs, to head up the soon to be reorganized Food & Drug Administration in preparation for an agency split that would separate the FDA into two --- one agency to oversee foods and the other to regulate drugs. But just exactly where does that leave dietary supplements?

Monday, March 23, 2009
Obama the Socialist and the Cause of Poverty
(2 comments) Roosevelt was a brilliant politician. He understood that Americans had a deep revulsion against socialism and fascism. So, he simply convinced them that all his welfare-statism and interventionism, including Social Security, the SEC, the NIRA, and the FHA weren't socialistic or fascistic but instead simply free-market mechanisms to save America's free-enterprise system. It worked. And that's the way it's been ever since.

Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Collapse of '09
The "Panic of '08" will be followed by "The Collapse of '09." In 2008, when the world's largest financial firms and equity markets crumbled, Wall Street's woes preoccupied the media. In 2009, the focus will broaden to include a range of calamities that will leave no sector unscathed.

Saturday, March 21, 2009
Prison no answer for accused teacher
(2 comments) As the father of four daughters, I would say that the music teacher was wrong for kissing and fondling a 14-year-old girl and telling her he wanted to marry her and the school is within its rights to fire him for unacceptable behavior. But three things about this case bother me more than what he did.

Friday, March 20, 2009
The AIG Tax Trojan Horse
The massive tax hike being voted on in the House today is a Trojan horse that uses the legitimate outrage over the American International Group bonuses to hit a wide variety of employees, and would be a serious blow to the economic growth we are trying to revive.

Friday, March 20, 2009
Scott Horton Interviews Tomas Young
Tomas Young, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, discusses his injuries sustained during military service in Iraq, his featured role in the documentary Body of War, the mission of IVAW and the advice a potential military enlistee needs to hear.

Friday, March 20, 2009
JFK and the Unspeakable
(6 comments) JFK And the Unspeakable Why He Died & Why It Matters (Orbis Books, 2008), by James Douglas. As a sensitive and serious subject, the assassination of President Kennedy has been approached from many different ways by journalists, historians, psychologists, witnesses and even suspects who have acknowledged their roles in a conspiracy. But James W. Douglas comes down a very different and spiritual path.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Obama's War on Recovery
Obama came to power with the idea of repeating the storybook-view of FDR's presidency and how he saved us from the Great Depression. Had he and his friends read the history more carefully, he would have seen how FDR did nothing of the sort. His policies waged war on recovery, perpetuating the problem he said he was solving.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Mexico retaliates with tariffs on 90 US products
Mexico said Monday it will increase tariffs on about 90 U.S. products in retaliation for last week's decision to end a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods in the United States. And so the trade wars begin.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Peaceful Dissent and Government Witch Hunts
The Campaign for Liberty has been singled out, along with a few other political groups, in a leaked Missouri state government report, "The Modern Militia Movement." The document tells state officials to be on the lookout for violent extremists while conflating them with pretty much anyone who criticizes the government.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Supporters of Capitalism Are Crazy, Says Harvard
Last weekend, Harvard University sponsored a conference called (I am not making this up) "The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology, and Consequences." Its purpose was to try to figure out why, since everyone knows the current crisis amounts to a failure of the market economy, the stupid rubes continue to believe in it.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
How FDR Promoted Racial Segregation
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a reputation as a friend of black people, yet he signed laws that promoted racial segregation throughout the United States. The laws were supposed to promote "affordable housing."

Monday, March 16, 2009
The Making of a Narco State
As Mexico descends into brutality and lawlessness, the government itself has become a tool of the drug lords

Sunday, March 15, 2009
News Flash: FDR Didn't Restore Prosperity!
(9 comments) The New Deal did not end the Great Depression. This statement will come as no shock to Freeman readers, but it will to the many people who never encountered it before. Now people are encountering it-in newspaper columns and news-talk shows. Why, after years of being taught that Roosevelt's economic intervention saved the country from disaster, is the public now being told-by FDR fans, not critics-that this is not true

Sunday, March 15, 2009
Police Trained Nationwide That Informed Americans Are Domestic Terrorists
A secret report distributed by the Missouri Information Analysis Center lists Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag and equates them with radical race hate groups and terrorists. This is an example of an alarming trend which confirms that law enforcement across the country is being trained that American citizens are a dangerous enemy

Saturday, March 14, 2009
De-bunking the Hoover Myth -- From the Left
In a review of William E. Leuchtenburg's new biography of Herbert Hoover , Roger Lowenstein of Portfolio unwittingly punctures the myth that Hoover was an apostle of the free market and "limited" government.

Friday, March 13, 2009
Individualism and Self Defense
(4 comments) There are present in America today a very large number of citizens who believe protection of themselves and their loved ones from violent physical attack, robbery, rape and general mayhem is the sole responsibility of others. Most of these ignorant folks believe that employees of the state should be responsible for protection of the individual in our society. This view is elitist and based on false assumptions.

Friday, March 13, 2009
The Obama Failure
(2 comments) In less than one hundred days in office, President Obama has managed to single-handedly destroy our economy and waste the opportunity to bring real change and hope for our country.

Thursday, March 12, 2009
Blame Republicans for Big Government
(2 comments) Government power is growing, and unless President Barack Obama and the majority in Congress have a libertarian epiphany, it will continue to grow for years. If the expansion of intrusive government (a redundancy) gives you the willies - it should; the cost is freedom and prosperity - you may be tempted to direct your anger at Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership. That would be myopic, blame the Republicans.

Thursday, March 12, 2009
Troubled Neighbor: Mexico's Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States
While U.S. leaders have focused on actual or illusory security threats in distant regions, there is a troubling security problem brewing much closer to home. Violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, has risen sharply in recent years and shows signs of becoming even worse. That violence involves turf fights among the various drug-trafficking organizations.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Fannie & Freddie: Why Should You Care?
Fannie Mae reported a loss of $25.2 billion for the fourth quarter of 2008 (losses of $58.7 billion for full-year 2008). Total nonperforming loans were $119.2 billion at year-end. Fannie is requesting additional capital from the U.S Treasury. The other gargantuan government-sponsored enterprise, Freddie Mac is likewise running up billions of dollars in losses.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Avoid Japan's mistakes
Those who think the $787 billion "stimulus" bill will chase the blues from the economy should look at Japan's experience in the 1990s, where a succession of interest-rate cuts and Keynesian spending initiatives did little but prolong the downturn. The result was a decade of lost growth.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Muslim Weapons of Mass Destruction
As America struggles with its debt-ravaged economy and surging unemployment, Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program have again become an issue of major contention. In recent weeks, Obama administration officials and the media issued a blizzard of contradictory claims over Iran's alleged nuclear threat, leaving one wondering who is really charge of US foreign policy?

Monday, March 9, 2009
Reclaiming the Libertarian Party
The party's national leadership and the staff at national HQ in Washington, DC are backpedaling away from the principled positions that made the LP the only consistent voice for liberty in American politics. Clear, uncompromising stands on issues were cast aside in the hope of "electing people now."

Monday, March 9, 2009
Why the U.S. Under Obama Is Still a Dictatorship
(3 comments) President Obama and Attorney General Holder need to spell out clearly that no president will ever again treat suspected terrorists, either Americans or foreigners, arrested on American soil as "enemy combatants."

Sunday, March 8, 2009
Lake Superior is freezing over
(3 comments) Lake Superior last froze over in 2003. It has now, again, frozen over. The frequency of freeze overs has historically been around once every 20 years. Now, in the last decade, we have seen two freeze overs.

Sunday, March 8, 2009
Next shoe to drop for U.S. job seekers: lower wages
(2 comments) With "no end in sight" for U.S. job losses amid a recession that could stretch into 2010, American workers will soon have to contend with another blow to their confidence: stagnant, or even falling wages. Job seekers -- already coping with the highest unemployment rate in a quarter century, their savings mugged by a plunging stock market -- can also expect lower pay once they land a new job.

Sunday, March 8, 2009
Venezuela's Chavez turns to confrontation in crisis
(4 comments) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's aggressive moves against the food industry show the socialist leader will respond to growing economic woes in the OPEC nation with takeovers and tighter controls on business.

Saturday, March 7, 2009
Tongue-tied Clinton gets warm EU welcome
Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe as secretary of state when she mispronounced her EU counterparts' names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe's. (Good thing we have an experienced person as Secretary of State.)

Friday, March 6, 2009
Death by Treasuries
(2 comments) Anyone who voluntarily funds the U.S. empire through the purchase of government securities must confront the death and destruction caused by the myriad government programs and endless wars. Contrary to Alexander Hamilton's claim that the national debt is a "national blessing," government borrowing wastes resources and makes one complicit in the government's crimes. If anything, government debt is a national disaster.

Thursday, March 5, 2009
NY regulators frown on doctor's flat-fee system
A doctor takes a creative approach to managing health care costs, and the people who are supposed to be trying to do the same instead shut him down. This defies common sense, free market alternatives, and the goals of lowering health care costs. Somebody should stop these people from destroying anything that threatens their status quo, which is in turn what's killing us.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Finding Ways to Stay in Iraq
Those who bought into the slogans "Hope" and "Change" last fall should have read the fine print. We were warned. Over and over during the campaign for the presidency Barack Obama made it clear that "withdrawal" from Iraq on his flexible 16-month timetable meant only the removal of "combat forces." He has also made it clear all along that "combat forces" means whatever he wants it to mean – until he decides to change his mind.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sweden's Government Healthcare
(6 comments) Government health care advocates used to sing the praises of Britain's National Health Service (NHS). That's until its poor delivery of health care services became known. Government health care advocates sing the praises of Canada's single-payer system. Canada's government system isn't that different from Britain's. Sweden's isn't any better.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Health of the State
(2 comments) The computerization of personal healthcare records is one of the showpieces of the new stimulus bill. Shoved into a 1,400-page bill passed in a panic, the plan went largely undebated. But the implications are horrifying. Doctors will be coerced into a massive federal healthcare scheme, and government will serve as the leaky repository of patients' most intimate information.

Sunday, March 1, 2009
Obama Puts the Economic Cart Before the Horse
In his first televised speech before Congress, President Obama asserted that prosperity will return once the government restores the flow of credit in the economy. It may come as a surprise to him, but an economy cannot run on consumer loans. Furthermore, credit stopped flowing in the U.S. for a very good reason: there was no more savings left to loan.

Saturday, February 28, 2009
Robert Higgs on War, Taxes and Economic Crises
With Barack Obama's delusional belief in massive expansions in government spending and power as a means to overcome the economic recession and create human welfare, Senior Fellow Robert Higgs's discussion on war, taxes and economic crises could not be more timely and instructive. Dr. Higgs is the author of the award-winning book Depression, War, and Cold War. His presentation was made before a conference of the Mises Circle.

Friday, February 27, 2009
The Silence of the Liberals
It will take a couple of shiploads of flag-draped coffins – and perhaps a couple of alarming incidents in Afghanistan and environs – to wake up Obama's liberal supporters to what they're presently enabling with their silent complicity. In the meantime, the creaking wheels of empire are turning as we gather our forces for another even more perilous mission that will take us straight into the graveyard

Friday, February 27, 2009
Obama's Karn Evil
If this article were a video it would be called Government Gone Wild. Narrated by Snoop Wolff, of course.

Friday, February 27, 2009
The speech Jindal should have given
(2 comments) The GOP needs to own up to eight years of mistakes. Too bad so many Republicans are still in denial

Thursday, February 26, 2009
The green energy fantasy
(6 comments) Will a green energy industry be an engine of economic growth? Many want us to think so, including our new President. This view is a fantasy -- one that could devastate America's economy. The reality is that "green energy" is at best a sophisticated make-work program.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Race Cowards? In Academia, Certainly
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.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Economic Recovery Requires Capital Accumulation, Not Government "Stimulus Packages"
This article is the second in a series of articles that seeks to provide the intelligent layman with sufficient knowledge of sound economic theory to enable him to understand what must be done to overcome the present financial crisis and return to the path of economic progress and prosperity. The first article in the series was "Falling Prices Are Not Deflation but the Antidote to Deflation."

Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty
Ivan Eland talks about his new book, which ranks the presidents on the merits of their policies and the extent to which those policies contribute to peace, prosperity, and liberty. Commentary is provided by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rick Shenkman of the History News Network. This event was hosted by the Independent Institute in Washington, DC.

Sunday, February 22, 2009
Separation of Television and State
Coercive regulation supposedly enables large-scale coordination where the market would fail. But this national television conversion scheme reveals the limits of central planning.

Saturday, February 21, 2009
Hollywood Movie and Bestselling Book Parrot Castroite Propaganda
A recent bestseller titled How the Mob Owned Cuba, and Lost it to the Revolution, by T.J. English parrots Fidel Castro's script down to very "ands" and "thes." Stephen Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro's Movie, Che, is every bit as slavishly compliant to a script from a totalitarian propaganda ministry. (With apparently a straight face) Soderbergh and del Toro followed a screenplay confected by Castro's propaganda ministry

Saturday, February 21, 2009
Wake Up And Smell the PR
An empire that has to keep its white, black and brown citizens, its Christians, Jews and Muslims, its men and women, its poor, middling and rich, constantly focused on the most divisive things about them, in order to keep them from focusing on what might actually bring them together – the task at hand. No amount of cant about race should stop us from talking about the nature and goal of the state power under which we live

Friday, February 20, 2009
Discrimination Is Not a Bad Word
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's speech commemorating Black History Month to be filled with what I consider to be some of the most objectionable and alarming remarks I've heard out from a government official.

Thursday, February 19, 2009
Venezuela's Bright Side
(1 comments) Hugo Chavez's victory in Sunday's constitutional referendum in Venezuela will allow him to run for re-election indefinitely, but it does not mean he will be able to establish a totalitarian state anytime soon.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Why demote Lincoln?
Freeing the slaves does account for something. But setting Americans against each other in the country's bloodiest war, recklessly disregarding a long Constitutional principle (the right of political secession), debasing the money supply, instituting the income tax and the first American draft, throwing dissenters into prison, stifling the press . . . these things somehow offset the balance.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Chavez Reminds Us that Democracy Is Not Freedom
(5 comments) The irony in all this is that both Republicans and Democrats honestly believe that the election results show that the Venezuelan people are free. They believe that democracy equals freedom. After all, isn't that the claim they make about Iraq - that by bringing democracy to Iraq, they have brought freedom to the Iraqi people?

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Left in Power
(2 comments) Both sides of the political aisle represent a grave threat to liberty, though each of a different sort. It is like two people tugging at a turkey's wishbone. The turkey is liberty and you are the bone.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Looting Bush Family
(2 comments) Lew Rockwell podcast interview of Russ Baker about his book Family of Secrets, see the FamilyOfSecrets.com website.

Monday, February 16, 2009
Chavez Wins: "Socialism" Or Death!
Even socialists are repudiating Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez.

Monday, February 16, 2009
Limbaugh-Leninism
The "progressive" and "conservative" factions in our political system are working, in dialectical symbiosis, to build a totalitarian Homeland Security State, each of them foolishly assuming that the apparatus of regimentation and coercion would be used to punish the other. There is a desperate need for people of all political persuasions to decide that they love liberty more than they despise their political enemies.

Sunday, February 15, 2009
Roots of the Banking Crisis
Banking has been heavily regulated, controlled, and manipulated for political purposes for many years. Creeping socialism has existed in the banking industry for decades. Occasionally, the "creeping" aspect has been replaced by giant leaps toward a socialist state. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was more a "leap" than "creep."

Saturday, February 14, 2009
The Myth of the Laissez-Faire Bush Years
One of the most pernicious misconceptions of our time is that the Bush administration represented an era of free-market capitalism. By wrongly blaming the financial crisis and economic woes associated with Bush on his alleged devotion to laissez-faire, many in the mainstream press, academia and political life are misdiagnosing the problem and prescribing the wrong solution: More government, which will only make things worse

Saturday, February 14, 2009
Battling Christian Terrorists
Africa was the continent (one of the few) that even the usually interventionist U.S. national security analysts deemed as non-strategic to U.S. interests. Not anymore. The Pentagon's new Africa Command bureaucracy, which was created largely to defend oil produced on the West African coast (itself a dubious objective), has already branched out to fight "the war on terror" elsewhere in Africa – with disastrous results.

Friday, February 13, 2009
The Great College Hoax
Higher education can be a financial disaster. Especially with the return on degrees down and student loan sharks on the prowl.

Thursday, February 12, 2009
A 'Lincoln Scholar' Comes Clean
Historian William Marvel is unique among all the "Lincoln scholars" who I have read in that his books do NOT read like defense briefs in The War Crimes Trial of Abraham Lincoln, filled with hundreds of bizarre rationalizations for every odious or barbaric act. Instead, they read like they are written by a man searching for historical truth.

Thursday, February 12, 2009
Bipartisan "Stimulus" Nonsense
The cynicism and shallowness of politics have been abundantly on display throughout the debate over the "stimulus" bill. The Democrats insult the intelligence of the American people by peddling the following sophistry: Republicans were big spenders when they controlled the government. Republican criticism of Democrats for being big spenders is hypocrisy. Therefore, arguments against big government spending are invalid.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009
What is Seen and What is Unseen: Government "Job Creation"
Barack Obama and his advisers should take a lesson from history: the New Deal and its public-works projects were a disaster, and it would be remiss to think they should be given another try. As Bastiat explained, government doesn't create wealth; it only diverts it. FDR's New Deal policies are a testament to that, and if they are repeated in response to our current economic crisis, it will only hinder the recovery.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Audacity of Dopes
While the author's regulatory approach to the banking crisis is all wrong, he at least gets that the taxpayers are being played.

Monday, February 9, 2009
Obama's Wealth Destruction
(7 comments) President Obama is under the impression that history owes him $1 trillion right now to spend on whatever he wants. His language is strident and full of irritation that anyone would question his right to live out his personal dream of being Franklin Roosevelt to George Bush's Hoover. This, he says, is what the election was all about.

Sunday, February 8, 2009
Obama considering at least 2 Iraq withdrawal plans
The White House is considering at least two troop withdrawal options as it weighs a new Iraq strategy - one that would preserve President Barack Obama's campaign pledge to get all combat brigades out within 16 months and a second that would stretch it to 23 months, two officials said Friday.

Sunday, February 8, 2009
Police State Keynesianism: Stimulating Tyranny
(7 comments) Obama's $900 billion wad of socialist boodle includes $3 billion for the federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program, as well as another $1 billion to revive the Clinton administration's Community Oriented Policing (COPS) program. Both of those initiatives will expand federal subsidies of – and, thereby, federal control over – "local" law enforcement, thereby further diminishing whatever remains of local accountability.

Saturday, February 7, 2009
The Coming Fascism
The Anderson-Obama interview this week wrapped by congressional hearings on government collusion with friends and relatives (otherwise known as the Bernie Madoff scandal) have brought forth only more government whining, moaning and self-justification. In them, we have also been given a pale notice of future full-fledged American fascism.

Friday, February 6, 2009
Smoot and Hawley Return
As if the "economic stimulus" bill was not bad enough, it also contains a "Buy American" provision. It is now truly an economic sabotage bill. This is particularly scary.

Thursday, February 5, 2009
The First Hundred Days
Ever since Barack Obama's electoral victory, we have heard talking heads in the mainstream media compare him to some of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Some pundits predict that President Barack Obama's first hundred days in office will be compared to those of President Franklin Roosevelt. Will Obama be able to surpass FDR, whose first hundred days broke the historical record in terms of legislative activity?

Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision
CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

Sunday, February 1, 2009
Under Obama, 'war on terror' catchphrase fading
'War on Terror,' Bush catchphrase, fading away as Obama seeks better ties with Muslim nations

Saturday, January 31, 2009
Guns and Butter (Again)
The American elite has enjoyed the United States' dominant status in the world since World War II and became thoroughly drunk with U.S. superiority in the last two decades after the demise of the Soviet Union left the country as the only superpower. This elite is resistant to accepting the reality that a multipolar world will soon be at hand.

Friday, January 30, 2009
Faith in God, Faith in the State
(1 comments) There are many people who reject the existence of God but embrace politics as a form of salvation. Specifically, they embrace Democracy. And what they mean by Democracy is not town-hall assemblies, petitions, or referenda. They mean, rather, representative democracy: voting for legislators and executives in large, populous districts.

Friday, January 30, 2009
The Lew Rockwell Show - 94. Gerald Celente: The Greatest Depression in History
Lew Rockwell interviews Gerald Celente about the coming economic collapse

Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Welcome to Obama's "New Era of Peace" - 22 Pakistanis reported dead
So much for the peace activists who supported Obama - how deluded could they be? To have expected (or "hoped") for anything different was delusional. Just like any warmonger, just like Bush, Obama put to use the same old policy of attacking and rationalizing the killing of Pakistanis. The death count as yet being reported is 22

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Credit crunch claims Icelandic Government after 'Household Revolution'
The global economic crisis claimed its first government yesterday when Iceland's ruling coalition collapsed amid a cacophony of popular protest. The Government of Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister, resigned en masse after days of mounting anger over the country's financial meltdown.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Enemies of Capitalism
(1 comments) New Rule: neomercantilists, neoconservatives, and statists are no longer allowed to call themselves "free marketers." People who call themselves free marketers such as Bush, Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are the primary threat capitalism faces. These false prophets of capitalism are the greatest friends that proponents of socialism have.

Monday, January 26, 2009
Obama's Vietnam
Hey, hey, BHO, how many years until we go?

Monday, January 26, 2009
Tour the Worldwide Economic Crash for 39 Seconds
So, you want to know how bad this crash will get. Fine. Spend 30 seconds to see the magnitude of what it is today. It's going to get much worse. The Manchester Guardian published 13 photos from around the world that show the extent of the disaster. Spend just 3 seconds per photo. (You won't see these on Tout TV.)

Saturday, January 24, 2009
Economic Stimulus Bill Mandates Electronic Health Records for Every Citizen without Opt-out or Patient Consent Provision
The economic stimulus bill mandates electronic health records for every citizen without providing for opt-out or patient consent provisions. "Without those protections, Americans' electronic health records could be shared-without their consent-with over 600,000 covered entities through the forthcoming nationally linked electronic health-records network

Saturday, January 24, 2009
Bush Was a Big-Government Disaster
Now that George W. Bush has finally left office, here's a challenge to a nation famous for its proud tradition of invention: Can somebody invent a machine capable of fully measuring the disaster that was the Bush presidency?

Saturday, January 24, 2009
A Fabian Socialist Dream Come True
Unlike the usual Socialist points of views, the Fabians didn't advocate complete State ownership of businesses, industry, agriculture or land, instead they sought to involve the State into very specific areas of importance such as electric power production, transportation, precious metals and of course, credit. The remaining balance of economic systems would be left to the private sector however; it would be highly regulated

Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power
This week we witnessed the peaceful transfer of the authority to commit legal plunder. Apologists for government undertake bizarre mental contortions to show that we have consented to be taxed. Balderdash. I was never asked to consent, and I'm sure you weren't either. I refuse to accept the nonsensical argument that by not vacating the parcel of land I purchased, I have signaled my "tacit consent" to be plundered and bullied

Thursday, January 22, 2009
Preying at the Church of Green
(1 comments) This is a missive from a layman to his spiritual leader, written on 100% recycled bathroom tissue using biodegradable organic soy ink. Some may think this is a sacrilegious satire. Others will claim that it is too painfully true to be heresy. Each reader must judge for oneself.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Much in Obama stimulus bill won't hit economy soon
Much of President-elect Barack Obama's effort of $825 billion or so to rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure won't hit the economy for years, according to an analysis by congressional economists.

Sunday, January 18, 2009
Why all the hoopla over Obama's inauguration?
Obama doesn't care about freedom - not yours as an American, and certainly not that of foreigners. He is neither benevolent or enlightened. So what's to celebrate? The hopeful image of a United States with a president who cares about peace and justice has served its purpose - it got him elected.

Sunday, January 18, 2009
Dictatorship for Dummies
(9 comments) Learn how to quash dissent Ch�vez-style.

Saturday, January 17, 2009
Bush's Regulatory Kiss-Off: Obama's assertions to the contrary, the 43rd president was the biggest regulator since Nixon
Obama's assertions to the contrary, the 43rd president was the biggest regulator since Nixon. Since this seems to be a subject not understood by many this is an important article.

Saturday, January 17, 2009
Not-So-Great Depression
(1 comments) America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson- who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt. Harding inherited Wilson's mess a post–World War I depression that was almost as severe as the Great Depression

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Chavez will try again to end term limits
In Venezuela, a referendum is expected next month on a measure that would allow President Hugo Chavez and others to run for reelection an unlimited number of times.

Thursday, January 15, 2009
'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years
(8 comments) 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

Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Does "Depression Economics" Change the Rules?
According to our most recent Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, we are now in a period of "depression economics," where the standard rules don't apply. In particular, the argument goes, when there are idle resources lying around, the traditional economic problem of scarcity disappears. This article debunks this idea.

Monday, January 12, 2009
Fred Barnes and the Legacy of Bush
As we move closer to Jan. 20 and the end of the Bush administration, the push to salvage the legacy of the Bush administration becomes stronger and stronger. However, even from an objective standpoint, there is little that Bush has done in the last eight years that has made America safer, stronger or freer. As a result, the clamoring to save-face have pushed Bush sycophants to unprecedented levels of absurdity.

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age
(8 comments) The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.

Friday, January 9, 2009
Inclusive Science
Climate scientists should make every effort to be accurate and complete when communicating to the public about the politically divisive issue of climate change. Unfortunately, there are several points where Alexander Bedritsky's thought-provoking article "Meteorology and the War on Climate Change" (Summer 2008) fails to do this.

Thursday, January 8, 2009
Putting an End to Global Warming Alarmism
(5 comments) Billions of dollars taken from taxpayers will flow into the coffers of radical environmental groups, giving them the resources and stature to implement other parts of their anti-technology, anti-business agenda. This explains the paradox that even though the scientific community is deeply divided over the causes and consequences of global warming, every single environmental advocacy group in the U.S. believes it is a crisis.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The Great Credit-Crunch Hoax of  2008
The beauty of the Great Hoax of 2008, from the perspective of the ruling class, is that is was also a Great Scare, and such scares invariably serve as pretexts for the rulers' most audacious assaults on the peasants' lives, liberties, and purses.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Why Congress Must Stop the Fed's Massive Pumping
The current policy of fighting price deflation is a remedy for economic disaster. What is required is purging the economy of various false activities that severely undermine its ability to generate real wealth. Various policies aimed at fixing the symptoms rather than addressing the true causes are only making matters worse.

Monday, January 5, 2009
Israel's 'Fait Accompli' in Gaza
The Muslim world is in a rage. But so what? Stalin liked to say "the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on," and as long as the US gives Israel carte blanche, it can do just about anything it wants. The tragedy of Palestine will thus continue to poison US relations with the Muslim world. Americans who still do not understand why their nation was attacked on 9/11 need only look to Gaza, for which the US is now being blamed

Monday, January 5, 2009
Chaos in Gaza
Libertarians aren't foolish enough to think we have the answer to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. However, we do realize that steps can be taken by the United States to remove itself from injury in the conflict, and perhaps begin the process of long-term stability in the region. The biggest of these steps is to eliminate all economic and military aid to Israel and all other foreign countries.

Sunday, January 4, 2009
Obama Picks Come From Same Old CFR Roster
(1 comments) The Obama administration is being staffed with Council on Foreign Relations members. This is not change, just more of the same.

Sunday, January 4, 2009
Climate Scammers Prepare to Sacrifice Some Impoverished Asthmatics
"Your Metered-Dose Inhaler is Changing to Help Improve the Environment," is how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration chooses to present word that the inhalers used by those who suffer from asthma and other respiratory ailments are being pulled from the shelves as of Jan. 1.

Friday, January 2, 2009
Military Keynesianism to the Rescue?
This article really drives home a point that I've made to progressives many times. If you give the government the tools to "help" the economy they will inevitably use those resources to fund wars and empires. It never fails. Being for peace isn't enough. One must be for disarming the government so peace can actually happen.

Friday, January 2, 2009
The Huffington Post: Israeli-Occupied Territory
Why is the Huffington Post carrying water for the IDF? Follow the money ...

Thursday, January 1, 2009
Rioting at the Gates of Thermopylae: The Ramparts of the FED & Central Banks Shudder
The FDIC started 2008 with about $53 billion in reserves. Due to the failures at IndyMac and others, the FDIC fund has less than $34.6 billion left. Based on the closings since September 30, Captain Calculator reports less than $30 billion is left. The FDIC last reported on September 30 a reserve ratio of 0.76%, covering $4,544 billion in insured deposits, so now they are at about a 0.66% reserve ratio.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008
The Left, The Right, and The State
(2 comments) What is the state? It is the group within society that claims for itself the exclusive right to rule everyone under a special set of laws that permit it to do to others what everyone else is rightly prohibited from doing, namely aggressing against person and property.

Saturday, December 27, 2008
Why College Is A Waste of Money
Offering admission and financing to virtually every student who wants to enroll in college has resulted in a dropout rate of nearly 50% -- and an incredible amount of money down the drain.

Saturday, December 27, 2008
The "Great Slump" of 2008 (PART 1/2)
The outstanding contemporary relevance of Lord Keynes' short essay "The Great Slump of 1930" comes from the fact that Keynes faced very similar dire auspices as he grappled with the uncertain future of the 1930 global economic downturn. At the time he wrote the essay, Keynes was trying to explain both the origins of the crisis and its future length and severity. Needless to say, he missed the boat completely.

Thursday, December 25, 2008
Here Come the Progressives!
(5 comments) What's rising on the left-end of the political spectrum is a new brand of neoconservatism, a "liberal" and even "enlightened" variety of the same old hubris-in-arms that animated the departed warmongers of AEI. You can forget AEI; it doesn't matter that much anymore, now that the Republicans are out of power – but get ready the Progressive Policy Institute. It aims to keep the Democrats on the pro-war straight-and-narrow.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Abolish the SEC
(3 comments) The Securities and Exchange Commission should be closed down, pronto. It should not exist. They were given an impossible task that doomed the agency to failure. The US financial markets are way too complex to be effectively regulated by any government bureaucracy, no matter how competent. Moreover, the mere existence of the SEC gives investors false confidence, lulling them into reduced vigilance.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Torture Proponents Have No Serious Argument
George W. Bush's war against terror has brought out of the darker places in America a lot of people who want to torture, or like the idea of it. By now we know the names of the principal such figures in the Bush administration. If these are the kind of people who remain in charge, the United States will earn its permanent place in history as the kind of nation that tortures people.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Free press? Hardly.
The stories in the media have downplayed, or even omitted entirely, the issue which I find most disturbing: government propaganda and censorship. The criminal complaint lays out quite plainly how Governor Blagojevich wanted to trade a deal worth over a hundred million dollars to the owners of the Chicago Tribune (involving Wrigley Field), in exchange for them FIRING people who had written articles critical of him.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Nazi Economics
Even those who profess devotion to free enterprise have wavered. Are we not faced with an emergency that calls for immediate action to "save" capitalism? We need to be more resolute than ever in defense of the free market. If we do not defeat these measures, we face grave danger. The record of National Socialist Germany during the 1930s shows how quickly government intervention leads to full-scale socialism.

Monday, December 22, 2008
Cooling Is Warming
(7 comments) My relatives in New England are fighting their way out from under a giant ice storm. Here in Las Vegas it's been snowing all week, several weeks earlier than our usual one-day-a-year photo op of snow and icicles sparkling one of our palm-bedecked golf courses before melting away by afternoon. The National Weather Service calls it "a rare snow event." Why? It's getting colder. 2008 was the coolest year in a decade.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The Answer to the Economic Crisis
Lew Rockwell interviews 'Mish' Shedlock

Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Arming India Against Terrorism
Relaxing gun control laws would be a good start.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008
The Disaster Called the New Deal
(1 comments) The anti–New Deal verdict is hard to dispute: levels of unemployment at the end of the 1930s remained at depression levels. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry J. Morgenthau Jr., one of Franklin Roosevelt's best friends, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee: "I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started... And an enormous debt to boot"

Saturday, December 6, 2008
A Loud Silence
That's the response from the "antiwar" wing of the Democratic party to Obama's Iraq sellout

Friday, December 5, 2008
This (Old) News Just In... Obama Doesn't Plan to End the Iraq Occupation
Anyone who took the time to cut past Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric of "change" and bringing an "end" to the Iraq war realized early on that the now-president-elect had a plan that boiled down to a down-sizing and rebranding of the occupation. While he emphasized his pledge to withdraw U.S. "combat forces" from Iraq in 16 months, he has always said that he intends to keep "residual forces" in place for the foreseeable future

Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique
(1 comments) The symbiosis between liberal intellectuals and despotic statism at home and abroad is no accident; for at the heart of the welfarist mentality is a desire to "do good to" the mass of other people, and since people don't usually wish to be done good to - since they have their own ideas of what they wish to do - the liberal inevitably ends by reaching for the big stick with which to push the ungrateful masses around

Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Private-Sector Health Care Leads the Way
It is easy to criticize the US healthcare system, but we should be clear on one thing: it is not "free market" or "private" healthcare. A free market in healthcare would be more efficient and innovative, and offer better quality products and services, with lower prices than is currently the case.

Monday, December 1, 2008
Gun Control And Self-defense Against Terrorism In India
(2 comments) I live in India and I am a proud firearm owner -- but I am the exception not the norm, an odd situation in a country with a proud martial heritage and a long history of firearm innovation. This is not because the people of India are averse to gun ownership, but instead due to Draconian anti-gun legislation going back to colonial times.

Monday, December 1, 2008
Why Are Wages Low in Developing Countries?
(2 comments) Low wages in developing countries are among the many sins allegedly committed by global capitalism, but few of those making the charge really stop to think about why wages are so low in some developing countries.

Monday, December 1, 2008
Bush to receive first-ever International Medal of Peace
(19 comments) ROTFLMAO Maybe they'll try Gandhi for war crimes too! How much more Orwellian can they get?

Sunday, November 30, 2008
If Obama Doesn't Prosecute Bush's Torture Team, We'll Pay a Big Price Down the Road
Obama isn't likely to pursue torture atrocities during the Bush era, but this is one problem you simply can't wish away.

Saturday, November 29, 2008
A Return to Liberal Warmongering? Peace Advocates Must Continue the Battle
(1 comments) Despite a background as a community activist, conventional liberal stance in the Illinois state senate, extraordinarily liberal voting record in the US Senate, and celebrated anti-Iraq war position, as president-elect Obama has raced to the center. But he also has generated widespread fear that his foreign policy will turn into a slightly housebroken version of Bush-McCain neoconservatism.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Our First Thanksgiving
When the plentiful harvest of 1623 had been gathered in, the Pilgrims "set apart a day of thanksgiving." Governor Bradford adds, "Any general want or famine has not been among them since to this day."2 But what of the intervening years? After all, there were harvests gathered in in 1621 and 1622.

Monday, November 24, 2008
The New Deal Didn't Always Work, Either
People are looking back to the Great Depression and the New Deal for answers to our problems. But while we can learn important lessons from this period, they're not always the ones taught in school. The traditional story is that Roosevelt rescued capitalism by resorting to extensive government intervention; the truth is that Roosevelt changed course from year to year, trying a mix of policies, some good and some bad.

Saturday, November 22, 2008
And so begins the Obama betrayal.
(11 comments) You have to give Obama credit. He isn't even waiting to take the oath of office before he begins betraying the very people who elected him. Of course the Obamatrons worship the water he walks upon and won't admit they were taken for a ride by this con man.

Thursday, November 20, 2008
Jobarama: Obama's "Investment"
(7 comments) With all of the talk of how charismatic Barack Obama is, or of his oratory ability-and especially given his recent presidential victory-it is time to engage in a deeper economic critique of Obama's actual policies. Once we see the true effects of his policies and the incentives they create, we will see that his leadership skills and abilities make him more of a threat to freedom than if he were less articulate.

Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Myth of Good Government
(9 comments) One of the great and most persistent errors of classical liberals is to believe in "good government," a government that does "what it is supposed to do." There is nothing the state can do, which society needs done, that cannot be done far better by the market. Another point that is just as telling: no state empowered to do what is supposedly necessary will restrain itself to those things. It will expand as much as it can.

Saturday, November 15, 2008
Why would a Black president want slavery?
(2 comments) Why oh why would the first black president of America allow, and perhaps even encourage, yet another form of slavery in our nation? Has Barack Obama forgotten the African-American side of his own heritage? Doesn't he know that compulsory community service is just slavery by a different name?

Thursday, November 13, 2008
Treasury Shifts Bailout Gears Again
(1 comments) "The Treasury Department on Wednesday officially abandoned the original strategy behind its $700 billion effort to rescue the financial system, as administration officials acknowledged that banks and financial institutions were as unwilling as ever to lend to consumers." (New York Times, Thursday)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Good Bye Neoconservatives. Hello to Their Liberal Brethren?
(2 comments) Even after Obama takes power, an evil foreign policy ghoul will still hover over the White House-this time wearing the benign clothes of a compassionate angel. Obama's top foreign policy advisors include Susan Rice, a member of the "muscular liberal" crowd-you know, the same crew that includes the bombing progressives Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Consumers Don\'t Cause Recessions
(1 comments) There's one saving grace about Paul Krugman's column at the New York Times: when an Austrian economist wants to explain how mainstream economics leads to ruin, he can always trust Krugman to set up the target in a clear, concise manner. This saves us a lot of work, because we don't have to first build up the position before knocking it down.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008
No Hope for Change This Veterans Day
Our next president, Obama, I believe will do nothing of significance. His foreign policy, packaged in a more sanitized smooth style, will not bring peace or prosperity to America or the world. It will continue the brutality. It will be a policy of war continued with our forces in Iraq for years, and warmongering in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Monday, November 10, 2008
Tax Change for Banks Went Unnoticed
(1 comments) "The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention. Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Worse Than Bush?
(2 comments) America's foreign policy cries out for drastic change, but it remains uncertain whether president-elect Obama will bring the right kind of change. Many of his foreign-policy positions are sketchy, and in those cases where he has provided details, there are as many reasons for uneasiness and skepticism as there are for hope and confidence.

Saturday, November 8, 2008
Obama faces early test in Iraq
Iraq will serve as an early test of Obama's skill in weighing options and measuring risks. The next few months should give an indication whether he can end the Iraq war without risking new violence that could threaten U.S. interests throughout the Middle East. If things don't go well he'll have to decide whether to slow the U.S. departure despite his promise to remove American combat troops within his first 16 months

Saturday, November 8, 2008
The American People Render Their Electoral Judgment: Time to Finish Off the Neoconservatives
(2 comments) The neoconservative dream lies in ruins. John McCain was solidly defeated, Democrats picked up Senate and House seats for the second congressional election in a row, and GOP losses extended to the state and local levels. The Republican Party brand stands for big government, needless war, wasteful overspending, corporate bail-outs, executive abuses, and economic failure. Why would any sane citizen vote for the GOP?

Friday, November 7, 2008
Humility or Hubris?
All the good will and all the unity in the world won't change the laws that make these things happen. Government might try to overcome the "recalcitrant" market by issuing more and wider decrees and by firmly demanding compliance. But it would be for naught. We've seen this sort of thing fail time after time in systems no American would want to embrace.

Thursday, November 6, 2008
Barriers Broken?
Why should politics be the standard for what constitutes a barrier or a barrier broken? The ability of individuals in a group to navigate the murky and treacherous waters of electoral politics has no necessary connection to the status of the group as a whole. A much better indicator concerning the status of any group – racial, religious, sexual, or otherwise – is commerce, which is the real engine that makes society work.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008
A Mandate to End the War
Let's be clear about the nature and meaning of the mandate we're going to be hearing so much about: President-elect Barack Obama has a clear mandate to end the Iraq war as expeditiously as possible. Obama arrived at this moment not only on the strength of his pledge to end the present war, but also the implicit promise to refrain from involving us in any further hostilities.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Socialism of Public Schooling
(1 comments) While the nation is on the subject of socialism, we really ought to talk about public schooling. With the possible exception of the military, it's the best example of a socialist institution one could ever find. It's not a coincidence that public schooling is one of Fidel Castro's favorite government programs. Like the military, public schooling operates in a top-down, command-and-control manner.

Sunday, November 2, 2008
The New Technology of Repression
In its final months, the Bush administration is pressing ahead with a new generation of spy technology designed to strengthen the U.S. military's ability to detect and eliminate suspected insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere based on computer analyzes of their movements and activities. Scary stuff.

Friday, October 31, 2008
America's Slow-Motion Fascist Coup
(1 comments) Lew Rockwell interviews Naomi Wolf. A real eye opener.

Friday, October 31, 2008
The Battle Over CA Prop 5: Special Interests Overwhelming the Public Interest
Jerry Brown, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, George Deukmejian, and Arnold Schwarzenegger coming together to oppose Prop 5, a common sense ballot initiative that seeks to effectively and intelligently tackle the chronic problems facing California's deeply flawed criminal justice system. California's prisons are a budget-busting debacle. There are currently more than 170,000 inmates crammed into prisons designed to hold 100,000.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Greenspan Shocked
(1 comments) Toward the end of his tenure as Fed chairman in early 2006, Alan Greenspan was the object of praise. The praise at times edged into adulation and came from some unlikely sources. Milton Friedman penned an encomium for Greenspan in the pages of the Wall Street Journal titled "The Greenspan Story: He Has Set a Standard."

Monday, October 27, 2008
Heat?
(3 comments) Dear FRONTLINE: Your 2-hour program broadcast on 21 Oct 08 called HEAT followed the script of the self-appointed priests of global warming exactly. There was no attempt at balance. Those who might have provided it were marginalized as "Deniers" with no names and were accused by innuendo of being paid by the fuel industry. A Canadian reporter discovered that many "Deniers" were highly qualified scientists

Sunday, October 26, 2008
A Gigantic Armed Robbery
Amid the astonishing details of the Fed's fierce money pumping, the Treasury's partial nationalization of the banking industry, and the madcap exchange of its legal tender for the banks' rotten mortgage-backed securities, we may lose sight of the overall character of these actions: they are, in effect, nothing short of a gigantic armed robbery.

Saturday, October 25, 2008
Does it matter who we elect president?
(10 comments) Even a person who has only a casual interest in politics has probably heard a political pundit on television say that, "This is the most important presidential election in our lifetime." But for most Americans, this year's presidential election is meaningless. The end result will be that our government will, for all practical purposes, remain the same.

Saturday, October 25, 2008
Michael Moore, Your Heart Is in the Right Place
(8 comments) As a fan of many of Michael Moore's films and projects, I now see them in a new perspective since I began my studies in Austrian economic theory. I believe that laissez-faire capitalism and democratic socialism have a similar goal, but a different means of achieving it, with the former being the only real way to realize the goal. I write this open letter hoping to educate him and his fans on some basic economic facts.

Friday, October 24, 2008
Who Needs Evidence?
(2 comments) According to Weisberg, editor in chief of Slate, the financial turmoil taking place worldwide is the fault of . . . libertarians. That must mean libertarians have been in a position to repeal generations of deep-seated government intervention in the financial and related industries, including the Federal Reserve system. And that would have taken a long time. Yet I don't recall reading that a libertarian revolution occurred.

Thursday, October 23, 2008
Is Laissez Faire Responsible for the Financial Crisis?
(4 comments) The news media are in the process of creating a great new historical myth. This is the myth that our present financial crisis is the result of economic freedom and laissez-faire capitalism.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008
A Move towards Market Socialism
(3 comments) Karl Marx proposed "centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly." Years later, so-called "market socialists" like Oscar Lange, Abba Lerner, and H.D. Dickinson proposed state control over credit and financial capital.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The End of Libertarianism and Other Adventures in Financial Policy Fantasy: Don\'t blame free markets for the current pa
(1 comments) Libertarian policies have failed so miserably, he concludes, that it is time to toss libertarianism, like Soviet communism, on the trash bin of history. Excuse me? Are you serious, Jacob? Whatever one's views of libertarian policies, the incontrovertible fact is that the U.S. has not pursued such policies. Not in the past 10 years. Not in the past century.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Boston Tea Party II
Forbes is endorsing the ballot initiative abolishing of the Massachusetts income tax, "The Massachusetts political establishment is horrified--voters might actually pass a proposition abolishing the state income tax."

Tuesday, October 21, 2008
More Than a Two-Person Race
While the major-party race for the White House has been the subject of broad media attention for more than a year, the corporate media have mostly ignored at least four substantial third-party and independent candidates for the presidency.

Monday, October 20, 2008
Blaming Liberty for the State's Depredations
Whenever government failure destroys lives and wealth, we can easily become frustrated as we see the crisis blamed on freedom itself. Gun control fails to stop a massacre, and the freedom to own guns is attacked. Destructive intervention follows destructive intervention, always in the name of erasing whatever allegedly dysfunctional liberty remains.

Monday, October 20, 2008
FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate
(2 comments) Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

Friday, October 17, 2008
Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize
(3 comments) On Monday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is Princeton University economist Paul Krugman. Krugman, probably the best known economist under the age of 60, is known to the public mainly for his regular column in the New York Times. Yet those columns do not do justice to the extent of his economic knowledge and understanding.

Friday, October 17, 2008
An Echo, Not a Choice
Both major presidential candidates support the taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. They are just arguing over how to do it. If anyone hoped the presidential campaign would be a debate about political philosophy, the role of government, and such things - forget it. This is a debate over which man - John McCain or Barack Obama - should be given virtually unlimited power to run our lives.

Thursday, October 16, 2008
Beyond Municipal Wireless
The harsh daylight of fiscal reality has rudely awakened city administrators across the country to the unfeasibility of funding or partnering in citywide consumer wireless-broadband services. Over the past year, city after city has retreated from large-scale municipal wireless projects. Most, including Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Anchorage, Alaska, backed away before committing any substantial funds or city assets.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Fascism: Socialism With Shareholders
(4 comments) An irreverent look at our financial troubles and the different views of them.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Where Was the Constitution in the Bailout Debate?
Debate over the Bail Out covered many subjects: executive compensation, the global economy, markets v. government planning, the importance of home ownership, etc. Strangely missing from the debate was any meaningful discussion of the constitutionality of the Bail Out. Whence does Congress derive the authority to give the Secretary of the Treasury the power to purchase and manage billions of dollars worth of private assets?

Friday, October 10, 2008
Why I am not a conservative
I don't mind saying that I can work with conservatives on common causes. I don't mind saying that I have met, gotten to know, and worked with some racists. I am exceedingly uncomfortable with people who are racist, sexist, religious bigots, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, or homophobic. But I can work while uncomfortable.

Thursday, October 9, 2008
Regulators Cannot Avert Next Crisis
Why is it that regulation doesn't stop crises from happening again? No matter what pundits say, we are nowhere near a laissez-faire situation. Look no further than the US federal institutions in Washington, DC, and we find 12,113 individuals working full time to regulate the financial markets. What did they do with the powers they had? Made mistakes.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Fed Lowers Interest-Rate Target
(2 comments) The U.S. Federal Reserve led a coordinated round of global official rate cuts on Wednesday, easing by a half-point, as did the European Central Bank, Bank of England and Swiss, Canadian and Swedish banks.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Iceland teeters on the brink of bankruptcy
This volcanic island near the Arctic Circle is on the brink of becoming the first "national bankruptcy" of the global financial meltdown. Home to just 320,000 people on a territory the size of Kentucky, Iceland has formidable international reach because of an outsized banking sector that set out with Viking confidence to conquer swaths of the British economy - from fashion retailers to top soccer teams.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Anatomy of a Train Wreck: Causes of the Mortgage Meltdown
Sloppy press coverage about the financial crisis has spawned a host of widely believed myths. Take, for example, one of the popular names for it--the subprime mortgage meltdown. This is a misnomer: houses financed by subprime and prime mortgages were foreclosed upon at equal rates and at the same time. Instead, the crucial distinction is between adjustable-rate mortgages and fixed-rate mortgages

Friday, October 3, 2008
Avoid Flu Shots, Take Vitamin D Instead
(7 comments) The benefits of flu shots are exaggerated while the dangers are ignored. More studies are needed on the ability of vitamin D to prevent influenza and other diseases.

Thursday, October 2, 2008
Two-Party Debates
(1 comments) Commission on Presidential Debates is a largely secretive tax-exempt organization, created and run by former chairmen of the two major parties, funded by a small group of unidentified major donors, and designed, it seems, to exclude nearly all third-party candidates.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008
An Open Letter to my Friends on the Left
In the last week or two, I have heard frequently from you that the current financial mess has been caused by the failures of free markets and deregulation. I have heard from you that the lust after profits, any profits, that is central to free markets is at the core of our problems. And I have heard from you that only significant government intervention into financial markets can cure these problems, perhaps once and for all.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Democracy's Debunking
From the department of "No Great Loss Without Some Small Gain": perhaps Leviathan's $700-billion bail-out and nationalization of the economy will finally awaken Americans to the fact that we live in a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Hyperinflation?
Lew Rockwell interviews professor of economics J�rg Guido H�lsmann. They cover subjects including the possibility of hyperinflation, the spreading of the financial crisis to Europe or China, and the establishment of a world central bank. Scary stuff!

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Not So Fast!
Our friends in Washington have blessed us with future burdens almost too astronomical to comprehend. In the name of taking care of us in our old age, we are saddled with no less than $6 trillion in Social Security payouts over the next 75 years for which there are no presently-earmarked funding streams. The unfunded obligations for the new federal prescription drug program total another $8 trillion.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The Rescue Package Will Delay Recovery
It is true that the financial system must be rescued; it must be rescued from the institutions holding bad debt that are currently draining capital while waiting for a bailout and adding little in return. It is they that are preventing wealth-generating activities in the financial sector and the other parts of the economy from expanding real wealth.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The Great Bank Robbery of 2008
The Paulson bailout failed in the House. If it isn't a death blow to the plan, it should be. This is not an economic plan: it is a heist. It will go down as The Great Bank Robbery of 2008. The economics behind it are nonsense, but we are na�ve if we spend much time even considering the "arguments" for it. This is a money and power grab, pure and simple.

Saturday, September 27, 2008
Blaming the Victim: The Free Market
The economy is in a recession. The bugaboo word, "depression," is at last being used by high-level officials, economists, and talking heads on TV. This is the first time in my lifetime that people of influence have used the word, except in this sentence: "A depression is no longer possible because of central bank policy and government regulation."

Saturday, September 27, 2008
Barr Gets Smacked Down
(3 comments) The Texas Supreme Court makes a decision about Obama and McCain's right to be on the ballot after missing the deadline.

Friday, September 26, 2008
Bush the Socialist and Destroyer
Anyone who has read a good economics book would be quickly reduced to laughter and tears by George Bush's ridiculous economic address to the nation. He put on his 9-11 suit and tried to warn Americans about the impending disaster: that their access to an infinite stream of paper money might be imperiled if they don't cough up hundreds of billions immediately. It is very tempting to go line by line and shout back.

Monday, September 22, 2008
In Defense of Capitalism
(1 comments) The economy of the United States is not a pure capitalist system. We operate economically under what economists like to call a "mixed system". This is a system that combines elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy.

Monday, September 22, 2008
"Free Market" Reforms and the Reduction of Statism
(3 comments) When the state is controlled by "legal plunderers" every decision for or against state intervention reflects their strategic assessment of the ideal mixture of intervention and non-intervention. If the corporate representatives in government are proposing a particular "free market reform," you can bet your bottom dollar it's because they believe it will increase the net political extraction of wealth.

Monday, September 22, 2008
The Government Is Not Promoting Stability
Why the government's ban on shorting stocks is wrong and other dictatorial bumbling in DC.

Saturday, September 20, 2008
Venezuela Expels Two Rights Activists
(3 comments) Armed agents in Venezuela detained and deported two officials from Human Rights Watch just hours after the New York-based group issued a report critical of the country's socialist government, the activists said Friday.

Friday, September 19, 2008
Liberation by Internet
As a decentralized communication system facilitating the sending and receiving of messages by billions of people, the Internet has greatly shifted the balance of power away from governments and toward sovereign individuals. Even in its early days, the Internet played a vital role in bringing about the downfall of the Soviet Union's government.

Thursday, September 18, 2008
U.S. Government Goes Crazy
(1 comments) Lew Rockwell is horrified by the latest Government machinations in the Markets. While progressives may not agree with his solutions, his insight into the nature of the problem most will like. *audio*

Thursday, September 18, 2008
What's Behind the Financial Market Crisis?
The financial crisis is not over. Neither tax rebates nor low interest rates nor higher or lower exchange rates can do the job of reviving an economy that is burdened by debt loads that are too high. On the contrary: the policy measures that the US authorities have been applying will prolong the agony. Be prepared for the challenges of extended financial turmoil and economic stagnation.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Pro-Lifers for Murder
(4 comments) There are people who spend their time arguing that being "pro-life" this year means voting for an obtuse ignoramus who thinks it's a laugh riot to sing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." A savage who jokes gleefully about the inevitable creation of widows and orphans – that's the person the official pro-life movement wants as its public face for four years.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Big Brother Is Watching as He's Never Watched Before
(1 comments) The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has installed millimeter-wave scanners at checkpoints in about a dozen airports nationwide. It's threatening to inflict these gizmos on every commercial concourse in the country. Millimeter waves bombard passengers with beams that penetrate clothing to show the body beneath. Victims don't undress: the rays do it for them

Friday, September 12, 2008
The American Empire is Another Bubble
Today we see the symptoms of a worldwide central-bank-generated credit bubble and its oncoming collapse. What increasingly characterizes the global financial order is an arrangement where regulators encourage a "heads I win, tails everyone else loses" mentality, backstopped by the willingness of quasi-governmental entities to print and borrow money without bound.

Friday, September 12, 2008
U.S. sanctions Chavez aides in growing crisis
The United States escalated a major diplomatic crisis with Venezuela on Friday, imposing sanctions on aides to President Hugo Chavez in retaliation for his expulsion of the U.S. ambassador. The crisis and Chavez's threat to cut off oil shipments to the United States sent debt tumbling in the OPEC nation and plunged relations between the superpower and one of its top energy suppliers to their lowest point in years.

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Stop the Bailout
The Great Depression was a crisis manufactured and prolonged by the attempts to stop an inevitable downturn. What might have lasted a year to 18 months instead lasted 16 years. We're making the same mistakes today. The bailouts will only make things worse.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Palin, Politics, Family Values, Priorities & Compromise - Are you, too, part of the problem?
(1 comments) To align oneself with the machinery of oppression is to assume responsibility for its results. Do not delude yourself. No matter how you may rationalize or minimize your contribution to the big picture of government tyranny - nonetheless you've chosen to be part of it. Though you may tell yourself that by being part of it you can make it better, you are wrong. Your very presence within a corrupt system strengthens it.

Monday, September 8, 2008
Fannie and Freddie's government "˜takeover' "" truth in advertising at long last
There are many words - and most them not nice - to describe the new government conservatorship and planned bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But "nationalization" and "end of the free market" are not accurately among them. Fannie and Freddie can't really be nationalized, because they were never really private in the first place.

Friday, September 5, 2008
Secret Service confiscates books & button from Ron Paul delegates
Today at the Republican National Convention, as the Ron Paul Delegates were taking a picture in front of the model White House inside the Convention Center, they were surrounded by Secret Service which proceeded to search the bags of all the delegates. They took any and everything related to Ron Paul including signs, buttons, videos, slim jims, cards, even books. The police state has arrived.

Thursday, September 4, 2008
More Awful Truths About Republicans
As the economic debacle facing Americans continues to materialize, those responsible are running for cover with ten Republican senators refusing to attend their own national convention. Four years ago we observed that the so-called "Republican philosophy" of small government, sound money, and balanced budgets was illusory in terms of the history and then-current policies of the Republican Party.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The Calamity of Bush's Conservatism
Sometimes people say that Americans are cynical about politics. Looking at the way the Bush administration has used and abused its power for the last eight years, is it really surprising? You would have to be sedated not to be cynical.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Palin "Reeks of Local" -- The Dumb, Dumb Demonrats
Elitism and condescension are costing that party dearly. Agree or not this is a take on Democrats that Democrats should take to heart. It may be why they loose an election this year that they should have won. Time will tell.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Sarah Palin's Career Ends in Tragedy
(1 comments) If elected, Sarah Palin will have to give up all principles to keep her job.

Monday, September 1, 2008
Sarah Palin as Stalking Horse
With the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has impressed many as making a savvy political maneuver. McCain has not had much appeal to pro-lifers, gun rights advocates or fiscal conservatives. Sarah Palin looks to be much more appealing to those voters. So this VP pick may serve McCain's campaign for the presidency well.

Saturday, August 30, 2008
When Desertion Is a Duty
There is nothing criminal about refusing to honor a supposed commitment to serve as contract killers for the world's largest source of preventable criminal violence.

Friday, August 29, 2008
The Bastiat Solution
(2 comments) The election season, which -- sigh -- is only just beginning, makes me want to reread Frederic Bastiat's The Law. It is the best antidote for the toxic demagoguery that issues forth from across the political spectrum. While the candidates are busy outcompeting one another in proposing new ways to spend our money (while promising to cut taxes), I take refuge in Bastiat's sound philosophy. Where is he when we need him?

Friday, August 29, 2008
Why Did You Sell Your Soul?
(18 comments) Dennis Kucinich, you went to your convention, and sold your soul. You spoke eagerly, energetically, in support of a man whose positions you don't share, and who hasn't an ounce of your courage. You criticized the war in Iraq, but neglected to mention that the man you were endorsing has no intentions of cutting back our warfare state – that he complains that Bush hasn't sent enough troops to Afghanistan.

Thursday, August 28, 2008
Federal Attitude Policy
The Transportation Security Administration has created more gantlets at American airports than most travelers realize. It has continually changed the rules for flying since it first deployed its 40,000+ army of screeners across the land. Americans are at much greater risk of being arrested or fined in the airport for not kowtowing to federal agents.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Media Blackout: The Armada in the Gulf
(2 comments) The most important news for the month of August was the fact that President Bush has quietly sent the largest armada into the Persian Gulf since the Iraq war began in 2003, when there were six carrier groups. This is a huge number of ships to be concentrated in one location in peacetime. This story has been completely ignored by the news media all over the West. The only coverage is from special-interest websites.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Joe Biden and the political establishment's overriding goal
The political establishment has been demanding of Obama more and more proof that his "change" rhetoric is just that -- rhetoric, and not anything meant as a genuine threat to the prevailing order of things. Obama, arguably out of political necessity, has repeatedly obliged, eagerly trying to offer proof that he is no threat to them, and the Biden selection is but the latest step in that campaign of reassurance.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Social Security Increases Poverty
(69 comments) One of the most common arguments supporting Social Security is that it reduces poverty among the elderly. Last week, Barack Obama stated that, "Social Security has lifted millions of seniors and their families out of poverty. Without it, nearly 50 percent of seniors would live below the poverty line." This is almost certainly untrue.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The Biden Betrayal
(2 comments) Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Obama's selection of Biden as his running mate constitutes a betrayal of the antiwar constituency who made possible his hard-fought victory in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. The veteran Delaware senator has been one the leading congressional supporters of U.S. militarization of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, of strict economic sanctions against Cuba.

Sunday, August 24, 2008
The End Does Not Justify The Means
In the many issues facing society, a common rationalization for committing wrong, immoral, unjust or unethical acts is that if the greater good is served the relative harm necessary to gain such a supposed good is justified. In essence, people say doing bad can result in good, thus they assert bad becomes good. This has become commonly accepted in politics (as well as within people's personal and business lives).

Saturday, August 23, 2008
Socialism and Medicine, Part 2
(1 comments) Dispelling the myth of free market health care in the US, and explaining the downside of socialized medicine abroad is what this article does. The author covers all this while thoroughly explaining the economics behind it with clear easy to understand language.

Thursday, August 21, 2008
I Resign From the Mont Pelerin Society
I have come to the conclusion that the Mont Pelerin Society is no longer an effective force for freedom, becoming instead another tool in behalf of US hegemony, ringing Russia with US military bases and puppet governments in the name of "supporting democracy." As far as I am aware, the MPS has not addressed the Bush administration's assault on US civil liberties

Thursday, August 21, 2008
Why we love 'America's Outrageous War Economy'
Yes, America's economy is a war economy. Not a "manufacturing" economy. Not an "agricultural" economy. Nor a "service" economy. Not even a "consumer" economy.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Anti-immigrant hatred breeds discrimination, mistreatment, harassment and death
(9 comments) Remember when others worldwide regarded our nation as a beacon of light, a place where those persecuted could come to seek a better life, free from religious and ethnic persecution? Remember when you, perhaps, regarded our nation in that way? "The Mother of Exiles," as Emma Lazarus' The New Colossus called her, was how America was viewed by those seeking a better life. Yet such a warm welcome has not awaited many.

Monday, August 18, 2008
BATFE: Any Semi-Auto Can Be A Machine Gun
(7 comments) Gun control, like the war on drugs, pushes us even deeper into a dictatorship. The Olofson case is a prime example of the lawlessness that gun control fosters. An innocent man is in prison because of evidence fabricated by the government and upheld by the courts. This isn't freedom.

Monday, August 18, 2008
President Musharraf of Pakistan Resigns
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation is an important development with unpredictable implications. Those people who hope that Pakistan's turbulent politics will disappear along with Musharraf are likely to be disappointed. Pakistan's political class has been a revolving door of military and civilian leaders for most of its 60-year history.

Monday, August 18, 2008
GOP leader seeks to push Barr off Pa. ballot
The Republicans are up to their usual dirty tricks here in Pennsylvania. Trying to get the Libertarian Party thrown off the ballot for doing things the way the law requires and how its always been done.

Sunday, August 17, 2008
The War on Terrorism Brings Mass Surveillance "" In Sweden
(2 comments) On June 18 a new law was passed in Sweden granting the national defense's civilian agency National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) the right to collect and analyze all communication data that in some way passes the borders of the Kingdom of Sweden.

Saturday, August 16, 2008
On Thin Ice
Is Bush trying to provoke an incident with Russia by sending military humanitarian flights into Georgia? The author thinks the US government wants to at least establish a military presence there. A dangerous proposition to say the least.

Friday, August 15, 2008
US inflation fastest since 1991
(1 comments) US prices rose by 5.6% in the year to July, the fastest inflation rate for more than 17 years, figures show. The rate of inflation was much greater than economists had predicted, driven higher by the 30% increase in energy prices during the period. Food costs were 6% higher than a year earlier, the figures showed.

Friday, August 15, 2008
Ancient Saharan Cemetery Reveals Lost History
(1 comments) A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert. The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, 1,000 years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Lobby Like No Other Wants a War Like No Other
(2 comments) Having watched John McCain and Barack Obama resolutely pledge their allegiance – and their countrymen's lives and treasure – to the defense of Israel via AIPAC, the media, and personal meetings with Israeli leaders, it is worth asking what could possibly drive these men to so ardently commit America to participation in other people's religious wars.

Thursday, August 14, 2008
Neo-Con Hypocrisy on Georgia and Iraq
Amidst the death and destruction in Georgia, the neo-conservative reaction here in the United States is a sight to behold. Aggression, the neo-cons are screaming. The Russians are waging an unprovoked war of aggression, they're exclaiming. This is unacceptable, they're declaring. Something must be done, they're saying. Where were all those terms when the U.S. government attacked Iraq, a country that had never attacked the US

Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Minimum-Wage Terror
(18 comments) You're making $5.85 an hour and that's good enough for now. Then along comes Congress. As the fair, caring, sensitive, compassionate, progressive, and socially responsible Congresscrats do periodically, they to help poor little ol' you by ramming through the Fair, Caring, Sensitive, Compassionate, Progressive & Socially Responsible Minimum Wage Act.

Thursday, August 14, 2008
Venezuela to allow 100% home loans
(3 comments) While the US subprime crisis has left many bankers shivering at the consequences of generous mortgage financing, a new law in Venezuela now allows banks to offer 100 per cent loans to homebuyers. Analysts say that the law, part of a package of 26 presidential decrees passed by Hugo Ch�vez last week that has generated widespread controversy, is aimed at solving a deepening housing crisis

Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Olympic Games
The quadrennial, modern, international, multi-sport event (as with world soccer) has long been an exercise in rabid nationalism in which the world's nation states (200 participating this year) vie to determine which is the "superior." My own view is that for the games to be at all meaningful, any private athlete and team from anywhere should be allowed to enter the trials with the then best athletes meeting at the final games

Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Candidates for Sale
What a surprise, the politicians are taking bribes...I mean campaign contributions.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Obama World Tour 2008
Obama knows he's going to be running - and, he hopes, expanding - a worldwide empire if he is elected. He just wants to get a head start on it now and is counting on a fawning press corps to treat his tour of the satrapies as an opportunity for his intellectual advancement, preparing him to fill the shoes of the many supposedly wise, altruistic Caesars who have gone before him in Washington.

Sunday, August 10, 2008
Taxation as Vandalism
(6 comments) This is the crime of the state. Pragmatically, taxation is the enemy of innovation, the broken window in the general store. Philosophically, taxation is the moral--and universalized, or at least nationalized--equivalent of the sheriff's vandalism. The state feels, in the service of the public, that it must violate the property of some for the benefit of others.

Saturday, August 9, 2008
P.G. County Police: Overkill as the Default Setting
(1 comments) Prince George's County officers, it should come as no surprise, then, that authorities didn't even have a "no-knock" warrant when they raided Cheye Calvo's house, despite claims to the contrary by department spokesmen at the time of the incident. That's right; not only was the assault on the mayor's house immoral, it was also illegal.

Friday, August 8, 2008
The Struggle Over Egalitarianism Continues
In the two decades since this essay was written, the major social trends I analyzed have accelerated, seemingly at an exponential rate. The flight away from socialism and central planning begun in Yugoslavia has stunningly succeeded over the entire "socialist bloc" of Eastern Europe, and there is now at least rhetorical allegiance to the idea of privatization and a free-market economy.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008
US interest rates left unchanged
The US Federal Reserve has kept its key interest rate unchanged at 2% as it grapples with the twin dangers of possible recession and high inflation. Can you say stagflation? Maybe they'll bring back Disco and polyester too.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
China's One-Child Disaster
(1 comments) On February 28 a Reuters news story quoted Zhao Baige, the Chinese vice minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC), as indicating that the People's Republic of China might change its "one-child policy." That population-control policy limits the number of children Chinese couples are legally permitted to have.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
American Foreign Policy Brought to You by China: Advisers to Obama, McCain Tied to US Multinationals that Profit from Be
An interview with Ken Silverstein, of Harper's Magazine, who says many of the bipartisan experts who have advocated so-called "constructive engagement" with China are tied to major US multinational corporations that profit heavily from the Chinese market.

Sunday, August 3, 2008
Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism
(13 comments) Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code - socialist code.

Saturday, August 2, 2008
The Arrogance of Greenspan
Whatever the outcome of any extended inquiry into this question, it is clear that practitioners of the political manipulation of humanity are eager to intervene in the lives of others often on the basis of the skimpiest of evidence, and always without an awareness of the interconnected nature of events and other influences that make the prediction of outcomes impossible.

Friday, August 1, 2008
Radio Debate with a Socialist (& photos from Venezuela)
(1 comments) A libertarian who participated in a debate with a socialist reviews the event. Illustrated with pictures of scenes in Caracas, Venezuela.

Friday, August 1, 2008
The Role of the Constitution in the Current Debate on "National Health Care"
(5 comments) It appears we as a nation are going to succumb to an endless barrage of propaganda on how we are somehow "entitled" to some form of "free" medical care. How does the Constitution speak to this subject? First of all, it is quite clear there is no specific enumeration of powers given to the federal government to be involved in health care. This is also true of such subjects as agriculture, energy policy, and education.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Environmentalists, businesses reach compromise
Governmental inaction is prompting environmental groups and big business to cut unprecedented deals to promote energy exploration and other development in return for major conservation initiatives. Experts say the move to private agreements reflects a loss of faith in the government's ability to handle some of the USA's most pressing environmental disputes.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Al Gore's Curiously Cost-Free Plan to Re-Power America
(6 comments) Of course, great-souled visionaries such as Gore do not concern themselves with piddling and mundane issues such as who will pay for this marvelous no-carbon energy future and how much it will cost. Not being burdened with a great soul, I decided to don my green eyeshade and make a preliminary stab at figuring out how much Gore's scheme might cost us.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Winter Soldiering Against the State by Karen Kwiatkowski
There is another war being fought today, but it's not in Iraq, and it has nothing to do with the three legged race team of Obama/McCain. This war is being waged here at home, every day, by the state-corporate machine against the individual and against freedom. It is a war that was overtly won by the state in the 20th century, a war it continues to aggressively wage for persistent American-style fascism...

Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Did the Surge Work?
Using logic, if the U.S. troop surge had been the cause of the diminished violence, then why did the mayhem go up in 2005 when the United States undertook a troop surge of similar magnitude? Moreover, because little true political reconciliation has occurred in Iraq since the surge began, if the additional troops were the cause of the new tranquility, that calm should be evaporating now that U.S. forces are being reduced...

Monday, July 28, 2008
Your Tax Dollars at Work
We should look at the potentially seen costs of the State, if only because the State doesn't want us to see those. These are the direct destructions caused by some State activity, most especially war. Seeing war in photographs changes things. It causes us to observe the State's war and what it is doing to people: us and them. This is why the State doesn't want pictures of US wounded or dead circulating in public.

Thursday, July 24, 2008
What Every American Should Know About Single-Payer H.R. 676
(4 comments) While well-intentioned people are pushing for single-payer health care in the U.S., it's important to view the plan from the perspective of patients' choice and providers' freedom. Here are some serious consequences that would result from enactment of H.R. 676, the "United States National Health Insurance Act"

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
A Million Terrorists?
Earlier this month the federal government added the millionth name to its "Terrorism Watch List" - and it may have been yours. Comprising just 16 names on September 11, 2001, this modern blacklist now functions as a catchall and cover for federal intelligence agencies. Since no one wants to be accused of overlooking a terrorist, bureaucrats have added names over the last seven years, to the tune of 20,000 a month

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Should Oil Executives Be Strung Up?
The oil industry is everybody's favorite whipping boy, and indeed it is tempting to criticize them for their acceptance of past government largesse. However, the lion's share of criticism of the oil companies consists not of criticism of their violations of libertarian principles but of their status as exemplars of the alleged excesses of free market capitalism.

Friday, July 18, 2008
Spying uncovered
Undercover Maryland State Police officers repeatedly spied on peace activists and anti-death penalty groups in recent years and entered the names of some in a law-enforcement database of people thought to be terrorists or drug traffickers, newly released documents show.

Thursday, July 17, 2008
Notes on the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Bailout
Here's a general rule for you amateur political economists: whenever the government justifies a policy on the grounds that it must "stabilize" something (e.g., stabilize the Middle East, stabilize Iraq, stabilize Afghanistan, stabilize the commodity markets, stabilize the financial markets, stabilize the macro economy, etc.), immediately conclude that it is up to no good and hold on to your wallet.

Thursday, July 17, 2008
Mission Not Accomplished
(3 comments) For years, supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have touted his social programs known as "missions" as a model of social justice. But this narrative is a myth, according to a comprehensive study by the Latin American Institute of Social Research. The authors, Yolanda D'Elia and Luis Francisco Cabezas, are not ideological adversaries of Chavez's government.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
'Have Nothing To Do With Conquest'
When we celebrated Independence Day eight days ago, no party leader had the moral courage to tell Americans the truth, which is that in the last 50 years both parties have eviscerated our independence in regard to the single most important foreign policy issue – that is, the decision on whether or not to go to war.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Shoot-Down of Iran Air Flight 655
The shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the cruiser U.S.S. Vincennes marked the end of an eight-year-war between Iran and Iraq, a war that in all probability started with the help of the US government and was certainly prolonged by the US and Israel as part of the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Near Insanity at the Federal Reserve
(1 comments) There is no shortage of explanations for our current difficulties. Some commentators say it's all due to hedge fund "speculators" or the OPEC cartel or the spendthrift congress or Big Oil. Actually, the root cause of the inflationary recession is far more straightforward and far closer to home. The fundamental culprit is the U. S. Federal Reserve System and the near insane monetary policy it has had since 2001.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Time for comrade Paulson to pull the plug on the Fannie and Freddie charade
Are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac adequately capitalised, as asserted recently by US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and their regulator Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Director James B. Lockhart III? The answer is: obviously not, if these two government-sponsored enterprises of the US federal government had to make a living on normal private commercial terms.

Saturday, July 12, 2008
Fannie, Freddie, Fascist
(8 comments) President Bush is considering a fateful step in a 60-year-old problem: the nationalization of these mortgage companies. He wants to guarantee the $5 trillion (that's trillion with a "t") in debt owned by these companies. Another option would be to put these monstrosities under "conservatorship," which means that you and I will pay for their losses directly.

Saturday, July 12, 2008
US military tries to influence Hollywood's take on war
US Army Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale used to be stationed in Iraq. Now he wages his battle from the confines of a Los Angeles office. His frontline? The studios and film sets of Hollywood. Breasseale is part of a Pentagon offensive to help shape Tinseltown's take on war and the armed forces, a stance often seen by the military as relentlessly negative, one-sided and ill-informed.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Blame Taxes for Baltimore's Rot
Baltimore deserves the Third-World profile it has developed because it has expanses of crumbling, crime-riddled neighborhoods populated by low-income renters, an absent middle class, and just a few enclaves of high-income gentry near the Inner Harbor or in suburbs. This wasn't what Baltimore looked like in the 1950s.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Where the Fight is Truly the Most Fierce
...people such as Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rove, Hayden, Mueller and the rest of the gang, in my opinion, have begun the most fierce fight - and it's not their convenient "War on Terror" - it's right here in America against Americans...

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Should the Government Kill Its Own Citizens?
If the government is allowed to kill criminals, no matter what heinous crimes they have committed, then the precedent can always be expanded to kill law-abiding citizens for political reasons. Governments are especially prone to do this when they are fighting wars-reacting to paranoia that the enemy is everywhere.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Supreme Court Affirms Individual Right: What's Next?
(2 comments) Banning handguns not only fails to stop violent criminals from committing crimes, but also denies law-abiding adults a critical means of self-defense. Despite the false claims of anti-gun advocates that most murderers are not hardened criminals but rather others who use guns in moments of ungovernable anger, the proof is overwhelming that the vast majority of individuals who commit homicide are not first-time offenders.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The North Korea "Problem"?
All who think rationally and logically realize there is no actual state of national emergency regarding North Korea. I don't think very many Americans feel threatened by North Korea. After all, North Korean uranium enrichment activities, possession/development of nuclear weapons (crude nuclear devices), is relevant only to their region. But the continued imposition of sanctions hinders peaceful coexistence.

Sunday, June 29, 2008
Don't Invade Zimbabwe
(2 comments) The situation in Zimbabwe provides an excellent example of how U.S. foreign policy should operate all over the world.

Friday, June 27, 2008
Cooperation: How a Free Market Benefits Everyone
(11 comments) The following attempts to explain the most important idea in the history of social analysis. I speak of the division of labor, also known as the law of comparative advantage or the law of comparative cost, and also known as the law of association. Call it what you will, it is probably the single greatest contribution that economics has made to human understanding.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Barack Obama: The Peace Candidate?
..Bush sent an invasion force to Iraq and before Obama was in the Senate, he made a speech saying intervention would be a mistake. But after the invasion, in 2004, he said he wasn't sure how he would have voted when the resolution authorizing Bush to use force to overthrow Saddam Hussein came before the Senate. Since being in the Senate, he has voted to continue the occupation. ..doesn't sound much like a peace candidate..

Monday, June 23, 2008
Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol
(4 comments) Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry...

Saturday, June 21, 2008
Empire or Democracy: Are We Ready for the Fall?
Increasingly, parallels are being drawn between the Roman Empire and the current American Empire. Yet while some may look to Rome as an inspiration, others believe it casts a dark shadow over us and our supposedly imperial aspirations.

Saturday, June 21, 2008
Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol
(5 comments) Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum' To put it another way sometimes market based science, including bioengineering, actually has the answers to our problems.

Friday, June 20, 2008
Operation Enduring Pipeline
After debunking the war-for-freedom idea, the article offers a piercing perspective on the energy wars going on in southern Asia.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The March to Folly on the Afghan Border
The killing of 11 Pakistani soldiers by US air strikes last week showed that the American-led war in Afghanistan is relentlessly spreading into Pakistan, one of America's oldest, most faithful allies.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Real War Facing Our Nation
While it might be tempting to blame George W. Bush for the last 7 years of darkness, tyranny, and oppression in America, such would be a big mistake. The notion that simply electing a new president, McCain or Obama, will resolve America's woes is hopelessly na�ve. The problem is a systemic one, not one of electing "better" people to public office.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Manufacturing Difference Between McCain and Bush
(4 comments) In a front-page article headlined "Is McCain Like Bush? It Depends on the Issue," the New York Times (6/17/08) managed to locate "striking differences" between Sen. John McCain and George W. Bush on several issues-in spite of contradictory evidence reported in the very same article about the two politicians' overwhelming similarities on these very issues.

Monday, June 16, 2008
The Messenger Is the Message
Learned attitudes must be constantly reinforced, a function performed by the journalistic community. Those who were paying attention could see how this role played out in the propagandizing for the Iraq War as well as the treatment accorded presidential candidate Ron Paul. Here is a man whose ideas challenged the very foundations upon which the corporate-state owners had long maintained their destructive power over people.

Friday, June 13, 2008
The "Stable Bulwark of Our Liberties"
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday struck a blow for the separation of powers and dealt the Bush administration a big setback by ruling that suspects held without charge at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to contest their imprisonment under the doctrine of habeas corpus. Simply put, the Court held that the government may not keep anyone in custody indefinitely without having to justify its actions to a judge.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
From the Heartland to the Border
Your papers, please and other observations about the loss of liberty in the USA.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
War and Inflation
The US central bank, called the Federal Reserve, was created in 1913. No one promoted this institution with the slogan that it would make wars more likely and guarantee that nearly half a million Americans will die in battle in foreign lands, along with millions of foreign soldiers and civilians.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Is the Real Problem "Isolationism" or Bipartisan Aggression?
The problem with the Democratic Intelligence Panel's critique is not its criticism of administration lying, which is if anything understated. Partisanship arose when the report failed to mention that key Democrats, some of whom ran for president in the 2008 primaries, also made pre-war statements echoing the administration's line that Saddam's unconventional weapons were a threat to the United States.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Ominous Opposition to a Long-Term U.S. Military Presence in Iraq
At the behest of Iraqi Shi'i leader Moktada al-Sadr, his powerful faction staged a formidable protest this week against a likely U.S.-Iraqi agreement to establish a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq, which would replace the United Nation-authorized U.S. occupation that expires at the end of 2008. This demonstration, and subsequent protests planned for the duration of the summer, should worry both governments.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The Coming Collapse of Oil Prices
Bold economic predictions are dangerous, and I've been wrong before, but here goes: Oil prices are about to tumble. There are several important reasons to believe that crude oil prices of roughly $130/barrel are simply not sustainable. The first is that world-wide economic growth, and hence the demand for crude oil, has slowed markedly due to the credit crunch and the bursting real estate bubble.

Thursday, May 22, 2008
China's All-Seeing Eye
(4 comments) Naomi Klein wrote this article. Here is the Rolling Stone Magazine's description: With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Bob Gates' Hope to Reform the Pentagon Is Barking at the Moon
Not only are our masters in DC fighting unnecessary wars, they're fighting them the wrong way. Our tax Dollars in action!

Monday, May 19, 2008
Everything You Love You Owe to Capitalism
(6 comments) The state thrives on an economically ignorant public. This is the only way it can get away with blaming inflation or recession on consumers, or claiming that the government's fiscal problems are due to our paying too little in taxes. It is economic ignorance that permits the regulatory agencies to claim that they are protecting us as versus denying us choice.

Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Militarization of American Police
(5 comments) Police use deadly force at their discretion. Police agencies then investigate themselves. Few politicians are willing to discuss police procedures, and the courts and legislatures uphold the "right" of police agencies to hide information about misbehaving officers. America may not be a police state-that is, a political system characterized "by an arbitrary exercise of power by police"-but it's getting too close for comfort.

Friday, May 16, 2008
New Study Calls 'Embed' Program for U.S. Media in Iraq a 'Victory' -- for the Pentagon
(1 comments) "The embedded program proved to be a Pentagon victory because it kept reporters focused on the horrors facing the troops, not the horrors of the civilian war experience," wrote Lindner, who is completing his doctoral dissertation at Penn State University. "The end result: a communications victory for an administration that hoped to build support for the war by depicting it as a successful mission with limited cost."

Friday, May 16, 2008
The Cult of the Presidency
(1 comments) Who can we blame for the radical expansion of executive power? Look no further than you and me.

Monday, May 12, 2008
Why the propaganda campaign for international intervention in Burma?
The Bush government is seeking regime change there. No wonder the military dictators don't trust them. This is a great article explaining the US' machinations exploiting the recent cyclone in Burma. Just ignore the economic ignorance of the last paragraph.

Sunday, May 11, 2008
Christianity in Eclipse
(4 comments) The Christian's attitude toward the state, its leaders, its military, its wars, its imperialism, and its interventionism should be a no-brainer: contempt, disdain, disgust, revulsion, abhorrence, repugnance, loathing – take your pick. Yet, among Christians one continues to find some of the greatest apologists for the state, its leaders, its institutions, and its evil doings.

Thursday, May 8, 2008
The Crucifixion of Jeremiah Wright
I have spent my entire life cringing at the stupidity, cowardice, and self serving fraud of the intellectual establishment in this country. And now that we have 24 hour cable news, and now that talk radio has become BIG MEDIA (it used to be honest when there was no money in it) the intellectual level of political and social criticism in this republic aspires to Olympian heights of fatuity.

Sunday, May 4, 2008
Government Schools and the Housing Mess
The Law of Unintended Consequences is a fascinating thing. You can never be entirely sure what the second-, third-, etc. -order effects of any action will be. This is especially so with government policy because centralized decision-making can do so much damage to so many people. That ought to humble the politicians and bureaucrats, but it never does.

Friday, May 2, 2008
One-Party System
I can predict the winner of the presidential election even now: the government. In a one-party system, that's how things work. One-party system? Yes. The American political scene makes much more sense if you think of the two parties as two divisions of the same party. Admittedly that is hard to do at first. All American politics is presented as a tooth-and-claw rivalry between Republicans and Democrats.

Thursday, May 1, 2008
Healthcare Affordability
While not going far enough in a free market direction for this libertarian, the most of the proposed reforms in this article are excellent.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The CRA Scam and its Defenders
(5 comments) "Liberal" economists are overjoyed by the bursting of the housing bubble, for it provides them with what they believe is another "market failure" story. "Most analysts see the sub-prime crisis as a market failure," Robert Gordon gleefully declared in the April 7 online edition of The American Prospect magazine, edited by Robert Kuttner.

Monday, April 28, 2008
New Delhi's Food Failure
Inflation in India has shot up to 7.4%, and food prices are skyrocketing. To control prices, the government has banned the export of wheat, pulses and all rice, save the luxury basmati variety. But all those measures are at best beside the point and at worst counterproductive. The real solution is to reform the faulty policies that have led to stagnation in food-grain production for almost a decade.

Friday, April 25, 2008
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots
"American rice invaded the country," recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land.

Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Queen of Pork
Nobody doles out taxpayer money like Hillary Clinton - or rakes in as much campaign cash from the companies she does favors for

Thursday, April 24, 2008
Hillary Hates Freedom
Maybe that's a bit strong. Let's just say, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton operates with reckless disregard for individual freedom and the limited government that protects and sustains it. In her latest salvo, she dismisses the great promises of the Declaration of Independence, the founding principles of the United States, as rhetorical flourishes, mere garnishes on the real stuff of life.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Will the CIA Kill or Oust Ecuador's President?
(4 comments) He recently fired his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, and commanders of the army, air force, and joint chiefs. Why might those firings cost Correa his job or even his life? Because the reason he fired them was that Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA."

Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Dangerously Counterproductive War on Terror
At the passing of the 25th anniversary of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon-the first large suicide bombing to target Americans-the time is right to ask the perennial question: has the Bush administration's "war on terror" since 9/11 made Americans safer?

Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Politically Contrived Gasoline Shortage
Regulatory obstruction of investments in refineries is probably a more significant threat to the affordability of gasoline than any approaching exhaustion of oil reserves. Reestablishment of refiners' property rights and adoption of strict liability as the major instrument for controlling carbon dioxide and refinery pollution might end what otherwise may become an ever-worsening, regulatory-induced "energy crisis."

Sunday, April 20, 2008
Fuels vs. Food
(4 comments) If you think that wars for oil are bad, just wait until we're fighting for food.

Friday, April 18, 2008
Has Capitalism Failed?
(17 comments) It is now commonplace and politically correct to blame what is referred to as the excesses of capitalism for the economic problems we face, and especially for the Wall Street fraud that dominates the business news. Politicians are having a field day with demagoguing the issue while, of course, failing to address the fraud and deceit found in the budgetary shenanigans of the federal government...

Wednesday, April 9, 2008
New Regulations Will Shape the Next Crisis
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson put forth a number of "new" ideas for changes in the regulatory structures. Nothing I saw will help all that much in the current crisis. It's more like re-arranging the deck chairs as the ship is going down. It seems like most of it is being proposed to prevent another crisis like the one we are in from occurring in the future.

Friday, April 4, 2008
Strategic Assets
(7 comments) The war racket pays too well for our congresscriters to end it: "As Congress gets an update next week on the Iraq war, lawmakers are personally invested in companies reaping billions of dollars from defense contracts."

Thursday, April 3, 2008
General William Odom Tells Senate Rapid Withdrawal Is Only Solution
A must read devastating answer to those who say we must stay in Iraq: "Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims."

Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Embarrassed US Starts to Disown Basra Operation
As it became clear last week that the Operation Knights Assault in Basra was in serious trouble, the George W. Bush administration began to claim in off-the-record statements to journalists that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had launched the operation without consulting Washington. The effort to disclaim U.S. responsibility for the operation is an indication that it was viewed as a major embarrassment...

Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Putting Lipstick on a Pig: More Doublespeak on the Situation in Iraq
Some things never change. In a continuation of the Bush administration's Orwellian doublespeak on the Iraq War, President Bush recently gave an upbeat speech in Dayton, Ohio, extolling the progress in Iraq and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's military offensive in the southern oil port of Basra against "criminal" elements.

Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Goal Is Freedom: Bailout Hypocrisy
Thud. That was the sound of the other shoe dropping. In response to severe problems in the credit markets, thanks to years of government intervention, the Federal Reserve-the government's counterfeiter and chief culprit in the current crisis-has opened its discount window to the investment banks. Interest rate: 2.5 percent.

Sunday, March 30, 2008
British and US forces drawn into battle for Basra
The US is facing a new crisis in Iraq that may determine the outcome of the presidential election, as American military forces are drawn into supporting the Iraqi government's faltering attempt to crush the main Shia militia. A US warplane strafed a house in Basra killing eight civilians, including two women and a child, Iraqi police said yesterday.

Saturday, March 22, 2008
America's Anti-Militarist Tradition
The Right went apoplectic at the skepticism that greeted Gen. David Petraeus's recent testimony about the success of the military escalation in Iraq. It was as though a member of the military was incapable of engaging in spin to support his commander in chief's war policy. How could anyone even for a moment entertain the idea that a high-ranking officer in the U.S. military could say something untrue?

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Truncating the Antecedents
(1 comments) ...whenever the U.S. government launches a new war abroad, we would be well advised to look into what happened in that part of the world previously, perhaps over the course of several decades. We may well discover that the locals have legitimate grievances against our government or some of its corporate cronies. Or we may simply discover that the situation is more complicated than it has been made out to be.

Saturday, March 15, 2008
No link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda: Pentagon study
(1 comments) A detailed Pentagon study confirms there was no direct link between late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Al-Qaeda network, debunking a claim President George W. Bush's administration used to justify invading Iraq. Coming five years after the start of the war in Iraq, the study of 600,000 official Iraqi documents and thousands of hours of interrogations of former Saddam Hussein colleagues "found no smoking gun..."

Thursday, March 13, 2008
Spitzer and the Laws that Brought Him Down
(5 comments) Eliot Spitzer is a bully, but more important, a bully with a badge, a man who has no scruples, no conscience, and not a shred of human decency. Here is a man who openly threatened journalists, used his position as a prosecutor to destroy other people, and had the press covering his backside.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Free-Market Money:A Key to Peace
(3 comments) War finance has long been the overt and covert rationale for an expansion of government's role in the banking system. For classical liberals, exploring this historical relationship sheds light on the sources of both government control over money and the duplicity with which the state often heads to war.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Who's Listening In on You?
The original FISA legislation was passed to prevent abuse, not allow for more of it. One can only wonder if FISA curtailed any substantive abuse. It is doubtful. Examining the justifications for allowing even more sweeping power, one can't help but come to this conclusion: the Protect America Act is intended to reduce the ability of the original FISA legislation to preclude abuse.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
William F. Buckley, Jr., R.I.P.
(1 comments) Almost all accounts of Buckley portray him as a warm and generous friend, and guests on his Firing Line television program have praised the way he allowed them full scope to make a case that he opposed. Unfortunately, his tolerance had a very strict limit. Libertarian and conservative opponents of a militaristic and interventionist foreign policy had to be at all costs suppressed.

Thursday, February 28, 2008
Fascism, Left and Right
(6 comments) Mr. Goldberg gets some rough treatment from a libertarian reviewer for his book "Liberal Fascism". To quote the opening sentence: "Jonah Goldberg has ruined what could have been a valuable book." The reviewer also points out Goldberg's hypocrisy: "Goldberg himself supports the Iraq war; when one is faced with a "good" war, apparently, the link between war and fascism no longer need be of concern."

Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Is the Starving Man Free?
(20 comments) Modern "liberals" who advocate the view that government should provide us with the necessities or alleged necessities of life rarely appreciate that this assistance rests on a system of mass robbery and enslavement that is highly inimical to their professed belief in liberty. In fact, the advocates of such policies present them in quite the opposite light, as enhancing our liberty.

Sunday, February 24, 2008
Causes and Consequences of Our Foreign Policy in the Middle East and What It Means for Americans
(1 comments) Twelve steps to recovering from empireholism. This is one of the most in depth, concise, and thoughtful views of our foreign policy I've read recently.

Sunday, February 17, 2008
The Frightful Face of Stimulus
Among businesspeople, bankers, and investors, there is a growing fear that the economy is headed towards recession or already in one. But that alone is not the source of worry. After all, an economy if left alone to function in freedom can recover. The real problem has to do with the political response.

Friday, February 15, 2008
Torture and Kangaroo Justice Are Un-American
(1 comments) Justice Scalia's remarks about torture reflect a fundamental problem with conservative judges. While oftentimes sound on economic liberty, they are absolutely atrocious with respect to civil liberties. Scalia's approval of torture in certain circumstances ignores an important point that every first-year law student learns in his constitutional law course: that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Thursday, February 14, 2008
John McCain and the Forever War
A very tough assessment of McCain. The fact that the author is ex-military makes the article even more devastating. The author covers it all from McCain's lies to his flip-flopping to his vindictiveness. If this guy gets elected we may as well call his administration Bush III.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Rise of the Imperial Class
While the title sums it all up, this is one of the best overviews of the situation I've read recently.