Who Are You Calling Selfish? by Michael Tennant October 1, 2008 In an early episode of the television series Bewitched, Harold Harold (Paul Lynde), a highly nervous driving instructor, tries to teach Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery) how to drive a car. At one point in the lesson he instructs her to go the wrong way in a traffic circle. Samantha, however, ...
The Authoritarianism of American Labor Law by George Leef October 1, 2008 American labor law is a dank miasma of special-interest legislation that tramples on the rights of some citizens in order to advance the interests of others. The main beneficiaries are labor-union officials who lobbied for and received extraordinary and unique powers from compliant politicians. The victims are business owners and workers who prefer to have ...
Milk Protectionism by Gary D. Barnett September 22, 2008 The headline recently in Missoula, Montana’s, daily newspaper, the Missoulian, was “Cheaper milk from Washington pulled from Missoula shelves.” Angry customers know this is obvious protectionism, but Montana milk producers say they only want a “safe” product for Montanans. Yeah, right! Certain stores in Missoula on Friday ...
Government Failure by Sheldon Richman September 19, 2008 To hear the media pundits and presidential candidates tell it, you’d think Adam Smith has been president for the last eight years and, with a Congress full of free-market advocates, had enacted an agenda of full-blown laissez-faire. Had that been the case, we would not be in the mess we are in economically. Alas, it has not been the case. Politicians ...
Threatened by the Census Bureau by Gary D. Barnett September 15, 2008 I just received an official letter from the U.S. Department of Commerce threatening me with prosecution and fines if I do not comply with its Economic Census. The letter came from the Office of the General Counsel/Office of the Chief Counsel for Economic Affairs in Washington, D.C., and was sent to ...
The Government’s War on Money Laundering by Gary D. Barnett September 3, 2008 As a provider of financial services, once again I am required to attest (i.e., declare to be correct and true or genuine), by using the Compliance Attestation System, that I have read and understand and agree to the third-quarter anti–money-laundering training information. I have no effective choice. I can’t disagree. I ...
Foreword to Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State by Ron Paul March 26, 2008 Sheldon Richman’s Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State is precisely the type of scholarly work needed to wake up the American people to the dangers posed by the welfare state. Richman demolishes the popular myth that the welfare state was a natural outgrowth of the Founding ...
Naiveté at Business Week by Tibor R. Machan February 15, 2008 Why do some reporters never manage to become educated in the areas they cover? Consider, for example, a recent piece in Business Week, “A Food Fight over Calorie Counts” (2/11/08). The fight is supposed to be between public health officials and the restaurant industry. As to the latter, the report, ...
Energy Fascists by Sheldon Richman January 11, 2008 One of the great unnoticed curiosities of the presidential campaign is that the party which claims devotion to free enterprise is full-out socialist — or, more precisely, fascist — when it comes to energy. Listening to the presidential forum the other night, I was struck by how anti–free market all ...
The Soviet-Style Attack on NORFED by Jacob G. Hornberger November 21, 2007 It would be difficult to find a better example of federal heavy-handedness than the recent six-hour federal raid on NORFED, the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code. In fact, it would be virtually impossible to distinguish the NORFED raid from similar raids ...
Should the State License Human Beings? by Sheldon Richman November 21, 2007 Democratic presidential candidates are tripping over the driver’s-licenses-for-illegal-aliens issue like a bunch of old slapstick vaudevillians. What’s so comical about their antics is that the issue demonstrates that politicians are locked into bad assumptions from top to bottom. Start with driver’s licenses. In one debate Sen. Chris Dodd said driving ...
Heading Towards the Police State by Bart Frazier November 14, 2007 The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. — Thomas Jefferson Every year the United States becomes less free; the state controls more of our lives, takes more of our money, and takes from ...