Why Do Conservatives Support Medicare and Medicaid? by Jacob G. Hornberger October 4, 2013 For the life of me, I just don’t get conservatives. They profess to love free enterprise and free markets and they say they hate socialism. Okay, then why do they never call for the repeal of Medicare and Medicaid? After all, it’s not surprising that progressives (or liberals) favor Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. They don’t make any pretenses of loving the ...
Hero Joseph Nacchio Is Released from Jail by Jacob G. Hornberger October 3, 2013 From the standpoint of government officials, one of the greatest things about a highly regulated economy, banking system, and healthcare system, as well as a complex tax system, is that it provides officials with the ability to prosecute businessmen, bankers, physicians, and others whenever they get out of line. In that way, officials can claim that they’re not going ...
Shut Down the Nonessential National-Security State by Jacob G. Hornberger October 2, 2013 The national-security state apparatus under which all of us have been born and raised was established for one and only one purpose: to wage the Cold War against the Soviet Union. From the inception of the country to the aftermath of World War II, the American people had lived without an enormous permanent peacetime military establishment, a CIA with ...
Shut Down the Nonessential Drug War by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2013 A few days ago, I wrote about my experience crossing the Canadian border on the train in an article entitled “Dismantle the International Checkpoints.” The article focused on my experience with immigration checkpoints between the United States and Canada. This article will focus on another aspect of my experience at the border — the drug war. Going into Canada, ...
Shutdown Anxiety by Jacob G. Hornberger September 30, 2013 Isn’t it great seeing all those statists pacing the floor and wringing their hands over the possible “shutdown” of the federal government? Given that their entire world revolves around the federal government — which is their parent or their god — the possible shutdown of the federal government is one of the most frightening events in the life of ...
Dismantle the International Checkpoints by Jacob G. Hornberger September 27, 2013 Yesterday, I was returning to the United States from Canada on the train, which is my favorite form of travel. As I (and everyone else on the train) was being made to wait at the border for about two hours by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials, I had plenty of time to reflect on the inanity of the ...
Permanently Lay Off the Parasitic Sector by Jacob G. Hornberger September 26, 2013 One of the most amusing -- and fallacious -- aspects of the government-shutdown debate is when statists argue that a layoff of public-sector personnel would spell economic disaster for America. Laying off all those people, statists say, would add to the ranks of the unemployed, thereby increasing welfare payments. It would also, they say, be a death knell to ...
The Murder of Frank Teruggi by Jacob G. Hornberger September 24, 2013 Those who are familiar with my articles know that for many years I have written lots of articles about the role of the U.S. government in the 1973 regime-change operation in Chile. The most recent of my articles, entitled "The 40th Anniversary of Chile's 9/11" was published just a few days ago. After the Chilean people had democratically elected ...
Free Trade or Fair Trade by Jacob G. Hornberger September 23, 2013 Statists on the left side of the political spectrum oftentimes attack "free-trade agreements" like NAFTA by claiming that they aren't "fair-trade agreements." Free trade is fine, they love to say, but only if it's fair. When they're not fair, the "free-trade" agreements inevitably impose onerous conditions on workers, conditions that only government can rectify. There are at least three big ...
Yawn! Another Debt-Ceiling “Crisis” by Jacob G. Hornberger September 20, 2013 By now, everyone knows the script on the great debt-ceiling “crisis” that befalls us every two or three years. It happens like clockwork. First, the Republicans say that they’re not going to vote to lift the ceiling unless their demands are met. This time the demand is a repeal of Obamacare. Second, the mainstream press goes on the offensive, attacking the ...
Ditch the War on Poverty Forever by Jacob G. Hornberger September 19, 2013 An article in the New York Times, entitled “The Mismeasure of Poverty,” defends the “war on poverty,” which President Lyndon Johnson declared some 50 years ago. Actually though, as the article’s author, Sheldon H. Danziger, points out, Social Security is also an anti-poverty welfare program. Therefore, although FDR didn’t use the term, the war on poverty actually stretches ...
Is it Possible to Restore a Healthy Society to America? by Jacob G. Hornberger September 18, 2013 In the days ahead, there will inevitably be countless psychological analyses of Aaron Alexis, the man, now deceased, who is alleged to have been the killer at the Washington Navy Yard. Alexis had recently complained that people were harassing him with a microwave machine and that he heard “voices speaking to him through the wall, flooring, and ceiling.” In the ...