Fiscal Cliffs and Chicken Littles by Jacob G. Hornberger November 16, 2012 For those who are pacing the floors and taking anti-anxiety pills owing to scare hype about the “fiscal cliff” that public officials and their unofficial spokesmen in the mainstream press have been issuing, I am about to put your minds at ease. This is the biggest tripe since, well, the most recent debt-ceiling debate, when the government and its ...
Killing Iranian Children by Jacob G. Hornberger November 15, 2012 It was inevitable. Today the Guardian reported the first death of an Iranian child from the U.S. Empire’s sanctions on Iran. The death of 15-year-old Iranian Manoucherhr Esmaili-Liousi brings to mind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from the 11 years of sanctions that the Empire enforced against Iraq during the 1990s. According to the article, the ...
Socialist Correa and American Statists by Jacob G. Hornberger November 14, 2012 In my blog post yesterday, I pointed out how Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, provides a good insight into the mindsets of liberals and conservatives here in the United States. Correa, of course, is an ardent socialist. Everyone agrees on that. Correa is in a clique consisting of such self-avowed Latin American socialist rulers as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Evo ...
Beltway Economic Nonsense by Jacob G. Hornberger November 13, 2012 Leave it to 495ExpressLanes.com to bring a bit of humor and misguided economic analysis to the Washington, D.C., environs in the form of an advertisement in the Washington Post. The ad promotes the new beltway express lanes that are set to open this month and states that the project: Supported more than 16,000 jobs in Virginia Contributed nearly $3.5 billion ...
Statist Claptrap on the Gas Lines by Jacob G. Hornberger November 12, 2012 For an excellent example of the economic ignorance that pervades the mainstream press, take a look at these two articles: “Behind New York Gas Lines, Warnings and Crossed Fingers” by David W. Chen, Winnie Hu, and Clifford Krauss and “Around Odd-Even License Plate Rules, a History of Impatience” by James Barron. The articles address the long ...
The Power of Indoctrination by Jacob G. Hornberger November 9, 2012 Yesterday, I saw a political yard sign that said “Keep Us Free. Elect Romney.” It exemplifies perfectly one of the major problems we face in this country: the fact that so many Americans honestly believe they live in a free society. During our recent College Civil Liberties Tour, the issue of public schooling came up during the question ...
The Military and the Economy by Jacob G. Hornberger November 8, 2012 I wish to follow up on my blog post of yesterday, where I wrote about how the vast U.S. military establishment is a major contributing cause of America’s economic problems. Let’s consider North Korea, a nation in which the military plays a dominant role in society and the economy, just as the military does here in the United States. Like ...
A Poor Economy and Foreign Policy Go Hand in Hand by Jacob G. Hornberger November 7, 2012 CNN’s Wolf Blitzer made an interesting and revealing observation last night while discussing exit polls that CNN had conducted. Blitzer’s observation provides good insight into how mainstream political commentators and pundits think when it comes to such issues as the economy and foreign policy. Voters were given a list of issues and asked which one was most important to them. ...
Natural Disasters and the Election by Jacob G. Hornberger November 6, 2012 Last night we were treated to a fascinating and timely talk by economics professor Daniel Smith at our Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which is cosponsored by the student-run Econ Society at George Mason University. We’ll be posting his talk online within the next week. Smith researched and compared the recovery efforts in two cities that were hit hard by tornadoes ...
Hurricanes and Socialism by Jacob G. Hornberger November 5, 2012 Two articles in the New York Times last week exemplify perfectly why our nation is in such bad shape. Both articles concerned the devastation from Hurricane Sandy. The first was a Times editorial, entitled “A Big Storm Requires Big Government.” The other article was in the form of an op-ed entitled “Grover Cleveland’s Hurricane” by Matthew Algeo. The ...
Ignoring the Unseen Consequences of the Dole by Jacob G. Hornberger November 2, 2012 Mocking Mitt Romney’s shifting positions on the auto bailout, the New York Times editorializes that the bailout turned out to be a huge success because “nearly 1.5 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout. G.M.’s American sales continue to increase, and Chrysler said this week that its third-quarter net income rose 80 percent.” We begin ...
The Pre-Lochner Era by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2012 I had a fun session with nine students from George Mason University’s economics department last night at the informal law and economics seminar I’m conducting once a month at GMU. The seminar is sponsored by the GMU Econ Society, a student group interested in libertarianism and Austrian economics. They also serve as the co-sponsors of our Economic Liberty Lecture ...