Spending Our Way to Wealth and Prosperity by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2009 One of the most ludicrous policy prescriptions issued by federal officials is the one that exhorts the citizenry to spend more money to get the nation out of a recession. That’s the key to national economic prosperity, government officials exclaim. “Go to the mall and shop,” they tell people. If people will just spend, spend, and spend some more, ...
The Madoff Scandal Exposes Government Failure by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2009 A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains. This of course is evidence of a rigged game. The government can’t possibly monitor and regulate absolutely every transaction that ...
Boundless Ignorance versus Self-Government by James Bovard March 1, 2009 Modern democracy is based on faith that the people can control what they do not understand. As government has grown by leaps and bounds, “government by the people” has become one of the great fairy tales of our times. As the Founding Fathers feared, citizen ignorance often brings out the worst in their rulers. Contemporary ...
The Fallacies of Another New Deal, Part 1 by William L. Anderson March 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As the financial panics on Wall Street seem to be never-ending, a lot of commentators are openly asking whether the United States will slide into something akin to the Great Depression of nearly 80 years ago. Certainly, there is real fear in the air, and at this writing, the current ...
Two Ways to Fight an Economic Depression by Gregory Bresiger March 1, 2009 “There was a depression in 1920? Really?” That was the comment I received recently from a smart, usually well-informed editor. Yes, there was a depression. But it was over so fast that few people seem to have heard of it. Yet almost everyone knows about the Great ...
Real Change on Cuba by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2009 A good place for Barack Obama to begin his program of change would be U.S. policy on Cuba. The change would move America toward three important principles on which our country was founded: economic liberty, civil liberty, and a limited-government republic. Economic liberty First, the Obama administration should lift the U.S. government’s 40-year-old embargo against Cuba. Not only has the embargo ...
The Wizards of Washington by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2009 Remember that telling scene in The Wizard of Oz when Toto reveals the “great and powerful wizard” as nothing but a homunculus operating an imposing thunder-and-lightning machine? “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” he bellows, not knowing enough to quit even when he’s exposed. The government’s response to the current economic turmoil reminds me of that scene. ...
The Campaign-Reform Crime, Part 2 by James Bovard February 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 We saw in the last issue how the McCain-Feingold Act — the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) — sought to fundamentally change the American political landscape. Politicians did not allow the Act’s power to lie idle in the first presidential election after its enactment. The BCRA’s issue-ad ban — the peril that Justice ...
Regime Change: Promise and Peril, Part 3 by Stephen Kinzer February 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 This article is a transcript of Stephen Kinzer’s speech given on June 6, 2008, at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties.” I talked about unintended consequences. In the period immediately following the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (see Freedom Daily, ...
The Financial Crisis: 9/11 Redux by Michael Tennant February 1, 2009 Perhaps the one bit of shiny interior in the black cloud of the financial crisis is that most mainstream conservatives, heretofore bootlicking worshippers of George W. Bush and the Republican Party, have come to realize that there’s literally not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties when it comes to their willingness to bail out their Wall ...
The Second Amendment: More Important than Ever by Scott McPherson February 1, 2009 The day after the November 4 election, Gun Owners of America (GOA), based in Springfield, Virginia, sent an email alert to supporters. With the subject heading “Gun Rights in Peril,” the message began, “Based on his voting record in the Illinois state senate and the U.S. Senate, President-elect Obama will be the most anti-Second Amendment president in the history ...
The Socialist Bailout of Wall Street, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 During the recent presidential race, Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of being a socialist, owing to Obama’s belief in using the federal government to “spread the wealth.” Obama, for his part, expressed surprise at being accused of being a socialist. Apparently, he’s always believed that he’s a strong supporter of America’s “free-enterprise” ...