What Greenspan Missed by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2009 Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made headlines around the world with this admission: “hose of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief. Such counterparty surveillance is a central pillar of our financial ...
The Campaign-Reform Crime, Part 1 by James Bovard January 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 In 2002, Congress passed and George Bush signed the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). The McCain-Feingold Act was supposed to create an era of clean politics — uncorrupt, untainted, and far loftier than what Americans had experienced in prior decades. If the 2008 election proved anything, it revealed that politicians cannot be trusted ...
Regime Change: Promise and Peril, Part 2 by Stephen Kinzer January 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.” Let’s look at the case of Cuba. It’s another case of American intervention gone terribly wrong. When the United States ...
Paper Money and the Constitution by Rick Lynch January 1, 2009 Why do we have a Constitution? How and why did it come into existence? Just what, exactly, prompted the calling of the Constitutional Convention, which gave birth to it? Most Americans believe, logically enough, that with the passing of the British from the scene it was simply time to create a new government to take the place of the ...
America’s Anti-Militarist Heritage by George Leef January 1, 2009 Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism by Bill Kauffman (Metropolitan Books, 2008); 284 pages, $25. Americans don’t have much historical memory anymore. That isn’t just because of the dumbing down of the educational system and the fact that most young people read very ...
The Socialist Bailout of Wall Street, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 The massive federal bailout of U.S. financial firms reflects everything that’s wrong with the economic system of welfare and interventionism under which the United States has operated since at least the 1930s. There are critically important lessons in the bailout that the American people ignore at their peril. While most politicians and mainstream pundits ...
Government Failure by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2008 To hear the media pundits and presidential candidates tell it, you’d think Adam Smith had 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 ...
How Abu Ghraib Was Politically Defused, Part 2 by James Bovard December 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 From the first days of the torture scandal, the Bush administration followed a “deny everything and praise American values” strategy to defuse the controversy over Abu Ghraib. In a May 28, 2004, interview, a French journalist mentioned Abu Ghraib and asked President Bush, “Do you feel responsible in any way for this moral failure in ...
Regime Change: Promise and Peril, Part 1 by Stephen Kinzer December 1, 2008 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.” Thomas Jefferson is the author of the phrase that I take as my guiding principle, and it’s the principle that ...
When Government Replaces God and Family by Christine Smith December 1, 2008 Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men. — Mortimer Adler It is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. It knows best what we need and what must be done. We must trust in its absolute power, knowledge, and presence in all areas of our lives. For this overseer is ...
The Crusade Against Population by George Leef December 1, 2008 Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits by Steven W. Mosher (Transaction Publishers, 2008); 300 pages. You have probably never heard of Dr. Reimert Ravenholt, but he was one of the most influential people of the 20th century. More than anyone else, Ravenholt was responsible for putting together the worldwide network ...
Why Does America Have a Drug War? by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2008 Given that most people agree that the drug war has failed to achieve its supposed purpose after decades of warfare, an important question arises: Why is the drug war still being waged, especially when we consider all the collateral damage that this federal program has produced? Hasn’t the time arrived for Americans to demand an immediate end to the ...