Bureaucracy: A Mises Classic, Part 2 by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2005 Part 1 | Part 2 Last month I discussed Ludwig von Mises’s presentation of profit management in his great little book Bureaucracy. He explains in detail how consumers “use” the price and profit-and-loss systems to direct entrepreneurs toward producing the things they want most urgently. (Of course, they don’t self-consciously use these systems; they simply buy and abstain ...
Bush Profiteering from Housing Defaults by James Bovard February 1, 2005 President Bush is determined to end the prejudice against people who want to buy a home but don’t have any money. Since he became president the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has spent more than $120 billion. HUD public-housing projects continue to devastate poor neighborhoods. HUD largesse to local governments continues to finance the confiscation and demolition ...
The Greatest Safeguard Against Tyranny by Scott McPherson February 1, 2005 One is misled not by what he does not know but by what he believes he knows. — Jean Jacques Rousseau, On Education The purpose of government is the protection of individual rights. Government officials are elected and appointed to ensure that the citizenry are safe from military invasion, as well as from the ...
Gun Control and the War on Drugs by Anthony Gregory February 1, 2005 Many opponents of gun control support the war on drugs, and many critics and reformers of America's drug laws tend to believe in gun control. Conservatives tend to fall into the first category and liberals into the second. In reality, these two issues are more similar than many people might think. In both cases -- laws that restrict which guns people ...
A Letter to My Friend Who Supports the Drug War by James Muhm February 1, 2005 My friend, we’ve been discussing this war on drugs for quite a while, and whether or not it is doing anything to reduce drug use. We both agree that most drugs, particularly “hard” drugs, have a harmful and debilitating effect on most persons who use them. And yet, is the metaphorical war on drugs doing what it is supposed ...
How the Enemy Combatant Label Is Being Used, Part 2 by Jesslyn Radack February 1, 2005 Part 1 | Part 2 On Monday, October 4, the Supreme Court declined to consider a petition filed by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Al-Marri is perhaps the least well known of the three persons who have been held in the United States as enemy combatants. The decision was unsurprising yet still disappointing. Al-Marri, who has been waiting for nearly three ...
Book Review: The Bush Betrayal by Brigid ONeill February 1, 2005 The Bush Betrayal by James Bovard (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); 336 pages; $26.95. The reelection of George Walker Bush rubs too much like the gruesome aftermath of a hit and run — made bearable only by our instinctual ability to self-medicate in numbness. For a first-stage coping mechanism — just ask the Sopranos psychiatrist — it ...
An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Iran by Jacob G. Hornberger January 31, 2005 When Iranians took U.S. officials hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, Americans were mystified and angry, not being able to comprehend how Iranians could be so hateful toward U.S. officials, especially since the U.S. government had been so supportive of the shah of Iran for some ...
A Whopper of an Inaugural Address by Sheldon Richman January 31, 2005 2005 We have come to understand that when the typical politician speaks, he ought not to be believed. Nevertheless, in his inaugural address last week President Bush achieved depths of incredibility deserving of a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Leave aside that his speech was preceded by his ...
A Balanced Budget Is Not Enough by Sheldon Richman January 24, 2005 Conservatives must be easy to please. Case in point: The other day columnist Lawrence Kudlow excitedly let us in on the well-kept secret that the federal budget deficit is getting smaller. “Last week’s Treasury report on U.S. finances for December shows a year-to-date fiscal 2005 deficit already $11 ...
Will Bush Side with the Property Thieves? by Sheldon Richman January 19, 2005 Susette Kelo’s story is becoming tragically familiar. She and her neighbors are at risk of losing their homes and businesses because the local government has conspired with a corporation to condemn their land under the power of eminent domain. This is happening in New London, Connecticut, the latest ...
Let’s Look within Ourselves for Iraq’s WMD by Jacob G. Hornberger January 17, 2005 Last Wednesday, some two months after the U.S. presidential election, U.S. officials formally ended their two-year search for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Perhaps this will finally put an end to the hopes of many supporters of the Iraq War that a modern, air-conditioned facility would be ...