Archive for January, 2010
By Mary Theroux | Monday January 18, 2010 at 9:18 AM PDT | 7 Comments
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed fascinating priorities in the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake in saying that a chief effort of the U.S. effort was to “assert authority” and to “reinstate the government.” On-the-ground private disaster relief organizations such as The Salvation Army understand that Job 1 is to alleviate human suffering....
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Tags: Charity, Disaster Management, Poverty
By Randall Holcombe | Thursday January 14, 2010 at 12:53 PM PDT | 21 Comments
The budget crisis many state governments are facing has received lots of publicity, and also produced lots of federal bailout money. Meanwhile, over the longer run state governments are facing a potentially more serious problem because of unfunded liabilities in their pension systems. This report is one of many that have pointed out the...
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Tags: Budget and Tax Policy, Government subsidies, Politics
By David Beito | Wednesday January 13, 2010 at 12:37 PM PDT | 1 Comment
This audio of an entire America First Committee rally from June 1941 is a real treat. The sound quality is crisp and clear: The all-star line-up includes John T. Flynn (about 4:30 minutes into the audio), probably the most important activist in the “Old Right” during the 1940s and the 1950s. Speaking after Flynn...
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Tags: American History, Audio, Books, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Constitution, Corporatism, Corruption, England, Europe, Fascism, Germany, Government subsidies, Great Depression, Imperialism, Liberty, Media, Mercantilism, Military, Morality, Nationalization, Personal Liberty, Politics, Presidential Power, Propaganda, Russia, Socialism, The State, Unemployment, War
By Randall Holcombe | Tuesday January 12, 2010 at 2:31 PM PDT | 3 Comments
According to this article, small businesses are reluctant to hire because of the very real prospect of additional tax and regulatory burdens they will have to bear. The possibility that Obamacare will make them responsible for their employees’ health insurance expenses is but one example of the tax and regulatory burdens that may be...
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Tags: Bailouts, Budget and Tax Policy, Business, Economics, Regulation, Taxation, The State, Unemployment
By Mary Theroux | Monday January 11, 2010 at 10:21 AM PDT | 6 Comments
With frigid weather discomforting millions and resulting in deaths worldwide, Britain’s Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband maintained in a parliamentary answer last week that the science of global warming was “settled.” Meanwhile, U.S. governments from local to federal continue to push CO2 controls, and global warming advocates stand fast by their predictions of Arctic...
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Tags: China, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, The State
By Robert Higgs | Saturday January 9, 2010 at 3:53 PM PDT | 26 Comments
Has the recession ended? If not, do “green shoots” foretell a recovery’s advent in the near term? The answer, of course, depends on which indicators we check. Unfortunately, the mainstream economics profession and the public alike place too much emphasis on highly aggregative measures, such as estimates of quarterly GDP and the standard rate...
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Tags: American History, Business, Economics, Employment, Great Depression, Politics, The State
By Art Carden | at 6:57 AM PDT | 1 Comment
In prepping for my appearance on Radio Free Market this afternoon I’ve done some thinking about society’s search for Great Leaders and Great Men. This made me think about a recent post on Aid Watch by William Easterly that everyone should read and a few passages in Democracy in Deficit, which I’m ashamed to...
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Tags: Uncategorized
By David J. Theroux | Thursday January 7, 2010 at 9:22 PM PDT | 6 Comments
Here is renowned meteorologist John Coleman, Founder of the Weather Channel, on the actual science of climate change and why the claims of global warming alarmists are junk science. HT: Julie Sheppard
Tags: Corruption, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Politics, Propaganda, Science, Technology, Video
By Randall Holcombe | at 10:52 AM PDT | 6 Comments
This article, prompted by Northrop Grumman’s moving its headquarters out of California to the Washington, D.C. area, says that California is on its way toward becoming a third-world economy. Once the center of the aerospace industry, Southern California now has no major aerospace firms headquartered there. Once a financial center, California has also lost...
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Tags: Budget and Tax Policy, California, Politics, Technology
By Randall Holcombe | Wednesday January 6, 2010 at 11:11 AM PDT | 14 Comments
This op-ed by Heather MacDonald in the Wall Street Journal makes a good argument that crime is not the result of a lack of economic opportunity by looking at crime rates during the downturn in 2009. The line of reasoning that crime is caused by poverty and lack of economic opportunity implies that during...
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Tags: Criminal Justice, Economics, Law, Morality, Police, Poverty, Unemployment, Urban Issues