Clinton and Obama Struggle for Power by Sheldon Richman June 21, 2008 Many Americans are spellbound by the historic contest for the Democratic presidential nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Forgetting the political context, it is indeed something spectacular, even inspiring. A woman and a black man have reached a pinnacle that just a few years ago seemed impossibly far off. If it were happening outside politics, it would be something ...
The New Politics: Squaring the Circle by Sheldon Richman May 12, 2008 How many times will people be fooled by a presidential contenders claim that he is a new kind of politician? Sen. Barack Obama has made this the centerpiece of his campaign. He strives to hold himself above the partisan fray and talks about changing Washington. As a result, some people look on Obama as a savior who needs to be ...
One-Party System by Sheldon Richman May 2, 2008 I can predict the winner of the presidential election even now: the government. In a one-party system, that's how things work. One-party system? Yes. The American political scene makes much more sense if you think of the two parties as two divisions of the same party. Admittedly that is hard to do at first. All American politics is presented as ...
George Bush, Big-Government Man by Sheldon Richman April 14, 2008 In an unscripted and candid moment, a top spokesman for President-elect Barack Obama let the cat out of the bag. On Meet the Press, interviewer Tom Brokaw asked transition co-chair Valerie Jarrett, I wonder if, as a Democrat, which has always represented the party of big government, ... there will be a kind of paradigm shift this time, that ...
GOP Statists by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2008 Any remaining pretense that the Republican Party is the party of free markets has been blown to smithereens in the election season. Even the lip service to free enterprise has become scarce, as the major candidates threw their arms around flagrantly statist economic proposals. This is vividly illustrated by the Bush-Pelosi “stimulus package,” which was ...
The Capsizing of American Democracy by James Bovard April 1, 2008 American democracy is capsizing as a result of the vast increase in the number of government dependents and government employees. This has created a voting bloc that overwhelms every other potential force. H.L. Mencken quipped in the 1930s that the New Deal divided America into “those who work for a living and those who ...
The Demise of Conscience, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As libertarians have long pointed out, both the welfare state and the warfare state have brought immeasurable damage to our country. With its various programs of confiscatory taxation of income and capital to accomplish its coercive redistribution of wealth, the welfare state has brought standards of living lower than otherwise would ...
Ron Paul, Fox News, and the Conservative Life of the Lie by Jacob G. Hornberger January 7, 2008 Last week television commentators Greta van Susteran and Shepard Smith, treading cautiously and with a bit of trepidation, wondered aloud why their employer, Fox News, was banning Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul from its New Hampshire presidential debate. Permit me to explain the likely reason: the life of the lie, the life that conservatives have ...
Are Conservatives (Undocumented) Aliens? by Jacob G. Hornberger December 19, 2007 Conservatives are strange and fascinating creatures. Their minds operate in a strange, Bizarro-like universe in which delusion and deception seem to be considered normal. Consider, for example, the most recent Republican presidential debate. Let’s leave Ron Paul out of the picture for the time being. The rest of the candidates were standing there and periodically proclaiming how committed ...
Big Government at Home and Abroad, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2007 Part 1 | Part 2 No matter how much we address the socialism and interventionism that pervade our nation on a domestic level, it will all be for naught if we fail to address the great big elephant in the room — U.S. foreign policy, including the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. For unless we dismantle the ...
Do Elections Guarantee Freedom? by James Bovard November 1, 2007 Elections are sometimes portrayed as practically giving people automatic remote control on the government. Elections kindly provide a chance for people to pre-program the government for the following years. The government will be based on the popular will, regardless of the ignorance of the populace or the duplicity of the government. President Lyndon Johnson declared in 1965 that the vote ...
Big Government at Home and Abroad, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2007 Part 1 | Part 2 Practically everywhere we look there is a crisis. Public schooling: crisis. The drug war: crisis. Social Security: crisis. Medicare and Medicaid: crisis. Immigration: crisis. Iraq: crisis. Terrorism: crisis. Federal spending: crisis. The dollar: crisis. So many crises! Yet there is a common denominator to all these crises. Focusing on that common denominator provides the key ...