Milking the Truancy Cow for Cash by Wendy McElroy February 1, 2013 Diane Tran is a 17-year-old honor student who was jailed for truancy in Texas. When a tearful Tran gave an interview for a local television station, the story went viral. Her parents had recently divorced, leaving Tran to support herself and her siblings by working two jobs in addition to attending school. Fury was unleashed on the truancy court ...
Deflation, Liquidation, and Necessary Revisionism by Tim Kelly February 1, 2013 During his ill-fated 1932 reelection campaign Herbert Hoover delivered a speech in which he said, In the midst of this hurricane the Republican administration kept a cool head, and it rejected every counsel of weakness and cowardice. Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until it had found its own bottom. ...
New Deal Utopianism by George Leef February 1, 2013 Back to the Land: Arthurdale, FDR’s New Deal, and the Costs of Economic Planning by C.J. Maloney (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2011), 292 pages. Drive south from Morgantown, West Virginia, and you soon come to the little town of Arthurdale. At the outskirts of town, there is a roadside plaque informing those who stop to read it that Arthurdale was ...
Clinton’s Legacy, Part 2: The Attacks on 9/11 by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2013 Part 1 | Part 2 Last month I sought to correct the record by showing that the administration of Bill Clinton (1993–2001), which is almost universally viewed with nostalgia, played a major role in inflating the housing bubble, which led to the Great Recession, thanks to aggressive polices pushed by his second secretary of Housing and Urban ...
The Forgotten Pox of Government Spending by James Bovard January 1, 2013 It is only a question of time until Washington is convulsed by the next federal budget crisis. Unfortunately, neither major political party is offering substantive proposals to curb soaring federal outlays. And Washington itself is inherently unable to recognize the true threat of government spending to Americans’ future and freedom. It was a common saying in the 1930s that “we ...
The Successes and Failures of Social Security by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2013 One of the oldest, largest, most popular, and most expensive government programs is Social Security. After appealing to the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution in a speech to Congress in June of 1934, Franklin Roosevelt appointed a Committee on Economic Security to report and make recommendations on the task of “furthering the security of the citizen and his family ...
The Heroism of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Wendy McElroy January 1, 2013 A destructive myth hangs over the history of World War II. It is that a flaw within the German character allowed the rise of Hitler and Nazism. How else can you explain the coming of the Holocaust from one of the world’s most cultured nations? Oddly, no one seems to consider Mussolini as indicating a flaw in Italians or ...
Authentic Liberalism Vindicated, Part 2: The Economics of Liberty by Anthony Gregory January 1, 2013 Part 1 | Part 2 Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School by Ralph Raico, (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2012); 347 pages. The passionate interest in economics among libertarians is not immediately understood by all students of liberty. Even those generally in favor of economic freedom for ethical reasons may wonder why so many libertarians adhere ...
Clinton’s Legacy, Part 1: The Financial and Housing Meltdown by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 Bill Clinton leads a charmed life. The former president is treated like a respected elder statesman whose tenure in office was so good that even some Republicans look back fondly on the years 1993–2001. On the surface the record indeed looks good. The 1990s were a period of economic growth, and the central ...
The Mirage of Welfare State Freedom by James Bovard December 1, 2012 Government dependency was one of the hottest issues in this year’s presidential race. Unfortunately, neither major-party candidate focused on the perils of “freedoms” that rely on government handouts. Instead, “welfare state freedom” has become the coin of the political realm. Lyndon Johnson declared in 1964, “For the first time in world history we have the abundance and the ability to ...
Two Extraordinary African-American Entrepreneurs by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2012 As the 19th century neared its end, two African-American women became rivals as they became millionaires in the beauty-care industry. Annie Turnbo Pope Malone and Madam (Sarah) C.J. Walker were wildly successful entrepreneurs at a time when both blacks and women were marginalized by society. Annie and Sarah broke racial and sexual barriers; they created economic independence for an ...
Women Who Made a Difference by George Leef December 1, 2012 Ladies for Liberty: Women Who Made a Difference in American History by John Blundell (New York: Algora Publishing, 2011); 230 pages. In contemporary American politics, women are generally assumed to be more inclined to socialistic ideas than men are. Women are more likely to favor candidates and policies that are supposed to help people, to provide a “safety ...