Freedom Daily Archive

Don’t Trust the Feds’ Happiness Index

by James Bovard October 1, 2012

The Obama administration is financing research to devise a new gauge for Americans’ happiness. A National Academy of Sciences panel is currently analyzing proposals for surveying Americans’ “subjective well-being.” But there are grave perils in any “national happiness index” Uncle Sam might concoct. Critics increasingly complain that the Gross Domestic Product does not accurately measure citizens’ quality of life. The ...

Social Engineering through Criminal Law

by Ridgway K. Foley Jr. October 1, 2012

Stealth defines the statist who seeks to channel all human conduct as he thinks best. Such external human controls upon personal action represent the antithesis of liberty. This essay explicates a particularly surreptitious and dangerous means currently employed to dominate and command free men who attempt to act freely. Contrary to the essential statist doctrine, men and women who believe in ...

Destroying the Young with the Minimum Wage, Part 1

by Gregory Bresiger October 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 The minimum wage, a price control as futile as all other government price controls, continues to damage the U.S. economy and much of the world. But the obscene irony of the minimum-wage law is that it hurts some of the very people it is supposedly designed to help — young people seeking employment. The government’s ...

Playthings of the Gods

by Matthew Harwood October 1, 2012

The United States of Fear by Tom Engelhardt (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011); 230 page On  the night of March 11, 2012, Sgt. Robert Bales walked a short distance to two Afghan villages in Kandahar Province from Camp Belambay. Under the cover of darkness the soldier is alleged to have gone house to house shooting and stabbing to death 16 ...

The Supreme Court’s Word Game Saves Obamacare

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2012

The Supreme Court decision upholding the health-insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) had a distinct Alice-in-Wonderland feel to it. As Lewis Carroll wrote in Through the Looking-Glass, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Chief Justice ...

The Federal Wetlands War, Part 3

by James Bovard September 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As the first two parts of this series revealed, federal bureaucrats have been using environmental pretexts to rampage against property owners since the late 1980s. Unfortunately, even after the Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and promised sweeping reforms, the outrages continued. A recent Supreme Court decision vivified that, despite ...

Is Social Security Welfare?

by Laurence M. Vance September 1, 2012

Since the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare became the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services in 1979, the term “welfare” has fallen into disuse. “Income security,” “entitlement,” or “public assistance programs” are now the usual terms for what used to be called “welfare programs.” Even the food-stamp program has been renamed the Supplemental ...

Reflections on the Torture Debate

by Joseph Margulies September 1, 2012

What remains to be said of the torture debate? I asked myself this question because March 28 was an anniversary of sorts. On that date 10 years ago the United States cast the first person into a CIA black site. In time, he was subjected to each and every one of the Bush administration’s “enhanced” techniques. Waterboarding, of which ...

Book Review: The U.S. War Machine

by Anthony Gregory September 1, 2012

The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril by Eugene Jarecki (New York: Free Press, 2008); 336 pages. Many supporters of Barack Obama are disappointed that he has not reversed the war policies of his predecessor. He did his best to continue the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The Afghanistan war rages far beyond what ...

The Market and Uncertainty

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2012

Relying on the mass media for accurate economic analysis is like relying on a mobile home for shelter from a tornado. It’s a rather bad idea. Two items in the news demonstrate this beyond a shadow of a doubt: JPMorgan Chase’s big loss last spring and the role of private equity in an economy. It’s widely believed that JPMorgan Chase’s ...

The Federal Wetlands War, Part 2

by James Bovard August 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In August 1993, the Clinton administration announced a new policy that tightened the federal noose over private lands. The White House Office on Environmental Policy (echoing a 1988 George H.W. Bush campaign promise) proclaimed a national goal of no net loss of wetlands, creating a presumption ...

Keynesians, Austrians, and the Continuing Economic Depression, Part 3

by William L. Anderson August 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Shortly after Barack Obama took office in 2009, he requested new spending of $800 billion to help “stimulate” the economy, and given that the Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, he faced little opposition. Soon construction workers were making highway repairs and digging ditches, and new signs ...