Republicans Miss the Point on Tax Cuts by Laurence M. Vance November 6, 2012 At the same time Republicans are adamant that more people should pay income taxes and lukewarm on the idea that Social Security taxes should be cut, they are also calling for the so-called Bush tax cuts to be extended, individual marginal income-tax rates to be lowered, the corporate income-tax rate to be lowered, and certain taxes to ...
Life without FEMA? by Sheldon Richman November 2, 2012 Advocates of big government never miss a chance to capitalize on a natural disaster. Even before the storm has passed, they will boast that without activist government, recovery would be impossible. Peddlers of this line ask us to imagine what life would be like today — in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy — without FEMA and the state and ...
Legal Earthquake Rocks the Scientific Community by Wendy McElroy November 2, 2012 On October 22, an Italian court found six seismologists and one government official guilty of multiple involuntary manslaughter for failing to accurately predict an earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, which killed around 300 people. The trial lasted from September 2011 until October 2012, but it took a judge only a little over 4 hours to decide it. Each man ...
Sheldon Richman Joins FFF Full-Time by Future of Freedom Foundation November 1, 2012 The Future of Freedom Foundation is pleased to announce that Sheldon Richman, who has served as a part-time senior fellow for FFF for many years, has joined the foundation as vice-president and editor of FFF’s monthly journal, Future of Freedom. “We are really excited to have Sheldon join us as a full-time member of FFF’s staff,” said Jacob Hornberger, the ...
Medicare Is Doomed by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2012 When Democrats accuse Republicans of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” they are right. Of course ending Medicare as we know it is not the same as ending Medicare. What Democrats fail to point out is that “Medicare as we know it” is no longer an option for anyone. They too will end “Medicare as we know ...
The Lingering Curse of “Bush Freedom” by James Bovard November 1, 2012 It has been almost four years since George W. Bush’s presidency ended. Unfortunately, it increasingly appears that Bush did permanent damage to this nation’s political vocabulary and understanding. Rather than repeal his worst precedents, Barack Obama used them as launch pads for his own abuses. And the scant discussion of Obama’s power grabs in this fall’s presidential campaigns illustrate ...
The Misplaced Fear of “Monopoly” by Thomas E. Woods Jr. November 1, 2012 Those of us who get drawn, often against our better judgment, into Internet debates soon discover that the case against the market economy in the popular mind boils down to a few major claims. Here I intend to dissect one of them: under the unhampered market we’d be at the mercy of vicious monopolists. This fear can be attributed in ...
Limits on the Right to Exit: The New Slavery by Ridgway K. Foley Jr. November 1, 2012 The federal fascists respond with threats and vilification when a few knowledgeable citizens renounce their American citizenship and move — with capital and assets that they have accumulated by honest endeavor — to a more hospitable state, one that does not mulct them as rigorously by the theft benignly called taxation. The government bullies, who threaten to follow the ...
Destroying the Young with the Minimum Wage, Part 2 by Gregory Bresiger November 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 What is the case for raising the minimum wage? Supporters say it will help the low-paid worker, the teenager or the young person in his 20s, just starting out. They claim that it helps the economy because it will generate more buying power. More people at the bottom of the economic scale have more ...
Meeting Frédéric Bastiat by Martin Morse Wooster November 1, 2012 The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Volume 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics, Jacques de Guenin, general editor, and Jane Willems and Michael Willems, translators (Liberty Fund 2011); 600 pages. Of all the great classical liberal thinkers, Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) remains one of the least well-known. His works, of course, continue to be ...
George McGovern Reconsidered by Tim Kelly October 31, 2012 The late George McGovern will probably be most remembered as the man who suffered the worst defeat of any presidential candidate in United States history. In 1972, he lost 49 states, including his home state of South Dakota, to the incumbent Richard M. Nixon. The electoral drubbing would make McGovern the butt of more than a few political jokes, and ...
Conservatives and Medical Freedom by Laurence M. Vance October 30, 2012 If there is one thing that Republicans all over the country who are running for House and Senate seats in the upcoming election have in common, it is their opposition to Obamacare. A litmus test of their conservative bona fides is their commitment to repealing Obamacare. Although the House of Representatives has voted to repeal Obamacare (the Patient Protection and ...