Daily Articles

QE Forever and John Q. Public

by Tim Kelly October 4, 2012

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) has voted to launch a third round of quantitative easing (QE3), this time focused on purchasing as much as $40 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities. This decision to provide liquidity ad infinitum could add nearly half a trillion to the Fed’s balance sheet annually and hold the federal-funds rate near zero ...

Debates? Let’s Call Them the Agreements

by Ken Sturzenacker October 3, 2012

Are you expecting Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to express any significant difference of opinion or policy on almost any issue you can imagine? Here’s one libertarian’s view: Not bloody likely. The broadcasts of the presidential contenders facing off are far more “Agreements” than they are “Debates”. Jobs? At much lower median wages that four years ago. That’s “recovery” for you. Unemployment? ...

Government Impossible

by Laurence M. Vance October 2, 2012

Restaurant: Impossible is a popular show on the Food Network. I don’t watch much television. Not only do I have more writing projects in the works than I have time for, but the political shows on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox that I should be watching because I write about politics make me either mad or nauseated, and sometimes both. ...

Don’t Let the Aurora Shooting Curtail the Right of Self-Defense

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2012

The July shooting in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, which took 12 lives and injured 58 during the midnight premier of The Dark Knight Rises, has incited the usual bitter controversy over guns. One side says tighter gun restrictions could have prevented the horrible incident that night. The other responds that more guns in the hands of law-abiding people ...

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 ...

Obama Releases Names of Cleared Guantánamo Prisoners; Now It’s Time to Set Them Free

by Andy Worthington September 28, 2012

On September 21, as part of a court case, the Justice Department released the names of 55 of the 86 prisoners cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2009 by Barack Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, which consisted of officials from key government departments and the intelligence agencies. The Task Force’s final report was issued in January ...

The Hubris of Romney and Obama

by Sheldon Richman September 27, 2012

Mitt Romney, whose bid to unseat Barack Obama looks more desperate every day, senses he’s found a weakness in his rival. In a foreign-policy speech the other day, he blasted Obama over the upheaval in the Arab world, saying, “This is a time for a president who will shape events in the Middle East.” Romney is making two claims: that ...

Government Dependency and Corporatist America

by Tim Kelly September 26, 2012

Mitt Romney’s comment that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes and therefore are not likely to respond positively to his stated opposition to tax increases has been called a “gaffe.” This reminds me of Michael Kinsley’s quip: “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say.” Romney was only half right, ...

The Problem with Conservative Plans to Save Social Security

by Laurence M. Vance September 24, 2012

The largest expenditure of the federal government is Social Security. According to the most recent annual report of the Social Security Board of Trustees, in 2011 $725 billion in Social Security benefits were paid to 55 million Americans, plus other expenses of $11 billion. The three major entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — account for almost half ...