Daily Articles

Stimulus II Won’t Work, Either

by Sheldon Richman September 16, 2011

President Obama won’t use the “stimulus” label to describe his nearly half-trillion-dollar jobs bill, but that refusal can’t hide the fact that he has no idea how economies recover from recessions. “Stimulus” is a tainted label because his $800 billion bill in 2009 was a failure. His economic team promised that passing that bill would keep unemployment from exceeding ...

Endless Evil: The Drug Wars Continuing Collateral Damage, Part 2

by Radley Balko September 15, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 “The Fourth Amendment has been virtually repealed by court decisions,” Yale law professor Steven Duke told Wired magazine in 2000, “most of which involve drug searches.” The rise of no-knock raids and SWAT teams is one example (discussed in part one of this series), but there are others. James Bovard once wrote, for example, of the almost comically ...

Give Me Doubleplusgood or Give Me Death!

by Wendy McElroy September 15, 2011

George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, got a few things wrong — for example, the date. But he was dead-on in depicting the cause-and-effect relationship between language and politics, between language and our ability to think clearly; the process of using words as social control was called Newspeak. What cannot be expressed cannot be effectively understood or opposed. Neutralizing language ...

The Jacob Hornberger Show: September 10, 2011 (video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 13, 2011

The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.

Antitrust Is Central Planning

by Laurence M. Vance September 13, 2011

Child safety, national security, national defense, counterterrorism, and consumer protection — by invoking one of these terms, the federal government can do almost anything and the public will not just go along with it, but accept it as good and necessary. Under the guise of consumer protection, the U.S. government is seeking to block the merger of two companies — ...

Trumping Protectionism

by Robert Murphy September 12, 2011

Although he’s no longer a contender for the 2012 Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s short-lived proto-campaign was notable for its extreme China-bashing. Because such mercantilist and xenophobic sentiments may get only worse as the economy slumps along, it’s worthwhile to point out exactly why Trump’s proclamations made little sense and in fact were internally contradictory. At the height of his popularity ...

Obama’s War on Prosperity and Freedom

by James Bovard September 12, 2011

On September 7, 2011, James Bovard gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundations Economic Liberty Lecture Series. The speech can viewed below in its entirety. James Bovard is the author of nine books, including Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), The Bush Betrayal (2004), and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994). He has written for ...

The Freedoms Defended Since 9/11

by Anthony Gregory September 9, 2011

“Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward,” said George W. Bush on September 11, 2011. “And freedom will be defended.” President Obama apparently agrees that the U.S. government’s response to 9/11 has been to defend freedom. This past Memorial Day he announced, “From Gettysburg to Kandahar, America’s sons and daughters have served with honor and distinction, securing ...

Ten Years After 9/11, America Deserves Better than Dick Cheney’s Self-Serving Autobiography

by Andy Worthington September 9, 2011

On August 30, when In My Time, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s self-serving autobiography was published, the timing was pernicious. Cheney knows by now that every time he opens his mouth to endorse torture or to defend Guantánamo, the networks welcome him, and newspapers lavish column inches on his opinions, even though astute editors and programmers must ...

9/11 and the National Security Scam

by Sheldon Richman September 9, 2011

National security is a scam — an $8 trillion scam. That’s the amount spent since September 11, 2001, on the military, including the Iraq and Afghan wars, and “homeland security,” according to Christopher Hellman of the National Priorities Project. If “veterans benefits, future costs for treating the war-wounded, and interest payments on war-related borrowing” are added, Hellman writes, the cost ...

Stockholm and the Kidnapped Citizenry

by Rich Schwartzman September 8, 2011

Individual men and women don’t need enemies. Many want a challenge with an opponent, someone with whom to compete cooperatively, but not an enemy. Governments, however, do need enemies to get their citizenry to submit to coercion. Some of us accept that as almost axiomatic, a self-evident fact that’s so blatant we can’t understand why the rest of society doesn’t ...

An Orgy of Make-Work for Bureaucrats and Lawyers

by Wendy McElroy September 7, 2011

New Jersey has provided a blueprint on how not to solve a social problem. The blueprint will almost certainly create a barrage of new difficulties without relieving the old one. The “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act” took effect on September 1. The New York Times (August 30) reported, “Under a new state law in New Jersey, ...