Daily Articles

Is There a Right to Earn a Living?

by George Leef September 3, 2011

The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law by Timothy Sandefur (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2010) Is there a right to earn a living? Most Americans would answer, “Of course there is, but ...” Following that “but” you would get a long list of exceptions and qualifications that whittle away at the right, such as “but ...

Freedom by Jury

by Rich Schwartzman September 2, 2011

We should be celebrating September 5 with at least as much exuberance and respect as we celebrate July 4 or Thanksgiving. It’s Jury Rights Day. Little is made of the date. Most people are completely unaware of its historic significance and have never heard that jurors have rights. Yet it was on that date in 1670 when a group of ...

Libya Is Nothing for Obama to Be Proud Of

by Sheldon Richman September 2, 2011

A fascinating example of the mindset of American mainstream journalists is provided by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote a glowing piece this week praising the U.S. government’s humanitarian intervention in Libya. It’s entitled “Thank You, America!” Kristof’s article comes across as a glorious paean to the U.S. government — how good and wonderful the government ...

Debt and Financial Repression

by Tim Kelly September 1, 2011

Despite all the Sturm und Drang surrounding this summer’s debate concerning the debt limit, there was never any doubt that Congress would vote to increase it. It was all political theater because there was never the political will on Capitol Hill to impose the kind of spending cuts that would have been necessary had it not been raised. So the ...

Paul Krugman and Military Keynesianism

by Tim Kelly August 30, 2011

The Princeton economist Paul Krugman recently appeared on CNN’s GPS hosted by Fareed Zakaria and offered up this pearl of economic wisdom: It’s very hard to get inflation in a depressed economy. But if you had a program of government spending plus an expansionary policy by the Fed, you could get that. So, if you think about using all of ...

The Unessential Air Service Program

by Laurence M. Vance August 30, 2011

During the Great Depression, the New Deal program known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) paid certain farmers not to grow corn, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, and tobacco in order to control their supply and drive up their prices. The money paid to farmers came from a tax imposed on processors of farm products. In the Soviet Union that ...

Restoring Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 30, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Now that the celebrations over the killing of Osama bin Laden have died down, reality is setting in for the American people. It is slowly dawning on them that the killing wont make any difference whatsoever and, in fact, might even make things worse for them. The occupations of Iraq ...

Can Kuwait Break the Guantánamo Deadlock?

by Andy Worthington August 30, 2011

As the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, those hoping for the closure of the “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo, which was and remains the most notorious emblem of the Bush administration’s excessive and misguided response to the attacks, are wondering how the prison will ever close. Because of a combination of cowardice on the part ...

Pressing the Statist Quo

by Rich Schwartzman August 29, 2011

The question was blunt: “Why are libertarians so off-putting?” I’m not sure what I said exactly in response or how I said it. I was too busy forcing myself to be polite. It happened at last year’s Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s and the question came from my sister’s mother-in-law. I had the urge to scream that members of the ...

After bin Laden

by Sheldon Richman August 28, 2011

Osama bin Laden is gone, yet controversy will rage for a long while. There are many questions, and complete answers are not likely to be forthcoming. Was the shooting necessary, or could bin Laden have been taken alive? What exactly were the orders given to the Navy SEALs? The operation appears to have been a military mission rather than a ...

Memorial Day Reflections and Revisionism

by James Bovard August 26, 2011

On Memorial Day, the media do their usual sacralizing of war. Instead, it should be a day for the ritualized scourging of politicians. During the last 60 years, their lies have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of almost 100,000 thousand American soldiers and millions of foreigners. And yet, people still get teary-eyed when politicians take the stage to talk ...

Federal Reserve Grabs New Powers

by Sheldon Richman August 25, 2011

While inflation hawks understandably keep a close watch on the Federal Reserve’s money-creation activities, an equally worrisome Fed activity is taking place right under their noses. Under cover of addressing the financial crisis and recession, the Fed has become the central allocator of credit. As San Jose State University economics professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel points out in The Independent Review ...