How FDR Promoted Racial Segregation by Jim Powell March 17, 2009 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a reputation as a friend of black people, yet he signed laws that promoted racial segregation throughout the United States. The laws were supposed to promote “affordable housing.” Until the 1930s, buying a home required making a down payment equal to a quarter or a third of ...
The Nobodies Known as Former Enemy Combatants by Andy Worthington March 16, 2009 Changing the names of things was a ploy that was used by the Bush administration in an attempt to justify some of its least palatable activities. In response to the 9/11 attacks, for instance, the nation was not involved in a limited pursuit of a group of criminals responsible for the attacks, but instead embarked on an open-ended “war ...
FDR, the Great Court-Packer by Jim Powell March 10, 2009 FDR won the 1936 presidential election with more than 27 million votes, compared to 16 million for his Republican opponent Alf Landon. FDR won the Electoral College vote by an even bigger margin — 523 to 8. He concluded that he could do anything, and he over-reached, triggering a harsh reaction ...
Why the U.S. Under Obama Is Still a Dictatorship? by Andy Worthington March 9, 2009 Two weeks ago, when the Obama administration announced that it was bringing to an end the disturbing isolation endured by Ali al-Marri, a U.S. resident who has been held without charge or trial for seven years and two months — and who, most worryingly, has spent the last five years and nine months as an “enemy combatant” in ...
The Cruel Isolation of America’s “Enemy Combatant” by Andy Worthington March 2, 2009 Last Thursday, U.S. resident Ali al-Marri, the last “enemy combatant” on the U.S. mainland, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Peoria, Illinois, for providing material support for terrorism, bringing to an end the Qatari national’s disturbing imprisonment for five years and eight months without charge or trial in a state of solitary confinement that is unprecedented in ...
Spending Our Way to Wealth and Prosperity by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2009 One of the most ludicrous policy prescriptions issued by federal officials is the one that exhorts the citizenry to spend more money to get the nation out of a recession. That’s the key to national economic prosperity, government officials exclaim. “Go to the mall and shop,” they tell people. If people will just spend, spend, and spend some more, ...
The Madoff Scandal Exposes Government Failure by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2009 A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains. This of course is evidence of a rigged game. The government can’t possibly monitor and regulate absolutely every transaction that ...
Boundless Ignorance versus Self-Government by James Bovard March 1, 2009 Modern democracy is based on faith that the people can control what they do not understand. As government has grown by leaps and bounds, “government by the people” has become one of the great fairy tales of our times. As the Founding Fathers feared, citizen ignorance often brings out the worst in their rulers. Contemporary ...
The Fallacies of Another New Deal, Part 1 by William L. Anderson March 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As the financial panics on Wall Street seem to be never-ending, a lot of commentators are openly asking whether the United States will slide into something akin to the Great Depression of nearly 80 years ago. Certainly, there is real fear in the air, and at this writing, the current ...
Two Ways to Fight an Economic Depression by Gregory Bresiger March 1, 2009 “There was a depression in 1920? Really?” That was the comment I received recently from a smart, usually well-informed editor. Yes, there was a depression. But it was over so fast that few people seem to have heard of it. Yet almost everyone knows about the Great ...
Obama’s Uninformed Optimism by Sheldon Richman February 27, 2009 President Obama is optimistic that “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.” That and $5 will get you coffee at Starbucks — until inflation kicks in. In his appearance before Congress, Obama demonstrated he can give a speech. Big deal. We ...
Socialism’s “Fatal Conceit” by Ralph R. Reiland February 25, 2009 The appeal of socialism, wrote Nobel-winning economist F. A. Hayek, “depends on the instinctual appeal of promised consequences.” The problem, argued Hayek, is that “socialism cannot possibly do what it promises.” Socialism fails, unavoidably, because it is based on the flawed concept, the “fatal conceit,” that one man or one group, ...