The current financial crisis has been cast as a failure of the left by the right, and failure of the right by the left. Did laissez faire capitalism fail or was it excessive taxation or regulation? Perhaps it was a combination. I use “left” and “right” here strictly in the context of capitalism, with “right”…
I’ve been watching television with a certain amount of amusement as various reporters try to create news and then discuss the news they’ve created with reference to President-Elect Obama’s cabinet and other appointments. But what interests me is the great surprise that the president-elect may appoint former rival Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Besides…
As an exercise in brevity, some things that occurred to me while watching political TV and reading the blogs: An economic expert is one who provides the arguments that allow me to get what I want. An incompetent economist is one that says I can’t have it. The entire argument is based on need. The…
In an MSNBC story today Senator Jeff Sessions, from our neighboring state of Alabama is quoted: Fellow Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions also opposes helping the auto industry. “Once we cross the divide from financial institutions to individual corporations, truly, where would you draw the line?” Just a second here. Line? What line? Look in…
A corollary of the fundamental idea of a free market is caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. I look at that from a slightly different angle than usual, not as an indictment of the free market, but rather as a statement of its driving force–the decisions of buyers. As a buyer, you vote every day…
Mark has issued a kind of challenge in his things heard post today on Stones Cry Out, regarding the Obama administration’s intent to require public service in high school and college and improve it everywhere else. He points to this post by D. A. Ridgeley at Positive Liberty which quotes Change.gov as saying: The Obama…
Since I had decided long ago what my vote would be, and the man I thought the better (though not nearly perfect) candidate won, it was enjoyable for me to watch. I really don’t want to dwell on the details. The greatest problem for President-Elect Barack Obama may not be any of the crises with…
I have been fascinated by politics for as long as I can remember. The first presidential campaign I recall thinking and talking about was in 1968 when I was 11 years old, though I had certainly read and talked about many. There was never any doubt that I would register to vote as soon as…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I’m never one to shrink from producing a thousand words–or ten! I wonder what a video is worth? A certain number of words per frame? In any case, I wrote earlier about God being mocked in the campaign and I even commented on how “In…
I’m interested in how one can take a rather ordinary set of proposals and make them incendiary just by providing a label. And sorry, my conservative friends, I don’t buy into the “but he really is a socialist” line. The basis of the socialism charge is specific–Obama’s tax plans–and a response to that particular point…
