Living as I do in Arkansas, I’m privileged to read the commentary of Bradley Gitz, a conservative columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette who occasionally makes libertarian noises. I wish there was a Thomas Sowell Award For By-the-Numbers Regurgitation Of Republican Talking Points, so I could nominate Mr. Gitz. In his column of July 31, Gitz…
Politicians say the darnedest things. On a daily basis they regale us with fairy tales like “the best way to prevent a humanitarian crisis is to bomb that country’s already starving and demoralized populace back to the Stone Age,” or “the best way to get the economy going is for me to steal half your…
Democracy is great, when people genuinely participate in making decisions about things that affect them. But it seldom works out that way. Once a formally democratic entity gets large enough to require government by representatives and a permanent administrative apparatus, it ceases to be “democratic” in anything but that formal sense. This results from what…
Tom Knapp on the developing Anarchist Scare.
“Syrian security forces,” reports BBC News, “have cracked down on anti-government protests across the country, killing 100 people in the city of Hama alone.” These most recent reports come after months of protests, inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings in other countries, that led to the removal of leaders long in power. Throughout the violence,…
Amidst the continuing debate over the debt ceiling, with the deadline looming, CNNMoney reports the “worst week of 2011” for stocks, citing stagnant growth numbers for the second quarter. Analysts at one bank, the Zurich, Switzerland-based Credit Suisse, have even predicted that, if the federal government defaults on its payments, U.S. stock prices “could tumble…
The people had their revolution stolen out from under them by Sachs and his ilk.
Tom Knapp on Washington’s “debt ceiling” melodrama.
Late last year, I called the first shots in Cyber World War One. I got the timing completely wrong. In fact, I was off by about 27 years. The real first shot in that war — heard ’round the world and widely lauded, but its implications not really understood — was fired in 1984 by…
Darian Worden on the ATF and Drug War violence.
Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn joins the long list of CEOs calling Barack Obama “anti-business,” denouncing him as “the greatest wet blanket to business, progress and job creation in my lifetime.” Obama’s rhetoric is the kind of thing we hear only from “pure socialists.” In February 3M CEO George Buckley called Obama’s instincts “Robin…
“Employer groups,” The Washington Post reports, “turned out in force Monday to challenge rules proposed by the National Labor Relations Board that would streamline the process for holding union elections and make it easier for workers to organize.” The article observes that private sector union membership has fallen nearly 30 percent over the past 60…
The Center for American Progress, a progressive, DC-based think tank, celebrated July 21 as “Consumers’ Independence Day.” The date marks the official birthday of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a new federal government agency developed to “protect and educate buyers of financial products.” CAP is certainly right that consumers, that vague but vulnerable group,…
Through the mid-fifteenth century, access to land in the typical English village was regulated on the so-called “open-field” model. Village lands were the common property of peasant communes, and occupancy right to arable land was periodically redivided between families, with each family receiving a number of strips in each field proportionate to its size. Access rights…
Kevin Carson on dealing with the pigs.
David S. D’Amato on the global debt crisis of statism.
Kevin Carson: “In order for capitalism to exist — i.e., for a rentier class to live off the income from property — the state must intervene in the market to prevent market competition from spontaneously creating socialism.”
Kevin Carson on the futility of political action in comparison to productive direct action.
David S. D’Amato on unrest in India.
David S. D’Amato points to Afghanistan and explains that positions of arbitrary political power ought to be abolished rather than filled.
