The August 22 episode of NPR’s Tell Me More inquired into the state of America’s welfare system, taking President Clinton’s 1996 “historical overhaul” as its starting point. Guest Barbara Ehrenreich contends that the overhaul “began an era of the government washing its hands” of “the poorest of the poor.” Whatever you think about welfare as…

In the wake of Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney’s “corporations are people” gaffe, Reuters’ John F. Wasik points out what ought to be obvious, but may not be for many Americans. “The ‘people’ Washington helps most,” he argues, are “big corporations,” noting the “infinite amounts of money” big business spends “to purchase politicians, legislation and…

Tom Knapp on new developments in the information war.

Free culture activist Nina Paley, in a recent cartoon, parodies the philosophy behind “intellectual property.” EUNICE:  “Copying a song instead of buying a copy is stealing!”  MIMI: “Doing  for yourself what you could pay someone else to do is stealing!”  BOTH:  “Competition is theft!” Unfortunately, Nina was preempted by reductio creep: The tendency of real world…

Kevin Carson on Soylent Gree … er, corporations.

I wish very much that I could report the riots now tearing across England as the opening gambit of anarchist revolution. Unfortunately, I can’t. The riots appear ideologically inchoate: They are a phenomenon born of rage, and rage is irrational, no matter the reason or unreason of the original spark (the killing, by police, of…

Matt Yglesias, some time back, summarized Bruno Bezard’s resume (“Where Socialism Lives,” Think Progress, April 18, 2010). Besides senior posts at various economic and industrial policy ministries and the Treasury, he held directorships at the France Telecom Group, Renault, Air France-KLM, and France Televisions. “Try to imagine,” Yglesias asked, “an American having Bruno Bezard’s official biography.”…

Tom Knapp on the “debt ceiling deal” and the ensuing stock market crash.

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…