“We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review.” — Barack Obama, Jan. 6, 2009. Perhaps Mr. Obama is the leader of some political party other than that of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Hawthorne, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Barbary Coast.
Fortuitously, I recently stumbled on a copy of Henry Hazlitt’s “The Failure of the ‘New Economics’”, 1959, reprinted 1973. The ‘New Economics’ referred to by the esteemed Mr. Hazlitt — who replaced H.L. Mencken as editor of The American Mercury in 1933 and joined the New York Times in 1934, writing financial and economic editorials […]
Preening that Nevada could lead the nation in linking job creation to energy efficiency, state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford detailed his “green jobs” initiative to a legislative panel in Carson City last Friday. SB152 would use federal stimulus funds to train an estimated 3,200 workers at a cost of about $3,500 each, and cover […]
On Jan. 10, Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten penned a column on the recent tumble of the nation’s 401(k) tax-deferred retirement accounts. “There’s been little discussion of the way in which this economic implosion has exposed the utter failure of the now-ubiquitous 401(k) retirement accounts,” Mr. Rutten offered. “In fact, the entire 401(k) system […]
Famously, the new president, Barack Obama, argued in his inaugural address last week “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works. … Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.” Given that not […]
“Corruptissima republica plurimae leges,” warned Publius Cornelius Tacitus, the Roman senator and historian: “The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.” “If you have ten thousands regulations, you destroy all respect for the law,” agreed the similarly pragmatic Winston Churchill, a few millennia later.
At hearings in Las Vegas Tuesday, Nevadans who have lost their jobs or their homes — or both — told a federal panel that $700 billion transferred to their Wall Street pals by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and (Federal Reserve) Inflation Secretary Ben Bernanke have done nothing to improve financial conditions outside New York. The […]
Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt — the latter continued and amplified the former’s policies in a kind of one-two punch, as revealed in Murray Rothbard’s “The Great Depression” — did all the wrong things from 1930 to 1938. In an environment of surplus labor but collapsing capital and credit, free-market entrepreneurs put people back to […]
It’s hard to write about politics of any kind in a “straddler” column — one keyboarded in early October to appear on most newsstands the week AFTER a national election. As I write this, the autumn 2008 global stock and financial swoop is well underway. The problem was caused, first, by reckless expansion of credit […]
If the job is spending money, who you gonna call? The federal government. In 2003, the Elko Daily Free Press reported Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest Supervisor Bob Vaught — pressed by a local lawmaker and others protesting the Forest Service’s actions in closing off access to the public lands in Jarbidge Canyon — admitted spending $15,000 […]