It can be a bittersweet moment when truth is all that's left. Suspicions of infidelity become credit card receipts from a no-tell motel. A Facebook post tells of a meal shared when a business trip was scheduled. It is ugly, especially the certainty you were lied to by someone you once trusted, especially when that person wanted to be President of the United States. Two such instances that deserve notice passed through the mainstream media last week with barely a notice. The first is that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee lied about Russiagate. Hillary paid experts to...
regulation
Trade Restrictions Are Depriving Our Infants of Formula
For parents who rely on baby formula—whether by choice or due to medical necessity—the nationwide baby formula shortage has become increasingly difficult to ignore. According to the Wall Street Journal, Walgreens, Target, CVS, and Kroger have all begun rationing supplies of formula. Covid lockdowns, combined with a product recall by formula manufacturer Abbott Nutrition has created a very real shortage in a product that is key for proper nutrition in many children. With the shortage has come the usual half-baked bromides about "evil corporations" and how baby formula companies are...
Joe Biden Blames Everyone for Inflation (Except Himself)
Speaking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, President Joe Biden on Tuesday morning declared inflation to be his top “domestic priority” and insisted that inflation would not be a problem were it not for covid and the war in Ukraine. There was little room, however, for any sound economics in a speech that was little more than a campaign speech for the ruling Democratic Party in an election year in which the party looks to take a beating at the ballot box. In truth, it is the U.S. regime itself—and the regime's central bank—that is the real cause of today's galloping inflation....
The Evil of Economic Regulation
In the Yucatan, we stayed at several all-inclusive resorts. These resorts were a good fit for my family: When you’re travelling in a Third World country with four kids during a pandemic, you want a convenient supply of abundant and tasty food – and enough variety to please each and every picky eater. (Me included). Since portions were smallish, we routinely ordered 12-15 dinners for dinner, all at zero marginal cost. At least in Mexican resorts, tips are appreciated but not expected. Economically speaking, there’s a straightforward win-win case for these Mexican resorts: Not only do...
What Rothbard Has to Say About Today’s War Collectivism
Readers of Murray Rothbard's articles and speeches on war collectivism will immediately recognize the progressive pietist fervor surrounding today's progressive war jingoism: everywhere is Ukraine! The atavistic need to analogize today's situation to 1938, with Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler and war skeptics as Neville Chamberlain at Munich, is proof of this. The lessons of 1914, where a series of tragic blunders turned a regional conflict into a conflagration across Europe, are far more apposite. The obvious interest for the U.S. is containment of the war as a terrible but internecine...
Et Tu, Heritage?
Heritage Foundation’s Research Technology Fellow Kara Fredrick’s recent paper, “Combating Big Tech Totalitarianism A Road Map,” is an about face from where the think tank stood just two years ago—and a major departure from where the Hertiage Foundation has stood for decades regarding intervention into markets. This ideological turn places the Heritage Foundation with Trump era conservatives whose populist anger at private technology companies has lead them to support using antitrust and other government regulation to crack down on “Big Tech.” Consequently, Fredrick urges the federal...
An Indictment of ‘Public Health’
We live in an age of public health. Even in countries with private sector health care, government regulates and steers the practice of medicine. On the surface this may seem a positive. In theory it's an established framework to protect the patient and practitioners from injury and risks. It exists to coordinate in times of widespread crisis and can act as an impartial entity to protect those who are vulnerable. It can also act as the moral heart of a nation, determining the ethics and values in such a manner to guide those who are at times pragmatic or emotionally exposed when decisions...
The Case Against ‘Uyghur Genocide’
In Xinjiang, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is conducting perhaps the most intensive program of social engineering in recent history. It is probably trampling on the human rights of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities, systemically and by design and randomly through abuses in the system. It might be committing crimes against humanity. It is not, however, committing genocide. Accusations of genocide against the Uyghurs have become a staple of anti-China campaigning in the West, not because of the merits of the case, but because of the convenience it offers to anti-PRC messaging and...
Jimmy Carter, the Great Deregulator
One way President Biden can “Build Back Better” is following the example of one of the greatest deregulators to sit in the Oval Office: Jimmy Carter. Whilst most think of Carter as a standard New Deal-Great Society liberal, deregulation was a major part of Carter’s economic agenda and one of the greatest aspects of his legacy. It’s something that Carter and Reagan had in common, not something that set them apart. Carter—and other leading progressives at the time such as Ralph Nader—understood the Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules. Regulation frequently, if not always,...
Demonizing Those Who Drive for Freedom
The denigration of the Canadian trucker protest convoy exemplifies how freedom is now the biggest villain of the COVID-19 pandemic. A Washington Post cartoonist portrayed the trucker convoy as “fascism” incarnate while another Post column derided the “toxic ‘Freedom Convoy.’” Anyone who resists any government command is apparently now a public enemy. The trucker protest was spurred by the Canadian government’s sweeping COVID vaccine mandate. Many truckers believe the risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefit and, more importantly, that they have the right to control their own bodies....