Eleven months ago, in the face of a gauntlet of headwinds that the Obama administration was creating in front of the American job creation engine, I came to the following conclusion:

“If you were an entrepreneur, or a business owner or manager with the ability to start large new initiatives, perhaps ones requiring large numbers of new employees, in the face of the above legislative uncertainty, would you dare proceed?”

The resulting economic lockup, and the trillions of private capital sitting in fear on the sidelines, has become the story of the day.

Predicting this story was not difficult, due to the nature of The Machine itself.  Driven by a lust for power, fueled by environmental extremism, economic illiteracy, and class warfare, and financed by a self-serving cycle of union cronyism, there can only be one conclusion:  The Machine is antithetical to the founding principles that made this country great, and can only produce seizure.   Here’s how it breaks down: Continue reading »

I am pleased to announce that I will be writing a column every other week at Forbes online called “On Civil Society”.

The first article is out there already, discussing the thought-provoking subject of “social business” as a possible alternative to “capitalism” in helping the world’s chronically poor.      Why the quotes around “capitalism”?  You’ll have to read the article…

Check out “How the Free Market Tames Greedy Investors” at Forbes online.

Just what happens to the mind when the bank account crosses the billion dollar mark?  Do all those dollars exert some kind of Big Government Tractor Beam that only the few can escape?   Or is it just the logical conclusion of crony capitalism?

Let’s examine two of the most influential billionaires of our times, Warren Buffett and George Soros.  One squanders opportunities to promote and enhance the system that made both of them rich, while the other actively seeks to destroy it. Continue reading »

The Lord said to Joshua, ‘See, I have handed Jericho over to you, along with its king and soldiers. ³You shall march around the city, all the warriors circling the city once. Thus you shall do for six days, ⁴with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. ⁵When they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and all the people shall charge straight ahead.’

- Joshua 6:2-5, NRSV

Here’s a story that simply needs to be retold, a modern day story of Jericho, and I believe a foreshadowing of this coming November 2nd.

As a subscriber to the Cato Institute’s monthly “Cato Audio” program, I recently listened to David Boaz, Cato’s Executive Vice President, recount a gripping sequence of events that ultimately led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.  When an entire generation of younger voters, including perhaps many who enthusiastically supported the election of Barack Obama, has little or no recollection of the Soviet Union and its attending Communism, it is a story worth knowing, and spreading. Continue reading »

Across the United States, millions of families are entering that perennial time period of anticipation, anxiety, excitement and hustle-bustle: Back To School.   In the majority of cases, parents choose their schools for their children indirectly, by moving into a neighborhood where the public schools meet their needs.  In a large minority of cases, families are stuck with the public school tied to their zip code, unable for one reason or another to move to better pastures.

In a smaller minority of cases, a private school is selected and paid for, often while simultaneously paying the local taxes that fund their would-be public school.   Some of these private schools choose their students with rigorous admission processes, where the applicants voluntarily subject themselves to all sorts of trial and tribulation, firm in their beliefs that the rewards will justify the means.

And in the tiniest minority, when like an “oversubscribed” bond offering the school has more applicants than slots, the school chooses the students randomly, by lottery.

What would make any parent reach for such a brass ring? A powerful independent documentary, “The Lottery”,  directed by Madeleine Sackler and released late in April seeks to shed some light on this situation.   It’s a film that no parent, voter, or teachers union member, should miss. Continue reading »

“All politics is local”

- Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977-1987

Oh really?    Increasingly, it seems like Washington didn’t get the memo.

In Arizona, an overwhelming majority of citizens have had their legislative directives overturned by a federal judge that towed the Obama administration’s political line.   According to an April Rasmussen poll,  70% of Arizonans (but far fewer journalists) supported their law which would have permitted local police to seek immigration status documentation in their course of work.   Note that having to provide your car registration to the police upon being pulled over for “reasonable cause” is already a widely accepted practice; being able to prove that you’re in this country legally doesn’t seem like a big stretch from there.

But this is just one of a number of increasingly high-profile interventions by the federal government into the affairs of an individual state.   Continue reading »

Is there any hotter subject for TV and film these days than the vampire?  The mass-appeal of these blood-seeking creatures appears to be at an all-time high, with shows like True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and the Twilight Saga series of books and films bringing home the bacon.

Wealth-sucking creatures that will stop at nothing...

Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the economy...

Then there are those perennial horror favorites, zombies, that defy all attempts to do them in.

It seems like Congress is trying to capitalize on the craze as well.   Witness the up-and-coming,  back-from-the-dead behavior of the Estate Tax, also known as the Death Tax, coming soon to every estate-planner’s office near you.

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Keynesian economics, that economic theory that is once again running the country, was shown to be a complete sham this past Tuesday by a fifth grade student in small Midwestern town during a routine math assignment.    The student’s teacher and school principal were impressed enough to issue a press statement, excerpted below:

“I was working on my decimal and percentage multiplication for homework”, the student said, “and I could hear my dad complaining about how his paycheck was smaller because of all the taxes they take out.  He said his check was about 75% of what he earned.   I asked him where the other 25% went and he said to the government, but that the government was spending a bunch of that money to stimulate the economy.”

“So I thought some more about that, and it occurred to me that they can’t simply take whatever they tax from my dad and spend it somewhere else, because some other moms and dads working for the government have to get paid, too.    Of my dad’s taxes, I bet they can probably only spend maybe half of that on stuff they think will grow the economy.   Continue reading »

“We’re on a mission from God.”

At least Jake and Elwood had a fallback, something they could lean on when in need of a little moral support.    When it comes to “climate change”, what and where exactly is President Obama’s support?

Addressing climate change just doesn’t rank very high with voters.   Amongst the top ten “most important issues” listed in a recent Rasmussen poll, climate change was not to be found.  And the trend on what people believe is the root cause of global warming has the planets beating the people pretty handily.

But with the remarkable live feed from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico still showing the sickening sight of oil belching into the water, one can not help but think of that please-gimme-a-Mulligan phrase from Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Dealing with the oil spill is one thing.   Making the leap from there to push a a costly “cap-and-trade” energy policy faintly associated with climate change is quite another.   It seems that rather than confronting a supposed “inconvenient truth”, Obama is attempting an inconvenient non sequitur.

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I feel slighted.  For years I’ve been going to my dentist, and not once has he come over to my house to buy anything.   Likewise, my supermarket has never offered to purchase produce from my backyard garden.   And the mechanic at the place where I get my car repaired has never had me repair one of his on my driveway.

I think I’m running a “trade deficit” with each of them.   At least that’s what I’m led to believe by listening to people who claim we have large trade deficits with certain countries, like China.

“You nimwit!”, says the ghost of my tenth grade accounting teacher.  “You’ve forgotten your T-Accounts!  All year long we drew those things on the board, and this is the thanks I get?!”

Oh, yeah, the T-Accounts…   What would the T-Accounts say about my “trade” with my dentist?

Continue reading »