Politics & Rights

[caption id="attachment_1809" align="alignright" width="228"] Wikipedia Commons[/caption] “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” cried Wall Street Occupiers. The sentiment is true, but it explains nothing. Remember that the federal government also bailed out the auto unions and, more recently, more underwater homeowners. On Wednesday President Obama spoke to students…

We can’t wait,” says President Obama. Among other things, he insists, the federal government must expand the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) to federally guarantee low interest rates for more “underwater” homeowners who seek to refinance their mortgages. But the program should not be expanded, it should be scrapped. The…

Many “Occupy Wall Street” protesters oppose the bailouts of failed banks and financial institutions. They are right to do so: such bailouts violate rights by forcibly transferring wealth from some people to others via taxes, deficit spending (future taxes), and monetary expansion (hidden taxes). At the same time, however, many…

As part of the left’s ongoing assault on productive Americans, Sen. Harry Reid is leading the senate Democrats in an effort to impose a new 5.6 percent surtax on people making a million dollars or more. This is economically stupid and morally wrong. Generally speaking, people who make a million…

I would merrily accept a simple national sales tax as a replacement for the income tax—only if it followed the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment. John Keel seems to misunderstand the purpose of my initial article about the so-called “Fair Tax.” I did not endorse the income tax over a…

[We received the following letter from John Keel regarding a recent post by Ari Armstrong, and we’re posting it here with Mr. Keels' permission. Mr. Armstrong will reply shortly. –Ed.] In his post “Fair Tax Looks Ugly in the Details,” Ari Armstrong makes several claims that I regard as false.…

While the “Occupy Wall Street” movement offers little in the way of a coherent message, it tends to demonize corporations (while using myriad corporate products to organize the protests), demand more political handouts and economic controls, and attack capitalism. Once in a while, though, the “occupiers” offer a tidbit that,…

No wonder so many Americans want to abolish the income tax and the IRS along with it. The IRS pries into our earnings, our daily spending habits, even our mileage records. The nightmarishly indecipherable tax code imposes huge compliance costs, along with the risks of arbitrary persecution for innocent errors.…

Nina Shea’s recent article, “Saudis' Vile, State-Sponsored Textbooks,” reveals nothing new, but the old news it relays is worth dusting off and shouting from the rooftops every now and then. It’s particularly relevant, for instance, in connection with the Saudis’ and other Islamist regimes’ agitations for Palestinian statehood and their…

The Agence France-Presse reports that North Korean defectors recently testified in front of a U.S congressional panel, recounting the horrors they experienced under the communist regime. One of the defectors, Kim Hye-Sook, who was taken to a prison camp when she was 13 because her grandfather had escaped to South…