Just The Numbers, Mam
By: Les Dunaway
An article by Alberto Mingardi was published in the Friday 23 March 2012 Wall Street Journal titled The European Union According to Hayek. It is an impressive, short summary of key ideas from Friedrich Hayek and an explanation of how Hayek predicted the collapse of the EU, which we are now witnessing. Notice that Mingardi refers to the breakdown of the European … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
In 2011, the best team in baseball on paper was the Philadelphia Phillies. Indeed, virtually every sports commentator expected the Phillies to win their division, pennant, and the World Series. On the other hand, no one gave the St. Louis Cardinals much of a chance. In fact, with 31 games to go, the Cardinals were ten and a half games behind the Atlanta Braves in their … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
2012 will be an historic election – no matter what happens. Right now, all eyes remain fixed on the GOP nomination. In November, the world will focus on the Presidential election to see whether President Barack Obama can get reelected. But, on November 6, 2012, control of another branch of government – the Congress – will also be at play.
Currently, Republicans control the United States … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
ONE BILLION DOLLARS. That is how much the State of Georgia spends every year on corrections. According to the Report of the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform for Georgians, “[d]uring the past two decades, the prison population in Georgia has more than doubled to nearly 56,000. …If current policies remain in place, analysis indicates that Georgia’s prison population will rise by another 8 percent to … Read more...
By: Les Dunaway
Today’s excellent Forbes article “Tim Geithner Covers for Corruption On Pennsylvania Avenue” by Charles Kadlec inspired me to dig into my pile of “Why the Crash?” writings. Mr Kradlec does an excellent job of summarizing the various crimes that led to the crash, so what I’ve collected here is, mostly, for detail and a clearer look at the perpetrators.
The top line summary of the … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
One of the most difficult challenges in the world of politics is separating fact from opinion. Candidates throw around facts like they were candy. Campaigns twist and turn facts to make the most innocent remark into a horrible thing. How is a voter to differentiate between fact and fiction?
Well, newspapers thought about this and came up with a clever marketing ploy. They created something called … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
In 1984, Vice President Walter Mondale was 40 delegates short of the number of delegates necessary to win the Democratic Presidential nomination. It was the last time that a national party convention opened without its Presidential nominee having been decided by its state primaries and caucuses. Mondale easily won the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, only to lose decisively to President Ronald Reagan in the … Read more...
I think the Goldman Sachs story epitomizes destructive jungle-ethics financialism as opposed to constructive free-market capitalism. We and our country need and must have a revival of capitalism but I fear that will not be possible for as long as we have no-ethics, no personal honor kleptoparasites running the show in Washington and jungle-ethics financialists running the show on Wall Street.
A revival of true and actual free-market capitalism is … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
With just 11 months remaining in his current term, President Obama announced drastic cuts in the U.S. military, including proposed significant reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The announcement comes as Iran proclaims, publicly and defiantly, that it is much closer to its own production of nuclear fuel; and as Russia continues its steady march to return as an equal military superpower after President Ronald Reagan … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
As Americans wait for Republicans to pick their nominee against President Barack Obama, there is an important subtext emerging for 2012. With the federal debt mounting, and the recovery remaining sluggish (at best), Americans increasingly wonder “is anyone in Washington, D.C. actually doing anything – especially their job?”
In response to this question, an enormous public relations battle and political tug-of-war is going on between President … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
The average person does not know who Jim Wooten is. Yet, every insider, pundit, politician, and elected official knows exactly who he is. He was a conservative columnist with the Atlanta Journal Constitution (“AJC”). With little fanfare last year, Jim Wooten retired. He was one of the last credible columnists of Georgia’s most liberal newspaper.
Somehow, it just does not seem right that the Georgia … Read more...
By: J. Randolph Evans
In Georgia, Republican lawyers have always been a small and inconsequential lot. One hundred and fifty years of Democratic rule meant that as a practical matter their opinions were not worth much.
The fate of Republican lawyers started to change some as Republican Presidents came along with Presidential appointments to the federal bench and U.S. Attorneys’ offices. Even then, their influence was pretty weak because the … Read more...