How The West Was Shunned In Primary Politics

by Froma Harrop.   There's a not-insignificant part of the United States known as the West Coast. It includes such prominent states as California, Oregon and Washington. These states have yet to hold a single presidential primary or caucus. But at 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, this population center of 50 million-plus souls was informed that the ... MORE

Glenn Reynolds: Cash Is The Currency Of Freedom

Facilitating voluntary transactions.      Former Treasury secretary Larry Summers wants to get rid of the $100 bill. But I think he has it exactly backward. I think we need to restore the $500 and $1000 bills. And the reason is that people like Larry Summers have done a horrible job. Summers wrote recently in The Washington Post that the $100  ... MORE

Robert Epstein: The New Mind Control

What you don't know can hurt you.    The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do. Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel (1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a    ... MORE

New York Yankees Don't Understand The Free Market

by Anthony L. Fisher.     The New York Yankees are known for being Major League Baseball's financial juggernaut, taking in monstrous amounts of revenue while putting out rosters with payrolls that frequently push the $200 million mark. Historically, they have unapologetically embraced capitalism, usually to the benefit of their fanbase. That is, until  ... MORE

Twitter Is Gearing Up To Interfere In The Election

by Milo Yiannopoulos.       Last week, a report from BuzzFeed claimed that Twitter was about to implement an algorithmic news feed, a departure from the chronologically-ordered tweets which users have grown accustomed to, and by which the platform is defined. CEO Jack Dorsey sought to calm users by saying they had no plans to implement  ... MORE

John Stossel: High-Tech Ted

Politicians tailor their messages to different audiences. Facing New Hampshire's primary, Ted Cruz talked more about "free-market principles" and a "commitment to the Constitution" and said "no one personality can right the wrongs done by Washington." Politico ran the headline "Ted Cruz, born-again libertarian." I'm skeptical.      ... MORE 

Richard Ebeling: The Proper Role Of Government In Society

Individual rights must be preserved   - without interference from government. What is the role of government in society? This has been and remains the most fundamental question in all political discussions and debates. Its answer determines the nature of the social order and how people are expected and allowed to interact with one another   ... MORE

Sheldon Richman: This Is Where The State Leads

Who does the system serve, you ask? Government is more than a territorial monopoly on aggressive force. It's also the heir to a centuries-old manufactured mystique, reinforced through its schools and other institutions, regarding its sanctity and sacrosanctity. The mystique is generated by and tends to manifest itself in the dogma that   ... MORE

VIDEO: How Donald Trump Answers A Question

The Sudden But Well-Deserved Fall Of Rahm Emanuel

by Rick Perlstein.    It’s hard to remember a time when Rahm Emanuel wasn’t a Democratic Party superstar. Go back to 1991, when the thirty-two-year-old took over fund-raising for Bill Clinton. He  was soon renowned for making the staff come to work on Sundays, shrieking into the phone to donors things like “Five thousand dollars is an insult! You’re a   ... MORE

Danny Vinik: Obama’s Effort To ‘Nudge’ America

Government using behavioral science to shape behavior.  For the past year, the Obama administration has been running an experiment: Is it possible to make policy more effective by using psychology on citizens? The nickname is “nudging”—the idea that policymakers can change people’s behavior just by presenting choices or information      ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: The 'Affordable Housing' Fraud

Housing is unaffordable BECAUSE of politicians.  Nowhere has there been so much hand-wringing over a lack of "affordable housing," as among politicians and others in coastal California. And nobody has done more to make housing unaffordable than those same politicians and their supporters. A recent survey showed that the average monthly     ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Hunt Lions To Save Lions

Guy Bentley: Good News For Cronies: Study Shows Regulations Are Strangling New Businesses At Birth

Protecting incumbent businesses from competition. Businesses are being strangled at birth and prevented from hiring workers, according to a new study looking at regulations across 215 industries. Using data on the extent of federal regulations, the Mercatus Center finds that a 10 percent increase in regulation leads to 0.5 percent fewer firm   ... MORE

Zeynep Tufekci: Why ‘Smart’ Objects May Be A Dumb Idea

Creating vulnerability.   A fridge that puts milk on your shopping list when you run low. A safe that tallies the cash that is placed in it. A sniper rifle equipped with advanced computer technology for improved accuracy. A car that lets you stream music from the Internet. All of these innovations sound great, until you learn the risks that this type of connect-   ... MORE

A Dictatorship Disguised As A Democracy

by John W. Whitehead.     Peeling back the surface layer: What most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted   ... MORE

Do We Want High Prices Or Low Prices?

by Fernando Herrera-Gonzalez.      Prices should be signals, not manipulations. In an almost daily debate over economic and monetary policy politicians complain if prices — such as home prices — do not rise, and some complain if they think other prices — such as health care prices — are going up too much. This situation begs the question:    ... MORE

The Hidden Privacy Threat of … Flashlight Apps?

by Robert McMillian. When I downloaded the Flashlight app to my iPhone, I was in a jam. I was camping, I think. Or maybe a pen had rolled under my couch. I remember that smug sense of self-congratulation after I downloaded the software, which converted the iPhone’s LED flash into a steady and bright beam of light. But I shouldn't have been so   ... MORE

Rigged Gold Price Distorts Perception of Economic Reality

by Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler.    The Federal Reserve and its bullion bank agents (JP Morgan, Scotia, and HSBC) have been using naked short-selling to drive down the price of gold since September 2011. The latest containment effort began in mid-July of this year, after gold had moved higher in price from the beginning of June and   ... MORE