Last Friday, Russian prosecutors asked for a new, 14-year new prison term for the former YUKOS oil company CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev. The two are Russia’s most famous political prisoners. They have already spent seven years in jail for alleged tax violations, an accusation most legal expert find spurious. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at one point the richest Russian according to Forbes, transformed the formerly state-owned YUKOS into an exemplary western-style corporation, importing Western technology and management. He invited American business executives to run YUKOS, while its …
The USA Today has a much needed article out today on the vulnerability of our nation to Electromagnetic pulses (EMP). Unfortunately the author doesn’t seem to understand the limitations of deterrence against a terrorist EMP attack. The USA Today reports: In the nuclear scenario, the detonation of an atomic bomb anywhere from 25 to 500 miles high electrifies, or ionizes, the atmosphere about 25 miles up, triggering a series of electromagnetic pulses. The pulse’s reach varies with the size of the bomb, the height of its blast and design.
Back in 2004, then Senate candidate Barack Obama delivered a powerful speech on the floor of the Democratic Convention challenging our country to shatter the idea that we are a divided people. Obama went on to say that this country is not a country of Black America, or Hispanic America or White America, but a United States of America. “We are one America,” Obama would go on to say culminating a speech that would go on to eventually propel him as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 2008. Six …
According to a recent White House video explaining the administration’s opposition to extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee claims: “If you ask objective economists and analysts around the country about what is effective you will find that everyone agrees that these giant tax cuts for very high income people are the least effective thing that we can do to get the economy growing.” Everyone agrees? If your definition of objective economists is limited to the White House’s economic team, then perhaps this …
Next January the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is set to issue new regulations on emissions from boilers used in facilities like oil refineries, paper mills, and shopping malls. The EPA claims their new regulations will only cost the economy $9.5 billion by 2013. But the American Chemistry Council says the cost will surpass $20 billion and kill 800,000 jobs. Who is right? We don’t know. But what we do know is that if you total up all of the new regulations already passed by the Obama administration last year, using …
A common promise among politicians is to “run the government more like a business.” The Obama Administration seems to have promised to have “government run more businesses.” The latest in the line of government takeovers and mandates is the proposal to subject heavy-duty trucks to fuel-efficiency regulations. These efficiency mandates are promoted as saving the vehicle operators money—the fuel costs supposedly go down more than the initial capital costs go up. What this Administration does not seem to be able to understand is that businesses (both truck buyers and sellers) …
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf recently spoke at the University of Southern California about the economic impact of Obamacare. He predicts that Obamacare will further depress the nation’s employment picture. CBO’s analysis of Obamacare predicts that it will reduce the amount of labor being used in the economy by roughly half a percent. Elmendorf states that this impact will be small, but in reality the impact is small only in relative terms. For instance, a half-percent loss in jobs in the American economy today would translate into about …
In a recent Daily Telegraph news report, Yulia Tymoshenko, former Prime Minister and opposition leader, has publicly declared that Ukraine’s national sovereignty is being sold away, that Russia is taking over Ukraine, and that the West is letting this happen. “The country’s new rulers see everything as an asset to be sold. Natural resources, state industrial monopolies, government cash flows, media organizations and factories. Russia is already taking advantage of the situation and I think they will do so even more in future,” said Tymoshenko, who was narrowly beaten by …
Delivering his first major address on education in March 2009, President Barack Obama promised the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce: “Secretary Duncan will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.” Supposedly keeping with this commitment to “evidence based” policy, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag made the case expanded Head Start funding in a recent edition of Annals of the American Academy of Political and …
The documentary film Waiting for Superman follows five children and their families as they struggle to find educational opportunities. Fed up with the ineffective public schools in their communities, but unable to freely transfer their tax dollars to a school of their choice, the families enter lotteries for the few available slots in private and charter schools. As an unapologetic denunciation of the American educational system, the film features families openly weeping at the prospect of losing the lottery and returning to the public schools. Opinions will vary about the …
