This is the third of our four-part series on Occupy Wall Street, transcribed from a recent Heritage Foundation event on the movement. In part three, Ben Domenech, research fellow at the Heartland Institute and editor of The Transom, reflects on his own interaction with Occupiers and explains why he’s not …
President Obama has a new role model for his Buffett Rule tax—Henry Ford. It’s an odd choice considering that Ford advocated free-market capitalism and opposed redistributive policies. Despite the lucrative government contracts, Henry Ford refused to participate in FDR’s 1933 National Recovery Act. (Let’s not forget that Ford Motors was …
Most politicians and political commentators insist that this year’s election rests on economic concerns, not “social values” (contraception, abortion, gay marriage, and the like). But in America’s free market system, economics and values are in fact closely joined. Not only is capitalism the most successful system for generating wealth, but …
Free-market capitalism is losing supporters these days. Wall Street occupiers blame banks, financial firms, and Wall Street for the bad economy. President Obama derides free markets, in true straw-man fashion, as you’re-on-your-own economics with “a free license to take whatever you want from whoever you can.” Even some Republican presidential …
Venezuela’s authoritarian populist President Hugo Chávez announced that presidential elections will take place on October 7, 2012. Chávez, who continues to battle an unspecified cancer, is convinced he will win. In office since 1999, Chávez argues he must have another six years in order to install Socialism of the 21st Century, …
Late last month, Smithsonian.com launched a “Department of Innovation” blog in hopes of reigniting President Barack Obama’s call for this generation’s “Sputnik moment”—in less glossy terms, that means taxpayer-funded corporate welfare to pursue the President’s pet projects. Fittingly enough, the “Department of Innovation” logo featured a series of cogs that, if …
The slow, painful end of Borders bookstores has finally arrived. After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February and taking actions to save the company, the 40-year-old chain with locations across the country will begin liquidation on Friday. All told, 399 stores will close, and 10,700 workers will lose …
