Right Opinion

Hollywood Actors and Economics 101

Welcome to Hollywood, where dreams become real — and where logic, reason and economics 101 become dreams. Take the current battle over the minimum wage. In Los Angeles County, the minimum wage is $9 per hour. Theater actors, however, can be paid as little as $7 a performance, and an actor can even work long rehearsal hours with no pay. Three decades ago, L.A. County actors sued their union for an exception to union wages for theaters with 99 seats or fewer seats. Why do these stage actors work for so little? They want to work. By working they improve their skills, stay sharp and or perhaps have a chance to get spotted by an agent. Some say simply having something to do is better than just sitting around and waiting for a casting agent to call. Actors Equity, the national union, wants to change this.

Where to Find America's Aristocracy

Notwithstanding what the Marxist whim-wham artists have been telling the youths of our country for over a generation, there has been little sign of a true aristocracy in America. For a very short period of time, something like an aristocracy appeared during the era when the robber barons plied their arts, but it did not last. They built their palaces and raised their empires among the steel mills, the transcontinental railroads, the oil fields, and so forth, but then they declined, submerged in the hustle and bustle of the market place. Their monuments remain as various museums and libraries and even universities, for instance, Vanderbilt University, but for the most part American aristocracy is gone. Allons-y, Messrs. Vanderbilt, Morgan, Carnegie and the rest, but thanks for the museums, the libraries and the increasingly irrelevant universities. So despite what the professors at women's studies programs, ethnic studies programs and other Marxist fronts tell us, American aristocracy was short lived. It was soon overwhelmed by the sheer exuberance of free markets. One day there were robber barons, the next day they were surpassed by another wave of commerce. Today it is the digital wave. Tomorrow it will be something else. There endures no aristocracy anywhere in the Great Republic, except perhaps in television land, and there this past week we witnessed a glimmer of its excess.

Still No Reports of 'Hillary Fever' Outbreaks

I gather from the increasing hysteria of the feminists that Democrats are beginning to rebel at having a loser of a presidential candidate being foist upon them, in the person of Hillary Clinton. The same way the national tea party leaders are a thorn in the side of the Republican Party, constantly challenging incumbent Republicans with untested candidates who then go on to lose to Democrats (in Delaware, Indiana and Nevada, and nearly in Kentucky, Kansas and Mississippi), the feminists are a thorn in the side of the Democrats, saddling them with utter mediocrities like Hillary. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sen. Patty Murray are, objectively, two of the least appealing human beings ever elected to any office. (That sentence still works even without the words "elected to any office.") But God help the Democrats if they tried to replace Schultz as chair of the Democratic National Committee or Murray as secretary of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Hillary This. Hillary That. All Day Long.

Some Inconvenient Man-Made Global Warming Truths

My last article went over some aspects of man-made global warming that would let me know I may have the wrong idea on the issue. But I wonder if any alarmists have stopped to look at some of their most cherished metrics going the opposite way of their forecast. People that live in the real world understand that if reality is contrary to your predictions, it means you are wrong (or at least can be). It's been nearly 10 years since the Oscar-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth" came out, so here's a question we should be asking: Are we worse off today than the movie implied? Let's look at some of those aspects. The movie came out at a time I believe was meant to capitalize on the monster back-to-back hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005. But it was pretty arrogant to think that peak was the new norm. Then again, arrogance is the child of ignorance — in this case ignorance of an easy to see global cycle represented nicely by the ACE (accumulated cyclonic energy) index.

Some Thoughts and Questions

What's the true test of one's commitment to free speech? It does not come when he permits people to be free to say or publish ideas with which he agrees. Not by a long shot. The true test of one's commitment to free speech comes when he permits others to say and publish ideas he deems offensive. In March, a video surfaced of a racist chant by Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers at the University of Oklahoma, a public university. It has brought widespread condemnation and the fraternity's suspension. Two fraternity students have been expelled. The University of Oklahoma's president, David Boren, said, "To those who have misused their free speech in such a reprehensible way, I have a message for you: You are disgraceful." The Western world was shocked and outraged by another speech issue that led to the murder of 12 people at the offices of French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Islamists were retaliating for what they considered the newspaper's vulgar portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad, an insult to millions of Muslims.

A San Francisco Priest Who Defied Tyrants

Every San Franciscan — and every friend of freedom — should learn about Eugene Fahy, a native of Northern California who took a stand against tyrants and never backed down. Born in San Mateo in 1911 and educated at Saint Ignatius and the University of San Francisco, Fahy was a brilliant man who left behind indisputable proof of his eloquence and courage. He could have been a prince of the city, one of San Francisco's most prominent and prosperous men. Instead he took a vow of poverty and devoted his life to God. He joined the Jesuits, went to China, was ordained a priest in Shanghai in 1945, and found himself in the district of Yangchow in 1949 — when the Communists arrived there. Their first target: the Jesuit school.

SleazeBob Menendez's 36DD Visa Program

America has an alphabet soup of visa programs for foreigners to choose from: B-1 for business visitors, B-2 for tourists, EB-5 for investors, F-1 for students, and so on. All are overwhelmed, loosely monitored and riddled with fraud and corruption. According to the recently unsealed federal indictment against him, sleazy Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., took it upon himself to add his own very special, crooked path to the U.S. Call it the 36DD Visa. The New York Post recounted this weekend how Menendez and his staff pressured the State Department to expedite the foreign tourist and student visa approval processes for a bevy of buxom foreign beauties. One of them, Brazilian actress and nudie model Juliana Lopes Leite (a.k.a. "Girlfriend 1"), had her F-1 student visa application moved to the top of the Mount Everest-high heap in 2008 as a favor to Menendez's now-indicted donor pal and accused Medicare fraudster Salomon Melgen.

Hillary's Wacky Poorhouse Claims

While Hillary Clinton hates doing Sunday shows -- as we remember from the weekend after Benghazi -- she did allow her close friend Gov. Terry McAuliffe to appear on "Meet the Press" on April 19. Jaws dropped when NBC host Chuck Todd threw him a real Russert-like hardball, quoting from his 2007 memoir "What A Party!" "This is Hillary Clinton," said Todd. "This is you quoting her in your book. 'They had bankrupted us totally. We owned nothing. We didn't own a car. We didn't own a house. Here we were, 50 years old and we owned nothing. No-thing! All the money we had, which we had brought into the White House, was gone. I hadn't made any money for eight years, so it was really horrible.'" The journalistic fact-checkers could have had a field day with this outlandish whining. Hillary Clinton's Senate disclosure forms show that in 2001, they reported earning nearly $12 million. Todd noted that in 1999, McAuliffe offered to give them a personal loan (actually, a $1.3 million loan) to buy their house in Chappaqua, New York.

Designer Drug Dilemma

Does the Constitution Allow Congress to Ban Unspecified Substances?

Congress Looks to Red-light District's Intolerance

The U.S. Constitution is a six-block walk from the D.C. City Council — but it's light years away from the District's policy making. For years, members of the D.C. government have pretended that the First Amendment in their neighborhood doesn't apply to their lawmaking, especially when it comes to social issues. The latest example is the city's Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act (RHNDA), which it raced through in January against the warnings of its own legal team. Under the bill, it would be a crime for groups to not only refuse to pay for abortion coverage — but to refuse to hire a pro-abortion activist. Of course, everyone is familiar with the first part of the measure, thanks to the ObamaCare mandate. But ordering groups like FRC to set aside its beliefs and hire members of the opposition? That's as unconstitutional as it gets!

The Next President

It's not smart to get too enthusiastic about any politician. I've been disappointed often. I believed Bill Clinton when he said, "the era of big government is over." I thought George W. Bush was a "small government guy." And Barack Obama ... Well, never mind. If I want limited government and individual freedom, to whom do I turn? Ted Cruz? I want to like him. He's smart. He's read economists Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, etc. He confronted Obama's attorney general about constitutional limits on killing Americans with drones. He fought hard against Obamacare.

Hillary's Vietnam

Headless bodies lie in the sand. Above those corpses stand the black-clad minions of ISIS, outlined against the coastline of Libya. This is the second video in three months depicting Islamic terrorists cutting the heads off of Christian captives. Bodies float in the Mediterranean Sea, face down. Twelve Christian bodies, thrown from a rubber boat by 15 Muslims. Their launch point: Libya. Approximately 700 more bodies float face down in the Mediterranean, victims of a smuggling operation gone wrong when their rickety craft sunk as it made its way to Italy. Its source location: Libya. Four American bodies in Benghazi, Libya.

Martin O'Malley's Modern-Day Know-Nothingness

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is thinking about running for president on the Democratic ticket by appealing to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's populist fans. Warren is a very bright former Harvard law professor. So it is interesting that O'Malley thinks the best way to reach out to her fans is to say remarkably stupid things. Steve Inskeep, host of NPR's "Morning Edition," recently interviewed O'Malley, asking him to respond to something GOP presidential contender Sen. Marco Rubio had said. Inskeep: "[Rubio] argues that an active government actually keeps people frozen at their economic status because if you are well off, if you can afford a lawyer, if you can deal with regulations, you can maneuver through government and stay prosperous. And if you are not so well off, it's harder to work the system. Is there some truth to that? You were a big-city mayor; you know how government works."

Obama and the Brotherhood: The Ties That Bind

Why exactly did the Egyptian media claim that Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Flunking Civics Should No Longer Be an Option

"Don't know much about history" —Sam Cooke It's an old joke, but one that is a commentary on our times. A pollster asks: "What do you think about the level of ignorance and apathy in the country?" The person replies: "I don't know and I don't care." Each week, Jesse Watters of Fox News interviews mostly young people about politics, government, current events and history. He claims their displays of ignorance are not edited. The worst part is that the interviewees don't seem to care that they know little about their government and country. In a recent episode, interviewees couldn't name President Obama's accomplishments or any of the Republican presidential hopefuls.

Hillary Candidacy Doesn't Worry Me, Part 2

I don't get depressed too often, but I feel the blues coming on. Many moons ago, if memory serves, I tweeted my skepticism that Hillary Clinton would even get the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, much less win the general election. I'm afraid I probably was right about her not getting the nomination, but I'm concerned that her implosion appears to be happening too soon — with way too much time for Democrats to regroup. I realize that all of this is speculative and I could have egg all over my face if Hillary were to smoothly sail to the nomination — and gigantic omelets on my countenance should she win the general election. After all, I don't have a perfect batting average in predicting presidential elections.

Killing 'Too Big to Fail' Could Unite America

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was an issue so compelling, it could unite Americans of every ideological stripe? Well, not everyone, just Americans who are beginning to understand the long-term effects of the concerted effort to destroy national sovereignty. What's that you say? You didn't know there was an effort underway to destroy our national sovereignty? Four words should give you a clue: too big to fail. Full disclosure: I am an unabashed free-market capitalist who, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, believes it is the worst economic system in the world — save for all the other ones. However it is the adjective preceding the word "capitalist" that is the one on the verge of being swept onto the ash heap of history. In the modern age, the term "free-market" has been almost completely subsumed by the word "crony" in all its government-aligned, competition-crushing, "bail us out when we screw up" glory.

Chaos in the Primaries

Painful as it is to realize that both the Democrats and the Republicans will still be holding their primaries a year from now, that is one of the high prices we pay for democracy. Seldom does the initial "front-runner" in either party's primaries end up being the actual candidate when election day rolls around. However, even if we cannot predict the outcomes of the primaries this far in advance, we can at least start trying to understand the candidates, the almost candidates and the people who are running just for the publicity. One of the curious things this early in the process is that, while the Republicans' three freshmen Senators — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul — have all had interviews on various television talk shows, veteran politician Hillary Clinton has been hiding out from real interviews by hard news reporters, as if she is afraid to be cross-examined.

Cashiering Andy Jackson

Andrew Jackson was sort of a rough-and-tumble president, undoubtedly, but the United States, in the 1820s and '30s, was sort of a rough-and-tumble country. Notice how refined and civilized we've gotten since then, to the point that a coalition of lady activists is ready to pull President Jackson's mug off the $20 bill, substituting — well, that's yet to be decided. New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's notion is that whoever we come up with for a replacement needs to be female, there being no other females on our paper currency. An online poll suggests Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and — get ready — Wilma Mankiller, a former chieftains of the Cherokees. Mankiller's promotion to greenback celebrity — viewed apart from her titillating name — would be seen, most likely, as an act of overdue retribution. According to one kick-out-Jackson activist, our country's seventh president "engineered a genocide" by conspiring with Congress to drive the Cherokees, at bayonet's point, out of the Southeast and into Oklahoma.