Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
The EPA's Disturbing Human Experiments
Unhealthy people purposely exposed to what the agency defines as lethal amounts of toxic gas.
Trickle Down and Tax Cuts
Dr. Thomas Sowell's "'Trickle Down Theory' and 'Tax Cuts for the Rich'" has just been published by the Hoover Institution. Having read this short paper, the conclusion you must reach is that the term "trickle down theory" is simply a tool of charlatans and political hustlers. Sowell states that "no such theory has been found in even the most voluminous and learned histories of economic theories." That's from a scholar who has published extensively in the history of economic thought. Several years ago, Sowell, in his syndicated column, challenged anyone to name an economist from any economic school of thought who had actually advocated a "trickle down" theory. To date, no one has quoted any economist who ever advocated such a theory. Trickle down is a nonexistent theory. Those who use it simply argue against a caricature rather than confront an argument actually made.
Capital Gains Taxes
One of the many false talking points of the Obama administration is that a rich man like Warren Buffett should not be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. But anyone whose earnings come from capital gains usually pays a lower tax rate. How are capital gains different from ordinary income? Ordinary income is usually guaranteed. If you work a certain amount of time, you are legally entitled to the pay that you were offered when you took the job. Capital gains involve risk. They are not guaranteed. You can invest your money and lose it all. Moreover, the year when you receive capital gains may not be the same as the years when they were earned.
Obama's 'Writ' Unleashed War Criminals
When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they made it clear that the only time the president would have the authority to use military force without prior authorization from Congress was when, as James Madison recorded in his notes from the Constitutional Convention, it was necessary to "repel sudden attacks." It was thus fittingly symbolic that when Barack Obama announced he had ordered the U.S. military to intervene in Libya's civil war, he did not do so from the Oval Office or the well of the U.S. House of Representatives, but from the capital city of Brazil. In that speech, delivered March 19, 2011, Obama repeatedly used the first-person pronoun, I, in explaining who had decided America would intervene in Libya.
Obama's Old-World Arrogance
When President Obama came to the U.N. General Assembly on September 25, his arrogance was on full display. He skipped meeting any world leaders, but did find time to sit down and talk about his lover moves on ABC's "The View." Topics included how he's a "romantic husband," how he "tucks in" his wife at night and how his first kiss with Michelle is now memorialized by a monument in Chicago. Meanwhile, Israel is preparing for war against a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. Yawn. Obama also skipped the traditional luncheon, leaving U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon looking like "a jilted prom date," reported CNN's Anderson Cooper. "I think he must be busy with something at this moment," Moon said at the lunch, drawing laughs. "Or perhaps he must be stuck somewhere in traffic."
A Few Debate Questions for Obama That Won't Be Asked
On Wednesday night, left-leaning TV anchor Jim Lehrer of government-supported PBS will moderate the first 90-minute presidential debate in Denver. The forum will focus on domestic policy. Lehrer alone will determine the topics and questions for six 15-minute segments, and then he will control an "open discussion" for each segment. We know the liberal media bias drill: Make the Republican candidate look like a scary extremist on social issues and a greedy capitalist pig on economic issues. Avoid the Democratic incumbent's record of failure. Run out the clock. Thank you and good night.
We Fund Dependency
"There are no jobs!" That is what people told me outside a government "jobs center" in New York City. To check this out, I sent four researchers around the area. They quickly found 40 job openings. Twenty-four were entry-level positions. One restaurant owner told me he would hire 12 people if workers would just apply. It made me wonder what my government does in buildings called "job centers." So I asked a college intern, Zoelle Mallenbaum, to find out. Here's what she found: "First I went to the Manhattan Jobs Center and asked, "Can I get help finding a job?" They told me they don't do that. 'We sign people up for food stamps.' I tried another jobs center. They told me to enroll for unemployment benefits."
Slandering Muhammad Is Not a Crime
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly last week, President Barack Obama tried to explain this strange attachment that Americans have to freedom of speech. He was handicapped by his attraction to a moral principle whose dangers the journalist Jonathan Rauch presciently highlighted in his 1993 book, "Kindly Inquisitors": "Thou shalt not hurt others with words." During the past few weeks, the widespread, often violent and sometimes deadly protests against "Innocence of Muslims," a laughably amateurish trailer for a seemingly nonexistent film mocking the Prophet Muhammad, have demonstrated the alarming extent to which citizens of Muslim countries -- including peaceful moderates, as well as violent extremists -- embrace this injunction against offending people. "We don't think that depictions of the prophets are freedom of expression," a Muslim scholar explained to The New York Times. "We think it is an offense against our rights."
Obama's Foreign Policy Follies
We're now entering the fourth week of the "CSI: Benghazi" hostage crisis. That's how long an FBI forensic team has been trying to gain access in Libya to what the State Department still calls a crime scene -- the Obama administration's preferred term for the location of the first assassination of a U.S. ambassador since 1979 and the first successful al-Qaeda-backed attack on U.S. soil since the 9/11 strikes. (Our embassies and consulates are sovereign U.S. territory.) It is perhaps not accidental that the State Department cites the need to complete the investigation as an excuse to stay silent on the whole matter. "You're not going to hear anything from here unless my guidance changes," explained Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman. "When we open a criminal investigation in the United States, generally, we don't brief out in pieces until the investigation is complete so we don't prejudice the outcome. I have to respect their process, obviously."
The First Debate
As I write this column, I'm waiting impatiently for the first debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama. More than 50 million Americans were expected to watch the debate in Denver on Wednesday night, and you have probably seen it by the time you read this. I don't know how it turned out, though The New York Times headline on Thursday probably read something like "St. Barack Slays Rich, Out-of-Touch Mormon Profiteer."
Read more The Obama Administration's Deadly Scandals
Damning new details emerging in Fast and Furious and Benghazi debacles.
The World's Most Dynamic Religion Is ...
For at least the last hundred years, the world's most dynamic religion has been neither Christianity nor Islam. It is leftism. Most people do not recognize what is probably the single most important fact of modern life. One reason is that leftism is overwhelmingly secular (more than merely secular: it is inherently opposed to all traditional religions), and therefore people do not regard it as a religion. Another is that leftism so convincingly portrays itself as solely the product of reason, intellect, and science that it has not been seen as the dogma-based ideology that it is. Therefore, the vast majority of the people who affirm leftist beliefs think of their views as the only way to properly think about life.
Obama and His Media Acolytes
We seem to be in the midst of another one of our periodic battles over liberal bias in the media, as denoted in recent days by Paul Ryan and various other conservatives vexed with the tone of campaign coverage. "It goes without saying that there is definitely media bias," Ryan said on Fox News. "I think most people in the mainstream media are left of center and, therefore, they want a very left-of-center president versus a conservative president like Mitt Romney." I think so myself after more than four decades of membership in that same suspect category, the gatherers and dispensers of news and commentary. The subjective question left dangling is, so what? Does it matter? Can Barack Obama's acolytes in the media tip the electoral scales for him?
An Ambassador Died. Obama Lied.
"Bush Lied, People Died" they chanted. When the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- information that was believed by the intelligence agencies of our major allies; that was described by the Clinton-appointed head of the CIA as a "slam dunk"; and that was agreed to by heads of state and leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties -- turned out to be badly mistaken, George W. Bush was branded a liar. Even Democrats such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle, and Ted Kennedy, who had warned about Saddam's WMD program on various occasions, quickly scurried to the "Bush lied, people died" slander when the intelligence proved inaccurate.
On the Debates
Mitt Romney must use the debates to spotlight President Obama's disastrous record -- with no mercy. Let's just consider a few major points Romney must make on domestic issues. Obama's record and his agenda for a second term are a target-rich environment. Unless the majority of voting Americans have decided to embrace Obama's vision of a fundamentally changed America -- an America that barely resembles the freest, most prosperous and mightiest land in world history that we have come to adore -- then Obama will experience a crushing defeat in November.
The Main Event
Mitt Romney's main advantage in his first debate with President Obama on Wednesday may be that the president will be speaking without a teleprompter. His second advantage is the president's record and how he has failed to fulfill many of his promises. While the president will probably recycle his class warfare themes, Romney should focus on the president's domestic failures and on Republican initiatives that have worked in the past. We Americans didn't just crawl out of a cave. There is history. He might start with what has happened since the 2010 election, which elected 17 Republican governors. According to a survey by examiner.com, "...the job market in states with new Republican governors is improving a full 50 percent faster than the job market nationally." Impressive, right? This is what can be accomplished when you either cut spending, lower taxes, or both.
Playing to the Heart
WASHINGTON -- In baseball, a game without a clock, each player on a team that is behind by a bunch of runs is advised to "stay within yourself." That baseball lingo means: Do not try to do too much. Instead, get 'em on, get 'em over, get 'em in. There are no five-run home runs. Small, incremental gains matter because the game goes on until someone makes the 27th out. Until then, there is hope. Unfortunately for Mitt Romney, presidential politics is, like football, a game with a clock, one with just five weeks of ticks remaining. In football, a team behind by lots of points late in the game must take gambles. Romney is behind -- in the important swing states, with the national electorate regarding who would best handle the economy and health care, and in national measures of favorable voter perceptions.
Cheap Politicians
Now that the National Football League has apparently learned that it can be costly to hire cheap officials, perhaps the rest of us should learn the same lesson when it comes to government officials, whose bad calls can do a lot more damage. What do we do when we want a better car, a better home or a better bottle of wine? We pay more for it. We definitely need a lot better crop of public officials. Yet we insist on paying flea market prices for people who will be spending trillions of tax dollars, not to mention making foreign policy that can either safeguard or jeopardize the lives of millions of Americans. Any successful engineer, surgeon, or financier would have to take a big pay cut to serve in Congress. A top student from a top law school can get a starting salary that is more than we pay a Supreme Court justice.