Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, August 26, 2011
How to Fix the Housing Depression
As the president contemplates his options for creating jobs and stimulating the economy, here's one idea he should consider: Create a new immigration lottery that would let in up to a million newcomers -- on the condition that they immediately purchase a home with cash. I know this idea is bound to infuriate some people, but it could do more to stimulate the economy than anything the Obama administration -- or the Republicans -- have come up with so far. There's no question that the depressed housing market is a major factor stalling the economic recovery. Most Americans' wealth is tied up in their homes; housing prices have continued to fall precipitously, and largely because of the huge inventory of unsold houses. Many of those houses are foreclosures.
Joey Vento: An Assimilation Warrior
Blunt. Brash. Bold. Politically incorrect. Unapologetically patriotic. Philadelphia cheese-steak king Joey Vento was all that and a side of freedom fries. The 71-year-old owner of Geno's Steaks died of a heart attack this week, but he reignited a national debate over radical multiculturalism that will burn for years to come. Five years ago, Vento garnered national headlines when a local newspaper profiled his outspoken views on customers who couldn't speak English. He hung a sign in his order window that read: "This is America. When ordering, speak English." Though he never turned anyone away, the grandson of Italian immigrants informed hungry patrons that he reserved the "right to refuse service" to those he couldn't understand.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Kerosene Maxine to Tea Party: 'Go to Hell!'
Waters' list of insults, vulgarities and blame-whitey scapegoating easily makes her the Al Sharpton of Congress. Let's go to the videotape: Waters once said of the then-sitting president: "I would like to ... say ... very clearly that I believe George (H.W.) Bush is a racist." She routinely refers to the Republican Party as "the enemy." She also referred to Republican former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan as a "plantation owner."
The Language of Socialism
There are a few key phrases that tell you precisely where someone stands on the political spectrum. If someone invokes "social justice," you can guarantee he or she voted for Obama, even though everyone on earth is presumably for justice in all of its forms. If someone preaches "women's rights," you know he or she supports abortion, even though the rights of the women have nothing to do with whether or not they can kill their unborn child. The left has claimed these terms, and we all know it.
Liberals' Wisconsin Waterloo
MADISON, Wis. -- The residues of liberalism's Wisconsin Woodstock -- 1960s radicalism redux: operatic lamentations, theatrical demonstrations and electoral futilities -- are words of plaintive defiance painted on sidewalks around the state capitol. "Solidarity forever" was perhaps painted by a graduate student forever at the University of Wisconsin. "Repubs steal elections" is an odd accusation from people who, seeking to overturn the 2010 elections, cheered Democratic lawmakers who fled to Illinois -- a congenial refuge for labor-subservient Democrats -- in order to paralyze the duly-elected Legislature. The authors of the sidewalk graffiti have at least read Jefferson: "The tree of liberty is watered by the blood of tyrants." The tyrant is "$cott Walker American Fa$ci$t."
Ryan Withdraws
Washington - Alas, we lost a most desirable candidate for the White House this week, one that is not charismatic, did not write (or have someone else write) his memoir, has displayed no jump shot in public and did not leave important documents on his desk while gallivanting around the country in campaign mode and heading for vacation on Martha's Vineyard. In the first instance, I am talking about Congressman Paul Ryan. In the second, I am talking about President you-know-who. Since the day he was inaugurated, he has been campaigning for his second term, all the while expressing ambivalence about wanting a second term. That is nonsense. He is living rent-free and has that big airplane to fly about the country in.
Trying to Cope With Liberals
I am familiar with the John Donne poem in which he claims no man is an island, further insisting that any man's death diminishes him, but I'm afraid I don't buy it. When a friend of mine dies, I am crushed. But when I pick up a newspaper and read that a thousand strangers halfway around the world have been lost to a tidal wave, I say "Tsk" and turn the page. What brought this home for me is that when I heard that 30 Navy Seals had been killed in Afghanistan, I felt as if I had lost family members, but if I'd read that 30 members of Congress had suddenly keeled over, I'd simply turn the page. Whether or not I went "Tsk" would depend on their party affiliation. Clearly, I am no John Donne.
United States Must Lead in Libya
With approximately 135 different tribes within its borders, the hard lifting in Libya now begins. It is incumbent upon the United States to take a lead role in this vital area. No more of the Obama policy of leading from the rear -- the U.S. must lead, and must lead from the front. The Libyan people have not breathed freedom since the tyrant Gadhafi took control of their government way back in 1969. It may not be easy for Libyans to learn how to be free after all that time, but we can and must help them.
BART Protesters' Oppression Envy
During one of the protests that shut down Bay Area Rapid Transit this month, an anonymous protester -- hiding behind a Guy Fawkes mask -- stood with a sign that read, "Mubarak Gaddafi BART." Talk about delusions of oppression. Egyptians risked torture, imprisonment and their very lives to oust the heavy-handed Hosni Mubarak regime. Libyan rebels have been engaged in months of bloody combat to evict Moammar Gadhafi from power.
Traveling Back to the Future on Intercity Buses
Not long ago, I wrote about how the private sector outraces and laps government. While governments dither and dispute, the private sector discovers. The example I mentioned then was energy. For years, governments, national and local, have been promoting wind and solar power, to little practical effect. Curiously, the biggest wind power producer is Rick Perry's Texas. But wind power isn't reliable, and both wind and solar cause serious damage to the environment.
The Old 'Not Enough' Excuse
To newly inaugurated Barack Obama and his prime-the-pump technocrats, the logic seemed so simple. America's problem was a struggling economy. The solution was to spread around even more borrowed government money. The result would be a return to prosperity. But after nearly three years and almost $5 trillion in more borrowed "stimulus," things have gotten only worse. Unemployment is stuck at 9.1 percent. Consumer confidence is approaching a record low. The stock market is tanking. National debt increases at the rate of $4 billion a day. Economic growth has almost vanished. Credit worthiness is downgraded. The housing market is still depressed. Food and fuel prices skyrocket. In response, only 26 percent of the public expresses confidence in the president's handling of the economy.
To the Shores of Tripoli
Name a single Arab or Islamic state, which, after a revolution that has overthrown a dictator, came to embrace political pluralism, religious tolerance and equal rights for women. You can't, can you? The U.S. State Department publishes an annual report on human rights practices in Arab states (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/). It consistently finds all are ruled by variations of dictatorial regimes that oppress their people, deny basic freedoms of press, speech, due process and are intolerant of any faith other than Islam, punishing converts to other faiths (a capital offense in some Islamic nations) and anyone who shares other faiths with their people.
The Flash Mob Method of Scientific Inquiry
The definition of hell is being condescended to by idiots. It will probably be MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Contessa Brewer sneering at you for all of eternity for not believing in evolution. Roughly one-third of my 2007 No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," is an attack on liberals' creation myth, Darwinian evolution. I presented the arguments of all the luminaries in the field, from the retarded Richard Dawkins to the brilliant Francis Crick, and disputed them.
White Flags and Swiss Cheese: How GOP 'Moderation' Could Re-elect Obama
I've always considered former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to be an astute political observer. But when I hear him suggest the need to include "revenue" as part of the proposal by the ridiculous "Super Committee" of Congress to cut another $1.2 trillion of federal spending, I see white flags and images of Swiss cheese holes coming into view. Then I read that Republicans in Congress, while fighting "every possible tax increase," want to hand President Obama the election by opposing his effort to continue the cut in the payroll deduction tax that is now in place. Now that hunk of cheese is beginning to smell like the Republican establishment's rotten "go along, get along" politics.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Libya 2011: Now Comes the War for Order
Gun battles in Tripoli's suburbs signal the death throes of Muammar Gadhafi's dictatorship. Regime change is succeeding, albeit slowly and with needlessly protracted agony. The honest understand that the Libyan War of 2011 is about regime change -- the termination of four decades of megalomaniacal misrule, torture, corruption, tyranny, terrorism and genuine warmongering. Col. Gadhafi, like Iraq's megalomaniacal Saddam Hussein, imprisoned his own country, to the benefit of favored cronies and clans. He also waged imperialist war on vulnerable neighbors, invading and occupying northern Chad, including the Aouzou Strip with its uranium mines. (Yes, he, too, dreamed of a nuclear arsenal.)
Pander-Mandate Mania!
Hey, you know what the beleaguered American economy could really use right now? More special-interest mandates imposed by the White House on employers and taxpayers. Team Obama is "Winning the Future" by strangling it in red, green and rainbow-colored tape. In a hapless bid to mollify minority politicians and criminal flash mobs of jobless hooligans in their districts across the country, the White House last week issued an executive order "establishing a coordinated government-wide initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce." Apparently, as record numbers of people collect food stamps and unemployment benefits, what's really eating at them isn't their hopeless dependency. It's the skin color, national origin and gender breakdown of the Nanny State drones doling out their public benefits.
Almost Everything We're Taught Is Wrong
We grow up learning that some things are just bad: child labor, ticket scalping, price gouging, kidney selling, blackmail, etc. But maybe they're not. What I love about economics is that it can show that what seems harmful is actually good for society. It illuminates what common sense overlooks. This is all covered in the eye-opening book "Defending the Undefendable" by economist Walter Block.
The Grand Illusion: It's Coming Right on Schedule
Charles Mackay published his classic study "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" in 1841, but it remains regularly relevant to the affairs of man. No wonder. For its author's purpose was "to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations." How little has changed.
Buffett’s Claim of Coddling Is Super-Rich
Warren Buffett is the billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a friend and political supporter of Barack Obama, and a well-known advocate of higher taxes on the rich. He is also a hypocrite, whose actions belie his words. For several years now, Buffett has been calling for significant tax hikes on extremely wealthy Americans like himself. Last week, in a New York Times column headlined "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich," Buffett lamented that the $6,938,744 he forked over in federal income and payroll taxes in 2010 amounted to just 17.4 percent of his taxable income. "What I paid," the world's most famous investor observed, "was . . . actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent."
Legal Obedience
What laws are we morally obligated to obey? Help with the answer can be found in "Economic Liberty and the Constitution," a 66-page pamphlet by Jacob G. Hornberger, founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.