by Dr. Susan Berry

In an interview last week on Heritage Foundation’s Istook Live!, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said that the Obama administration “actually wants to steamroll what’s left of the Republican Party here in Washington.”

by Michael Patrick Leahy

In a surprise move, former House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey has resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, the conservative Washington based group that has been strongly identified with the Tea Party movement.

by Matthew Boyle

UPDATE: Boehner Spokesman Kevin Smith responds- "The Steering Committee makes decisions based on a range of factors."

A Letter from Hobby Lobby Stores CEO

A Letter from Hobby Lobby Stores CEO

By David Green, the founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

When my family and I started our company 40 years ago, we were working out of a garage on a $600 bank loan, assembling miniature picture frames. Our first retail store wasn't much bigger than most people's living rooms, but we had faith that we would succeed if we lived and worked according to God's word. From there,Hobby Lobby has become one of the nation's largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 locations in 41 states. Our children grew up into fine business leaders, and today we run Hobby Lobby together, as a family.

by Tony Lee

Former Alaska Governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said the country has already gone over the fiscal cliff and House Republicans should not go “wobbly” or be “wusses” during the fiscal cliff negotiations with Democrats and the White House.

by Mike Flynn

For most of my adult life, there has been one thing I could rely on with the Republican Party; they weren't going to raise my taxes. Sure, President George H.W. Bush did it in 1990, but his shock reelection loss quickly taught the party a lesson. Tax policy was one clear issue advantage the GOP had over the Democrats. Yesterday, Speaker Boehner released a Democrat-inspired "fiscal cliff" offer that finally surrenders this advantage. The GOP is now the party of "slightly less tax hikes."

Senator urges the U.S. to reject 'crazy bastards' that want to kill us

Mises on Mexico

by EDUARDO TURRENT

Eduardo Turrent is the historian of the Bank of Mexico. This article is excerpted from a paper delivered at a conference of the Ludwig von Mises Cultural Institute of Mexico City, September 23–24, 1998, celebrating the publication in Spanish of Ludwig von Mises’s Mexico’s Economic Problems: Yesterday and Today, which was written in 1943 but unpublished until last year. Translated by Bettina Bien Greaves.
Today should be a day of celebration for students, book lovers, and all who are interested in reflecting on the economic development of Mexico. Mexico’s Economic Problems by Ludwig von Mises, which Bettina Greaves found in 1997 among Mises’s papers, is truly a treasure.^[1] Although there are obvious differences, it calls to mind musicologist Alberto Gentili’s rediscovery in the 1920s of the complete works of Antonio Vivaldi, more than 200 years after the composer’s death. We economic historians are more fortunate than musicians and music lovers were, since Mises’s text has reappeared only 25 years after his death.

Exploring Liberty: An Introduction to Libertarian Thought (David Boaz)

Are you a libertarian?

How many American libertarian voters are there?

Bibi Can't Lose

It's Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel. All of his rivals just live in it.

BY NATAN B. SACHS

It's one of Washington's worst kept secrets: President Barack Obama's administration would prefer Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lose the Israeli elections in January 2013. Netanyahu is not only too hawkish on the Palestinian issue and Iran for the White House's comfort, he has the added burden of a fraught personal relationship with Obama -- cemented by his perceived public endorsement of Mitt Romney in the U.S. presidential election.

By Clyde Prestowitz

As China prepares for a momentous change of leadership at the top, a question increasingly being posed is how the new leaders will guide a country that will soon be the world's largest economy. That the Chinese economy will reach the top rung sometime between now (some economists believe it already is the biggest economy) and the early 2020s is assumed as part of the conventional wisdom, having been confidently predicted by such influential voices as the International Monetary Fund, the Economist magazine, and virtually all of the leading pundits both in the West and in Asia.

Posted By Clyde Prestowitz

All my life I've been a Europhile. My dad worked for a Belgian company. I was a high school exchange student to Switzerland in 1958. My first posting as a Foreign Service officer was as vice consul to Rotterdam. I lived in Brussels for five years in the 1970s as head of Scott Paper Company's European marketing operations. I take my family to Europe frequently and maintain a wide range of work and other activities there.

The Muslim Brotherhood sees a conspiracy to oust it from power around every corner, and it’s prepared to strike preemptively against its enemies -- both real and imagined.

BY EVAN HILL

CAIRO - For the first time in Egypt's post-revolutionary political scene, the Muslim Brotherhood's ascendancy is under serious threat. But as a diverse array of political players challenges the Islamist movement's efforts to centralize power, the Brothers are showing no sign of backing down.
The trouble began last week, when President Mohamed Morsy issued a package of sovereign decrees that sacked the nation's prosecutor general, appointed a new one with a mandate to re-open cases against deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak and his inner circle, and -- most importantly -- declared both his own decisions and the assembly drafting the country's new constitution immune from judicial oversight. As scholar Nathan Brown put it, Morsy's edict amounted to a declaration that he was "all powerful ... just for a little while."

by Ludwig von Mises

[Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (1979), Lecture 4 (1958)]

If the supply of caviar were as plentiful as the supply of potatoes, the price of caviar — that is, the exchange ratio between caviar and money or caviar and other commodities — would change considerably. In that case, one could obtain caviar at a much smaller sacrifice than is required today. Likewise, if the quantity of money is increased, the purchasing power of the monetary unit decreases, and the quantity of goods that can be obtained for one unit of this money decreases also.

by Frederic Bastiat

[The Bastiat Collection (2011); originally from the second series of Economic Sophisms (1848)]

If anyone tells you that there are no absolute principles, no inflexible rules; that prohibition may be bad and yet that restriction may be good, reply, "Restriction prohibits all that it hinders from being imported."
If anyone says that agriculture is the mother's milk of the country, reply, "What nourishes the country is not exactly agriculture, but wheat."

by Philipp Bagus

Many politicians and commentators such as Paul Krugman claim that Europe's problem is austerity, i.e., there is insufficient government spending. The common argument goes like this: Due to a reduction of government spending, there is insufficient demand in the economy leading to unemployment. The unemployment makes things even worse as aggregate demand falls even more, causing a fall in government revenues and an increase in government deficits. European governments pressured by Germany (which did not learn from the supposedly fateful policies of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning) then reduce government spending even further, lowering demand by laying off public employees and cutting back on government transfers. This reduces demand even more in a never ending downward spiral of misery. What can be done to break out of the spiral? The answer given by commentators is simply to end austerity, boost government spending and aggregate demand. Paul Krugman even argues in favor for a preparation against an alien invasion, which would induce government to spend more. So the story goes. But is it true?

by Louis M. Spadaro

[Louis M. Spadaro discusses Liberalism by Ludwig von Mises in the book's foreword.]

The original work, published in 1927, was entitled Liberalismus and so complemented, as indicated earlier, Mises's book on socialism. That it was deemed desirable or necessary, when the English translation was prepared in the early '60s, to re-title it The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth illustrates pointedly what I believe to be a real tragedy in intellectual history: the transfer of the term liberalism.

by Patrick Caddell

In the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, the Republicans are in desperate need of a game-changer. That is, the current dynamics in Washington DC are so bad right now for Republicans that they are likely to go off a political cliff. President Obama and the Democrats have always been looking to push the GOP into the abyss, of course, but lately, Republicans have volunteered to stand at the edge of the precipice and lean far over.

Obama Cuts Campaign Ad to Push Tax Hikes

by Mike Flynn

If the recent election taught us anything, it's that Barack Obama certainly knows how to campaign. While to many of us his speeches were full seemingly small-bore issues like Sesame Street and contraceptives, these turned out to be perfectly calibrated to appeal to low-information voters. He is continuing this successful approach with the negotiations over the "fiscal cliff." He's even cut a campaign-style ad making his case for tax hikes.

by Ben Shapiro

On Saturday, a rich 25-year-old man, Jovan Belcher, murdered his 22-year-old girlfriend, the mother of his child. First, columnist Jason Whitlock of Fox Sports suggested that this “25-year-old kid” wasn’t responsible for his actions – it was the “gun culture” that was to blame. Then, Bob Costas of NBC repeats this idiotic notion, even though the 6’2”, 228 lb. linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs could easily have murdered his girlfriend with a knife.

US: Fractured fairy tales – by Paul Driessen

Greens hate natural gas and fracking, but costly, parasitic wind energy can’t live without it.
Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have boosted shale gas production from zero a few years ago to 10% of all US energy supplies in 2012, observes energy analyst Daniel Yergin. Fracking has also increased US oil production 25% since 2008 – almost all on state and private lands, and in the face of more federal land and resource withdrawals, permitting delays and declining public land production.
In the process, the fracking revolution created 1.7 million jobs in oil fields, equipment manufacturing, legal and information technology services, and other sectors. It will generate over $60 billion this year in state and federal tax and royalty revenues, reduce America’s oil import bill by $75 billion, and save us $100 billion in imported liquefied natural gas, concludes a new IMF Global Insight analysis.

US: Obama: The Dictator’s Choice For U.S. President – Investors.com

Election ’12: From Moscow to Caracas to Havana, something disturbing is happening: Dictators with long records of enmity toward the U.S. are endorsing Obama for president. What does that say about the Obama presidency?
Fresh from abusing Venezuela’s opposition after his own rigged re-election, Chavez declared, “If I were American, I would vote for Obama. He is my candidate.” It was his second direct endorsement of Obama in a week. After that, he spooled off his plans to impose socialism on his country.

The Wall Street Journal, upon the release of the most recent annual GDP growth figure of 2% (up from 1.3% in the previous quarter), observes: “The economy plowed ahead at a 2% growth rate in the third quarter, which thrilled more than a few of our liberal friends who think it’s enough to re-elect President Obama. We’ll soon find out if they’re right, but there’s no doubt their prosperity standards are slipping. In the third quarter of 1992, growth came in at 4.2% (3.4% for the year) and Democrats called it a catastrophe.”

Friday, December 7, 2012

Sen. DeMint: Obama Administration Wants to Steamroll GOP