Sep
10th

Lessons From Katrina (Or Everything You Knew but Hated To Admit About the Government)

The curtain has been firmly pulled back now and Americans of every stripe are finally facing the facts of what we’ve all known but ignored for so long, namely that our government is a farce of what it pretends to be. The machinations of the corporate oligarchs and their puppet politicians have been revealed for […]


Sep
1st

Taxation Without Rationalization

It is often said that the only things you can really count on are death and taxes. Of the two, death is probably easier to accept. Death, at least, is fairly applied to everyone. Taxes, on the other hand, are a complicated, unequal, seemingly arbitrary and often manipulated endeavor. And while we all can accept […]


Aug
19th

A Nation of Debtors

American’s have one of the highest standards of living in the world. We have nice cars, big screen televisions, comfortable houses, a closet full of clothes, three square meals a day, and on and on. We don’t actually have these things in equal proportions; in fact, there are millions in this country who go without […]


Aug
16th

It’s The Economy, Stupid

Nothing puts a glaze into the eyes of average citizens quite like discussing economic theory. At best, it’s a confusing topic. Start injecting things like gross domestic product, prime interest rate, futures pricing, trade subsidies, and compound interest and you’ve pretty much lost most of your audience. But talk to the average person about money, […]


Aug
12th

Bizarro Zero Tolerance

We live in a society that at times seems to take great pains to produce the most idiotic and inane policies possible. In this era of nonsensical political correctness, where up is told it’s really down, and the word “is” has infinite meanings, one of the most confounding practices to be injected into our society […]


Jul
25th

A Question of Trust

The world in which we live is steadily becoming increasingly cynical, or at least it seems. We’ve come to expect our politicians to be corrupt and dishonest. We’ve come to see our businesses as greedy and unsympathetic to the plights of their workers. We view each other through tinted lenses that paint us as red […]


Jun
22nd

Family Values?

Politicians are famous for creating titles for programs or ideas that bear little resemblance to their namesake. Chief among these is the clamor about “family values.” The phrase is used as a feel-good label, slapped on a candidate like just another bumper sticker on the family station wagon. We hear that Candidate A stands for […]


Jun
13th

A Tolerant Society

As our world becomes more connected, the expansion of freedom and self-rule becomes more and more dependent on the concept of tolerance. Increased contact between varying cultures requires an increase in the ability to respect, if not accept, or even embrace, the differences between each other. Indeed, for freedom to flourish, tolerance is a vital […]


Jun
9th

Society and Politics

Does society dictate political goals or is it the other way around? It’s getting tough to tell these days. With campaigns based on “family values” that are never really defined and legislation steeped in religious belief, one wonders which horse is pulling which cart. I use these two examples only because they are they easiest […]


Jun
4th

A Necessary Digression

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” We recognize the […]