The numbers are staggering, both in the failures of our ersatz health care and our job displacements, but the answer is simple enough. It is just not politically simple.

As more and more of the fruits of modern economies are commandeered by the very wealthy, the ability of populations to...

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering Citizens United (a corporation) vs. Federal Election Commission. At issue is whether or not the FEC went too far in interpreting the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act when it ruled Hillary: The Movie to be campaign speech, advocacy about a particular candidate, instead...

The images of 9/11 are seared into the soul of Americans. The impact of the planes, the fire, the people leaping to their death to escape the flames, the heroism of the police and firemen, the utter shock of those impossibly tall monuments, now, collapsing in rubble, cannot, and should...

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was authored by John Sherman of Ohio, a Republican. The act is said to have been modeled to prohibit the specific practice of separate business entities influencing the activities of other businesses through investments in those businesses. The investments were assured by collusion between...

Arthur Laffer famously took the trouble to draw a curve to describe the following. If taxes are zero, zero taxes are collected. If taxes are 100% of everything, zero taxes are collected because nobody has anything left to tax. Somewhere in between zero and 100% taxes is just right....

If the public is overwhelmingly for health care reform, 70-80%, then why are they against legislation that attempts to do something about it? In Real Clear Politics David Kuhn offers a reasonable analysis of the polling outcomes in his "The Health Care Reform Paradox." From his work can be...

Even if you are a Free Market Capitalist, there are reasons that you should back a reprieve in rising health care costs. As a Free Marketer, you should know that the political prospects for overturning socialization of risks and costs in health (Medicare and Medicaid), financial hardship (Social Security) and...

U.S. healthcare spending is $7,900/year/person., $2.4 trillion dollars or 17% of GDP. Big deal you say? What difference is there to the economy if consumers spend twice as much as other industrial nations on health care? That is the unanswered question of the health care debate, unanswered except in the...

Americans are for a starting up a public health care system by a huge majority. The margins in favor of reform are so great that it is not really accurate to even call it an issue. Even as the same majority in number are satisfied with their current health...

July 20, 1969, I sat with my assumed betrothed Mary, in her living room, watching the Moon landing with her parents. My heart arrested, I could barely breath, as Eagle counted down to touchdown at Tranquility Base. My adolescence began with the assassination of the President in whose imagination this...

Walter Cronkite 1916-2009. But for him, we would not know ourselves even as well as we do. He took us, gently, to the edge of what we could bear to hear. He bade us look and held our trembling hand as we saw. Adieu...Newsman.

A second economic stimulus package is in the news if not (and its not) on the front burner of the Obama administration. Curious, considering we haven't had one yet. More precisely, the one that was passed by Congress is just now rolling out. Warren Buffet's interview with ABC last Friday...

"The property which every man has in his own labor; as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable... To hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour is a...

I have been waiting a long time for a President of the United States to utter the phrases that shall not be spoken. Obama's Tuesday press conference did it, "...why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business?"...

An epic test of will has been on the brew and the ferment is nearly complete. Fear is the long suit of the Republicans. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney has been particularly hysterical of late. His motives may be viewed as simply as what he says. He thinks you should be...

The financial house of cards has collapsed. What remains is a game of 52 Card Pickup. A strategy is required for how you want to arrange all the cards once they have been picked up, but the task of picking them up is a matter of "52" individual efforts. No...

I got a high number in the first draft lottery and was not required to go and did not go to Vietnam. Whatever reasons I had for not volunteering would seem obsequious. But, to compare our current Afghanistan involvement with Vietnam or even the Soviet experience there, as some in...

How is it possible to disprove anything more thoroughly than Supply Side economics, and all its attendant Laissez Faire excesses, have been disproved, at nearly the cost of the nation? How then can Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) still peddle the notion that Obama's tax proposals miss the mark?

The face of the Republican Party has become a buffet of jarring personalities. Bobby Jindal might easily be replaced by a rubber duck. Sarah Palin is an ongoing and dark adaptation of I Love Lucy. You know, "You got some splainin' to do." Joe the Plumber's opinions are Twilight Zone-esque....

It is hard to stand at the output end of the journalistic pipe between the fact and the reporting and decipher what the hell is going on in the banking system. Harder still is understanding how the derivatives market has grown to rival the GDP in 10 years. Hard considering...