Category Archives: Media

UPDATED: A Vote For Chile’s President

America, Barack Obama, Bush, Free Markets, Government, Media, Technology, Trade

The following is from “A Vote For Chile’s President,” my latest WND column:

“President Barack Obama took to the podium well before President Sebastian Piñera did. Chile’s president bided his time patiently with the group of rescue workers in hard hats, until all 33 miners had surfaced from deep within the San José copper-gold mine, in northern Chile, where they had been entombed for 69 days.

If not for the translator’s running commentary, I would not have guessed that the man with a beaming smile—so different from Obama’s gleam of dentition and Bush’s demented grin—last in-line to meet and greet the miners who ascended from hell, was no other than Chile’s president. Sebastian Piñera wife, first lady Cecilia Morel, was equally low-key, fading into the background and ceding to the heroes of the unfolding drama.

The images transmitted from Camp Esperanz showed no swat teams, personal body guards, or retinues of handlers and props—the sort of ‘presidential comitatus’ that accompanies the head of the American hyperpower everywhere.

At ‘Camp Hope,’ the pensive group of rescuers and their president looked like a band of brothers. The media scrum did nothing to shatter what was almost a religious atmosphere. All present—mining men, the rescued and the rescuers, and their families—seemed oblivious to the din from the outside world. Nobody appeared star-struck; few were playing to the cameras. All present had eyes for one another alone. Expressions of joy were all the more poignant because so dignified. There was no slobbering, no Geraldo-Rivera hyperbole.” …

The compete column, now on WND.COM, is “A Vote For Chile’s President.”

Next week I hope to introduce you to the work of a dear friend, Professor Dennis O’Keeffe, who has just written a gem of a book about Edmund Burke. My conversation with Dennis will be the first of a two-part interview. You’ll enjoy it.

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material and reviews. Get your copy (or copies) now!

UPDATE (Oct. 16): Star Parker in “What Chile can teach America about freedom”:

But back just a little less than 40 years ago, Chile was a typical, poor South American nation, with intrusive government and sluggish growth.
How was it transformed?
Read a short essay called “How the Power of Ideas Can Transform a Country,” by one of the leaders that made it happen – Jose Pinera.
He relates how, in the mid-1950s, the Catholic University of Chile signed a cooperation agreement with the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, then home to the world’s top free-market economists, including the legendary Milton Friedman.
Milton Friedman’s classic “Capitalism and Freedom” explains how individual liberty can only thrive when accompanied by economic liberty
Thus began the education of a generation of young Chileans in the wisdom of economic freedom.
Beginning in the late 1970s, these young leaders, with newly minted Ph.D.s, helped implement new economic reforms in Chile protecting private property and promoting free trade.
A graph showing annual economic growth in Chile over the last hundred years looks like a hockey stick. From the early part of the twentieth century until 1980, the line is flat, averaging less than 1 percent growth per year. But beginning 1980, growth takes off in a vertical surge, averaging over 4 percent per year.

The John (Eliot Spitzer) & The Mindless Schoolmarm (Kathleen Parker)

Celebrity, Economy, History, Media, The State, The Zeitgeist

We can all agree that Eliot Spitzer did his most ethical work as a John, between the sheets with the hooker with whom he was caught. Before that he was a politician who persecuted the productive class.

“Parker Spitzer,” CNN’s new current-events program, is easily the most repulsive thing on TV. More so than “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”

I’d never have guessed, though, that I’d prefer Spitzer’s open statism to Kathleen Parker’s coy conformity. The New York Times stated that “Ms. Parker does not bring to CNN Mr. Spitzer’s propensity for controversy.” That’s an understatement.

Parker, we are told, is a Pulitzer prize winner. That tells me as much about that journalistic honor than Obama’s peace prize tells me about the Nobel Prize. Not only does this woman, Parker, not express a thought in opposition to her partner’s; she doesn’t express a thought.

Today the creepy couple entertained the king of Keynesians, economist Paul Krugman. Both offered plaudits to his predictive brilliance. Neither one challenged his warped history and economics. Yesterday it was the gorgeous model and ditz Paulina, and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both called the tea partiers savages. Nobody was smart enough to point out the differences between the Revolution in France, as Edmund Burke referred to this barbaric turning point in history, and the American Revolution.

Parker is a wound-up, tight-lipped, prissy schoolmarm—which is not a bad thing at all. I like prim and proper. It’s the dumb statist that I don’t much dig.

“Parker Spitzer” is self-congratulatory, pompous Beltway banter.

It needs to fail.

The John (Eliot Spitzer) & The Mindless Schoolmarm (Kathleen Parker)

Celebrity, History, Media, The State, The Zeitgeist

We can all agree that Eliot Spitzer did his most ethical work as a John, between the sheets with the hooker with whom he was caught. Before that he was a politician who persecuted the productive class.

“Parker Spitzer,” CNN’s new current-events program, is easily the most repulsive thing on TV. More so than “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”

I’d never have guessed, though, that I’d prefer Spitzer’s open statism to Kathleen Parker’s coy conformity. The New York Times stated that “Ms. Parker does not bring to CNN Mr. Spitzer’s propensity for controversy.” That’s an understatement.

Parker, we are told, is a Pulitzer prize winner. That tells me as much about that journalistic honor than Obama’s peace prize tells me about the Nobel Prize. Not only does this woman, Parker, not express a thought in opposition to her partner’s; she doesn’t express a thought.

Today the creepy couple entertained the king of Keynesians, economist Paul Krugman. Both offered plaudits to his predictive brilliance. Neither one challenged his warped history and economics. Yesterday it was the gorgeous model and ditz Paulina, and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both called the tea partiers a savages. Nobody was smart enough to point out the differences between the Revolution in France, as Edmund Burke referred to this barbaric turning point in history, and the American Revolution.

Parker is a wound-up, tight-lipped, prissy schoolmarm—which is not a bad thing at all. I like prim and proper. It’s the dumb statist that I don’t much dig.

“Parker Spitzer” is self-congratulatory, pompous Beltway banter.

It needs to fail.

Chris Matthews Lies: The Best Minds Are Not Keynesians

Economy, Elections, Journalism, Media, Political Economy

Chris Matthews has been repeating this lie almost every week in this ramp-up to the mid-term elections:

“This president came into office facing the worst economic outlook since the 1930s. He took action, bold action, the action prescribed by the best economic minds – following the best thinking there is in economics ‘since’ the 1930s.

First, even before taking office, he backed up his predecessor in preventing a major collapse of the financial industry. Everyone involved said it ‘had’ to be done to avoid catastrophe – the destruction of our country’s financial spine.

Second, he took the action – again boldly – to powerfully offset the white-knuckle drop in consumer spending and business investment. If he hadn’t, no one – including his worst critics – would have any idea what would have befallen us. We can argue about the name it was given – the stimulus bill – but the creation of this great boost in economic demand for goods and services as critical break on what was widely seen as an economic free-fall.”

Nonsense on stilts. And what a propagandist Chris is.

I’ll quote this blog, from 2009, on the so-call Keynesian consensus: “The Royal ‘We’ is unwarranted; and it’s not only me.

The following statement was signed by more than 200 academic economists, and posted by the Cato Institute. The Wall Street Journal buried the statement among a list of economists touting the stimulus package–and the “principle” of printing and borrowing the country out of a depression:

“Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s ‘lost decade’ in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.”