November 1999 -- Objectivists too often reduce the life and achievement of James J. Hill to a single debating point: He built a
Pre-emptive use of force may be proper when one is faced with a clear and present danger. This might be a credible threat from someone, or
The Objectivist answer to poverty and other social problems is: 1) create a society in which people have clear reasons to be responsible...
There is not to my knowledge a well-established position on pornography in Objectivism . However, here is my attempt to give an Objectivist
Larry Ribstein ponders the government’s failure to prosecute some big businessman as the ultimate scapegoat of this financial crisis, in the way that it prosecuted Michael Milken and Jeff Skilling. His conclusion: “Maybe it’s become just too obvious that we created the financial crisis. As even Oliver Stone showed in his movie, we borrowed all that money and thought the housing boom would never end. We saw the risks in the disclosure documents but ignored them, or refused even to look. We heard the doomsayers and preferred to ignore them. We elected the politicians who subsidized the housing bubble, and decided which firms should live and which should die. Maybe we have seen the face of the financial crisis. In the mirror.”
Apparently, it is not enough that businessmen are constrained by 10,000 commandments, so that every businessman in American can be nailed for some crime or other whenever a prosecutor decides to go after him. Now, the ferociously anti-capitalist Senator Patrick Leahy (Democrat of Vermont) and the blithely law-defying Obama Justice Department are joining forces to re-broaden the white-collar offense called “honest-services fraud,” which the Supreme Court narrowed last June to something that was borderline intelligible (bribes and kickbacks). According to this report in the Wall Street Journal, by Tom McGinty and Ashby Jones, Leahy said last Friday that he was working with his colleagues "to determine how best to clarify and restore this statute." On Tuesday, September 28, Leahy’s Senate Judiciary Committee will be hearing about the Court ruling's impact from the head of Justice Department's criminal division. (That would be Lanny Breuer, who got his friend Sandy Berger off with a wrist slap after Berger stole documents from the National Archives.)
The Fifth Circuit court of Appeals has granted former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling a November 1 hearing in Houston for his bid to win a new trial. His case was sent back to the appeals court by the U.S. Supreme Court after the latter sharply restricted the meaning of "honest-services fraud," one of the principal charges on which Skilling had been convicted.
Larry Ribstein has a review of the anti-capitalist film Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. And here is his article on the original Wall
Let me say again that I am not one who believes in an ethics of “no snitching.” Quite the contrary. I believe with Thomas Jefferson that: “A prejudice prevails too extensively among the young that it is dishonorable to bear witness against one another.” I believe that citizens should report to the authorities actions of genuine wrongdoing--actions that are malum in se (wrong in themself), such as subversion, murder, rape, and theft. But what our present government has done is, first, to restrict economic activity by means of 10,000 commandments that range from the merely arbitrary to the absolutely insane. And it now proposes to entice people’s colleagues into becoming bounty hunters by offering them huge sums of money to report any violation of those 10,000 commandments.
Robert Moffat has apparently asked to begin his six-month prison term for insider trading on November 5 rather than on next June 30...
I remarked a while back that, so far during the financial collapse, I had not seen anyone call for business executives to be put to death. Now I have. A blogger named Howie Klein, who posts at “DownWithTyranny,” was reviewing the forthcoming anti-capitalist film Inside Job , by Charles Ferguson, and in the course of his comments , Klein wrote: “As a firm believer in the death penalty, I heartily disagree with Ferguson that any of these crooks belong in prison.” Hyperbole? Maybe. But it has a tradition.
Question: On the topic of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, Objectivism , as I understand it, holds that the citizen delegates to the government have a monopoly on the use of force. If this is the case, then does Objectivism support the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and if so, how is this apparent contradiction resolved? Answer: Objectivism does not hold that government should be the only armed institution. It does hold that, for the government to function properly, it must be in a position to defeat any challenges to its power. That said, private security agencies, private arbitration boards, and an armed citizenry are not contradictory to the kind of limited government that Objectivism envisions.
In my last blog post, “ When Only Ayn Rand Says It All ,” I promised to say more about the continuing prosecution of James Brown as part....
One of the strangest stories in English literature is the rise and fall of Joseph Addison’s Cato, which was first performed in London in....
In my investigation of the Jamie Olis case, I wrote: Following the collapse of Enron in December 2001, the city of Houston became the
It is always gratifying to find a prominent pro-business blogger, not obviously an Objectivist, who feels that he cannot adequately express his revulsion for the government persecution of businessmen except through the words of Ayn Rand. Today’s example comes from the estimable Tom Kirkendall of Houston’s Clear Thinkers .
March 2005 -- Many people seem to sense it. The debate over whether to reform Social Security by allowing individuals to divert some of their payments into personal retirement accounts reflects a much deeper battle, one literally for the soul of the Republic. It pits those who would take the first small steps in restoring the morality necessary to sustain a free society against those who have undermined that ethos and who would perpetuate a system of servitude. To appreciate the nature of the battle it's necessary to recognize that true individualists, like the ones who created this country, are autonomous and independent. What does that mean? It means that they pursue their own goals in life by right, not by permission of "society," their neighbors, or elected officials—indeed, the purpose of government is to protect their lives, liberty, and property. It means that they rely on their own efforts to secure the means to their material survival. They don't beg government bureaucrats for alms or kiss the feet of feudal lords for handouts. Rather, through their own efforts they produce goods and services that they exchange with willing customers based on mutual consent. They are independent individuals in control of their own lives, dealing freely with one another.
It seems that the political Left’s criminalization of business will be debated this autumn via movies. And given the cultural Left’s dominance of the film industry, that is not encouraging. I have mentioned earlier the hard-hitting “exposé” about the financial crisis: “ Inside Job .” And I have mentioned the apparently pathetic right-wing alternative “ I Want Your Money .” Now I hear that a film is due out on November 1st dealing with the rise and fall of Eliot Spitzer: “ Client 9 .”
March 2005 -- President Bush's recent emphasis on reforming Social Security to include personal retirement accounts has been welcomed by free market advocates as a needed step toward giving people more control over their own lives. So far, much of the debate has focused on issues affecting individuals as participants in Social Security, such as what portion of their payroll taxes people should be allowed to invest in personal retirement accounts, how much the government should restrict investment choices in those accounts, and the extent to which Social Security should provide a minimum benefit relating to personal retirement accounts. Most current reform proposals provide that investment choices would not include individual stocks and bonds selected by the holders of personal accounts, but would be limited to diversified funds that invest in a broad range of stocks, bonds, or both. For example, under the Cato Institute proposal, employees would initially have three investment choices. An employee's contributions would be deposited in one of three balanced funds, each highly diversified and invested in thousands of securities. The default portfolio, where one's money would be invested if no choice were made, would have 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds. The two other funds would have the same asset classes but with different weights. (See Michael Tanner, " The 6.2 Percent Solution: A Plan for Reforming Social Security. ")
March 2005 -- Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from David Kelley's book A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare
November 1999 -- Objectivists too often reduce the life and achievement of James J. Hill to a single debating point: He built a
Pre-emptive use of force may be proper when one is faced with a clear and present danger. This might be a credible threat from someone, or
The Objectivist answer to poverty and other social problems is: 1) create a society in which people have clear reasons to be responsible...
There is not to my knowledge a well-established position on pornography in Objectivism . However, here is my attempt to give an Objectivist
Larry Ribstein ponders the government’s failure to prosecute some big businessman as the ultimate scapegoat of this financial crisis, in the way that it prosecuted Michael Milken and Jeff Skilling. His conclusion: “Maybe it’s become just too obvious that we created the financial crisis. As even Oliver Stone showed in his movie, we borrowed all that money and thought the housing boom would never end. We saw the risks in the disclosure documents but ignored them, or refused even to look. We heard the doomsayers and preferred to ignore them. We elected the politicians who subsidized the housing bubble, and decided which firms should live and which should die. Maybe we have seen the face of the financial crisis. In the mirror.”
Apparently, it is not enough that businessmen are constrained by 10,000 commandments, so that every businessman in American can be nailed for some crime or other whenever a prosecutor decides to go after him. Now, the ferociously anti-capitalist Senator Patrick Leahy (Democrat of Vermont) and the blithely law-defying Obama Justice Department are joining forces to re-broaden the white-collar offense called “honest-services fraud,” which the Supreme Court narrowed last June to something that was borderline intelligible (bribes and kickbacks). According to this report in the Wall Street Journal, by Tom McGinty and Ashby Jones, Leahy said last Friday that he was working with his colleagues "to determine how best to clarify and restore this statute." On Tuesday, September 28, Leahy’s Senate Judiciary Committee will be hearing about the Court ruling's impact from the head of Justice Department's criminal division. (That would be Lanny Breuer, who got his friend Sandy Berger off with a wrist slap after Berger stole documents from the National Archives.)
The Fifth Circuit court of Appeals has granted former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling a November 1 hearing in Houston for his bid to win a new trial. His case was sent back to the appeals court by the U.S. Supreme Court after the latter sharply restricted the meaning of "honest-services fraud," one of the principal charges on which Skilling had been convicted.
Larry Ribstein has a review of the anti-capitalist film Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. And here is his article on the original Wall
Let me say again that I am not one who believes in an ethics of “no snitching.” Quite the contrary. I believe with Thomas Jefferson that: “A prejudice prevails too extensively among the young that it is dishonorable to bear witness against one another.” I believe that citizens should report to the authorities actions of genuine wrongdoing--actions that are malum in se (wrong in themself), such as subversion, murder, rape, and theft. But what our present government has done is, first, to restrict economic activity by means of 10,000 commandments that range from the merely arbitrary to the absolutely insane. And it now proposes to entice people’s colleagues into becoming bounty hunters by offering them huge sums of money to report any violation of those 10,000 commandments.
Robert Moffat has apparently asked to begin his six-month prison term for insider trading on November 5 rather than on next June 30...
I remarked a while back that, so far during the financial collapse, I had not seen anyone call for business executives to be put to death. Now I have. A blogger named Howie Klein, who posts at “DownWithTyranny,” was reviewing the forthcoming anti-capitalist film Inside Job , by Charles Ferguson, and in the course of his comments , Klein wrote: “As a firm believer in the death penalty, I heartily disagree with Ferguson that any of these crooks belong in prison.” Hyperbole? Maybe. But it has a tradition.
Question: On the topic of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, Objectivism , as I understand it, holds that the citizen delegates to the government have a monopoly on the use of force. If this is the case, then does Objectivism support the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and if so, how is this apparent contradiction resolved? Answer: Objectivism does not hold that government should be the only armed institution. It does hold that, for the government to function properly, it must be in a position to defeat any challenges to its power. That said, private security agencies, private arbitration boards, and an armed citizenry are not contradictory to the kind of limited government that Objectivism envisions.
In my last blog post, “ When Only Ayn Rand Says It All ,” I promised to say more about the continuing prosecution of James Brown as part....
One of the strangest stories in English literature is the rise and fall of Joseph Addison’s Cato, which was first performed in London in....
In my investigation of the Jamie Olis case, I wrote: Following the collapse of Enron in December 2001, the city of Houston became the
It is always gratifying to find a prominent pro-business blogger, not obviously an Objectivist, who feels that he cannot adequately express his revulsion for the government persecution of businessmen except through the words of Ayn Rand. Today’s example comes from the estimable Tom Kirkendall of Houston’s Clear Thinkers .
March 2005 -- Many people seem to sense it. The debate over whether to reform Social Security by allowing individuals to divert some of their payments into personal retirement accounts reflects a much deeper battle, one literally for the soul of the Republic. It pits those who would take the first small steps in restoring the morality necessary to sustain a free society against those who have undermined that ethos and who would perpetuate a system of servitude. To appreciate the nature of the battle it's necessary to recognize that true individualists, like the ones who created this country, are autonomous and independent. What does that mean? It means that they pursue their own goals in life by right, not by permission of "society," their neighbors, or elected officials—indeed, the purpose of government is to protect their lives, liberty, and property. It means that they rely on their own efforts to secure the means to their material survival. They don't beg government bureaucrats for alms or kiss the feet of feudal lords for handouts. Rather, through their own efforts they produce goods and services that they exchange with willing customers based on mutual consent. They are independent individuals in control of their own lives, dealing freely with one another.
It seems that the political Left’s criminalization of business will be debated this autumn via movies. And given the cultural Left’s dominance of the film industry, that is not encouraging. I have mentioned earlier the hard-hitting “exposé” about the financial crisis: “ Inside Job .” And I have mentioned the apparently pathetic right-wing alternative “ I Want Your Money .” Now I hear that a film is due out on November 1st dealing with the rise and fall of Eliot Spitzer: “ Client 9 .”
March 2005 -- President Bush's recent emphasis on reforming Social Security to include personal retirement accounts has been welcomed by free market advocates as a needed step toward giving people more control over their own lives. So far, much of the debate has focused on issues affecting individuals as participants in Social Security, such as what portion of their payroll taxes people should be allowed to invest in personal retirement accounts, how much the government should restrict investment choices in those accounts, and the extent to which Social Security should provide a minimum benefit relating to personal retirement accounts. Most current reform proposals provide that investment choices would not include individual stocks and bonds selected by the holders of personal accounts, but would be limited to diversified funds that invest in a broad range of stocks, bonds, or both. For example, under the Cato Institute proposal, employees would initially have three investment choices. An employee's contributions would be deposited in one of three balanced funds, each highly diversified and invested in thousands of securities. The default portfolio, where one's money would be invested if no choice were made, would have 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds. The two other funds would have the same asset classes but with different weights. (See Michael Tanner, " The 6.2 Percent Solution: A Plan for Reforming Social Security. ")
March 2005 -- Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from David Kelley's book A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare