This week’s Barron’s contains a response to my article on the feds’ anti-cigar crackdown from Dr. Ioan P. Cleaton-Jones. His letter is headlined: “A Healthy Choice”: James Bovard’s Feb. 9 Other Voices essay, “Nanny Doesn’t Like Cigars,” asserts that the rights of 13 million cigar smokers to choose to consume a harmful product would be violated by […]
Tag Archives | Foreign Aid
Trouncing Federal Reserve Secrecy and All-Round Rascality
I did a brief monologue for Press TV yesterday morning (early enough that it was before I spoke English fluently) on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal for the Federal Reserve to bail out the Greek government: The Federal Reserve “has been so out of control for a long time, but especially during the last 12 years. It’s […]
Wash. Times: Obama’s Phony Foreign Aid Reforms
Washington Times, October 29, 2014 Obama’s phony foreign-aid reform The president boosts aid spending rather than fixing its flaws By James Bovard Four years ago, President Obama promised in a United Nations speech to “change the way we do business” with foreign aid and “seek partners who want to build their own capacity to provide […]
Foreign Aid Clobbers the Third World
From the FFF‘s April 2014 issue of the Future of Freedom – Foreign Aid Clobbers the Third World by James Bovard The U.S. government loves to preen about its generosity to the world’s downtrodden. However, a long series of presidents and their tools have scorned the evidence that their aid programs perennially clobber recipients. Nowhere is this […]
Coming Soon? America’s Tomb of the Unknown Democracy
This Tom Toles’ cartoon from the Wash. Post nicely captures the latest election absurdities in Egypt. We don’t have ancient pyramids in this country, but the ruling class is similarly imposing layer after layer of BS on elections. Many Americans already believe that we have an “unknown democracy.” How many absurdities can a democratic system […]
Latest Foreign Aid Fiasco: Afghanistan’s Killer Roads
Going back nigh 30 years, I have always been deeply pained when people accuse me of being cynical about U.S. foreign aid. At least my breakfast was nicely spiced this morning by a Washington Post front page story – “After billions in U.S. investment, Afghan roads are falling apart.” The highways that the U.S. spent billions […]
Hillary Clinton’s Legacy: Democracy in Egypt
A front page Washington Post piece revealed today that Hillary Clinton is racing to finish her memoir so that she can define her legacy in time for her 2016 presidential run. Shortly after Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, she promised to reform foreign aid. Egypt has gotten billions of aid in the meantime – […]