Friedrich Hayek was born this day in 1899. Hayek had a huge influence on the development of my political thinking. I learned about Hayek’s existence when William F. Buckley spoke at Virginia Tech and touted the Austrian economist’s opposition to the Welfare State. I zipped to the bookstore the next morning and snared Hayek’s 1944 […]
J.D. Tuccille‘s High Desert Barbecue is a zesty subversive romp through the woods and deserts of northern Arizona. How could anyone not like a feral mountain man in a running battle with the Forest Service? After inept Forest Service rangers ignite a huge fire when burning down the mountain man’s squatter shack, the feds demonize […]
The director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas R. Insel, tells the New York Times that the new Diagnostic Statistical Manual – the psychiatrists’ bible – is a crock. But we will still be endlessly taxed to pay for treatments that shrinks gin up as a result of the profusion of new […]
Congress is finally paying attention to the choking profusion of federal criminal laws. The House Committee on the Judiciary Over-Criminalization Task Force of 2013 will be launched this week, seeking to pare back the federal criminal code. The Wall Street Journal, which has had an excellent series of reports on this problem in recent years, notes, […]
Scott Horton and I had fun yesterday discussing the twisted history of U.S. foreign aid on his radio show. The show was spurred by yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article on Food for Peace, but farm subsidies took a thrashing across the board. There was also enough time to kick the stuffing out of ethanol. Okay, […]
I’ll be on the Scott Horton radio show at 1 pm Eastern to discuss today’s Wall Street Journal piece on the failure of food aid. You can listen live at http://scotthorton.org/ Scott usually gets the MP3 of interviews up within a day or so; I will post a link when that becomes available.
Wall Street Journal April 30, 2013 [alternative WSJ link – not blocked by paywall] How ‘Food for Peace’ Hurts Foreign Farmers For a half-century the program has done more to feed special interests than help the hungry. By JAMES BOVARD The United States government is the world’s largest food donor but its aid consistently wreaks havoc abroad. […]