Commentaire

November 18, 2010 -- The first great post-election policy decision facing the lame-duck, Democrat-dominated Congress is whether or not to allow taxes to skyrocket. Usually referred to as the “Bush tax cuts ,” the rates that have been operative for most of this decade will expire at the end of 2010, reverting to much higher levels. Even President Obama and his Congressional allies agree that a return to the past rates would harm most Americans, forcing them to pay $150 billion or more annually in taxes as they struggle in a depressed economy. The debate is whether to allow higher rates to hit households making over $250,000 annually, a debate that reveals the sordid soul of the left.

30 mai 2011

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Edward Hudgins

Sidebar to Interview with Bob Barr Summer 2009 -- I am not surprised that Bob Barr, who has been a consultant for the ACLU, should take a litigious approach to the current financial crisis. But my own researches into post–World War II prosecutions of businessmen persuade me that such an approach to the crisis would sidetrack the needed investigation into what went wrong and substitute a witch-hunt against innocent people.

30 mai 2011

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In this webinar, presented on March 25th, 2011, William R Thomas presents his view that goodwill and trust are Objectivist social values. He goes on to discuss the virtues of honesty and integrity as means of earning trust, and presents David Kelley's concept of benevolence, arguing that it is the key virtue for winning goodwill.

May 16, 2011

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May 11, 2011 -- Yesterday, May 10, the backdated options witch-hunt began drawing to its close. A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case of Greg Reyes, the former CEO of Brocade, who was convicted of committing securities fraud by backdating options at his company. Coincidentally, Reyes was the first person to be indicted in connection with backdated options, back in 2006. Now his case bodes to be the last resolved, even as he languishes in prison. Unfortunately, the appellate court was not able to consider the most general policy questions in the Reyes case: How did the SEC come to institute an absurd rule of accounting for backdated options? Who made the decision to criminalize violations of that absurdity? And why were only a few people targeted for criminal prosecution in the matter? The legal questions that the appeals court was asked to consider included: Was there a substantive misstatement of the law in Reyes’s trial? Was there prosecutorial misconduct? Was the conviction beyond the pale, given the evidence?

May 11, 2011

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April 2003 -- On April 15th the news is always full of stories about taxpayers standing in long lines at post offices to file their returns on time. Occasionally there are sidebar stories about some proposed tax cut or reform that might help the economy: stories that usually disappear by the next day’s news cycle. But perhaps tax stories would remain in the headlines—and tax policy on the front burner—if they were treated as moral and not merely economic matters. Why should we acquiesce when governments take our money? We’d be pretty upset if thugs stole our wallets at gunpoint or thieves broke into our homes and carried off our possessions. That’s because we understand that the only moral way for individuals to deal with one another is through mutual consent rather than through the initiation of force, with each individual respecting the equal rights of others.

May 10, 2011

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Edward Hudgins

July 2002 -- A California court's recent subtraction of "one nation, under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance distorts the ethical foundation of church and state separation. Yes, individual rights require safeguards against intrusive government, but the court's striking of a simple utterance begs the question…which rights are being safeguarded? And for whose benefit? The court decision, and the attitude that enabled it, is antithetical to an environment in which individual rights truly flourish. On the surface, the decision appears to be a victory against compulsory recitation of the Pledge (or a phrase therein). Genuine affection for the Pledge's sentiments must be chosen; forced recitation makes it a meaningless rite. In this regard, the court would have been morally justified in affirming that the Pledge should be voluntary. However, striking phrases from the Pledge, as an attempt to dispel certain ideas from the public domain, minimizes the role of individual learning and choice.

May 9, 2011

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March 2002 -- Because I live in Warsaw, I get most of my TV news from the BBC. Recently I have watched, dumbfounded and amused, at the outpouring of concern for the comfort of the Al-Qaida prisoners kept at Guantanamo Bay. They were transported shackled with bags over their heads! They sleep in open cages! Four of them have British passports! Have they all had their Miranda warnings? The fact that they are undoubtedly living in less discomfort than they freely chose to undergo in the field doesn’t seem to register. I often think that the most common error in reasoning is a kind of category error, the placing of an issue in a category it doesn’t belong in. The classic example is the “no right to shout fire in a crowded theater” issue, often cited in a free-speech context when it clearly belongs in an implied-contract context.

May 6, 2011

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February 2004 -- Given the fact that the title of director Denys Arcand's previous film was The Decline of the American Empire, that his new film is from Canada, in French, and that it includes images of the destruction of the World Trade Center, one would expect Oscar-nominated The Barbarian Invasions to be a not-so-thinly veiled attack on his neighbor to the south. While the attack might be there, it is subtle, and the film is morally ambiguous. In it, Arcand, intentionally or not, exposes the flaws both of leftist public policies and the moral decadence that tends to accompany them. The film opens with Remy (Remy Girard), a left-wing college professor, dying in a Canadian hospital. His ex-wife, divorced from Remy for 15 years because of his philandering, calls their estranged son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau), a financial-risk manager working in London, to return to be with his father at the end. Sebastien reluctantly agrees. Remy's daughter is out sailing in the Pacific and opts not to return. You see, Remy has placed a jolly life of seductions, mistresses, and wine ahead of his family and, indeed, his academic career.

May 6, 2011

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Edward Hudgins

While waiting for the jury to reach a verdict in the Raj Rajaratnam “insider trading” case, I was forwarded a tweet from Frank Quattrone that links to an investigation by the Northern California Innocence Project.

Apr 27, 2011

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Jim Jeck has consulted on strategy and marketing for small to large organizations from 1995 to the present. Prior to and overlapping with that was an academic career at Duke University and North Carolina State University in the respective colleges of management. Jim was also involved in the NC State College of Engineering’s consulting and outreach function. Jim’s graduate degrees are from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. The Masters is an Executive M.B.A.

Apr 27, 2011

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Sidebar to: A River Ran Through It Spring 2011 -- The beauty of eastern Kentucky was never apparent to me until I moved to Texas and didn’t see flowers bloom for two years. I flew home during summer for the first time in 2010 and was astounded by the beauty. The leaves were mint-green, the grass was as soft as my mother’s voice. I walked barefoot on mossy banks behind my parents' house and helped my niece pick wildflowers. We ate strawberries fresh from the garden.

Apr 26, 2011

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(February 4, 2011) An individualist life and a harmonious society are only possible because we can apply reason to the production of the values we need. As individuals, the crucial skill on which our lives depend is our ability to do productive work and be responsible for fulfilling our needs. In this interactive webinar, William R Thomas explains and discusses the Objectivist virtue of productiveness.

Apr 25, 2011

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by Sherrie Gossett Spring 2011 -- It’s here: April 15 is the date for release of the much-awaited Atlas Shrugged movie, bank-rolled and tirelessly spearheaded by entrepreneur John Aglialoro, a trustee of The Atlas Society which publishes this magazine. In this issue we feature two articles about the movie: an interview with screenwriter Brian O’Toole (page 12) and a sidebar interview with TNI’s own David Kelley who served as a script advisor (page 17). In one memorable scene from the movie, entrepreneur Hank Rearden explains why he won’t give up his company: “Because it’s mine.” We find the same gritty and admirable determination animating the hard-working townsfolk of Olive Hill, Kentucky, which recently experienced a ravaging flood (“A River Ran Through It,” page 56). Writer Sarah Perry returns home to bring us this moving story of Kentuckians resilient and proud, proud of what they’ve poured their lives into (homes, shops, each other) and proud of what they’ve already overcome. Despite tragedy, many choose to stay. Must the sweet always come with the bitter? Does the faith of the townspeople sweeten the bitter waters of their Marah experience (as in the book of Exodus)?

Apr 25, 2011

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Earlier today, the Galleon insider-trading case went to the jury. I see little hope that Raj Rajaratnam will be declared innocent. But we shall find out soon enough. I thought it interesting, though, to reflect that in the year Rajaratnam was born (ca. 1957, the year Atlas Shrugged was published), federal prosecution for insider trading essentially did not exist. It is an economic “crime” that the SEC has basically created out of whole cloth in the last fifty years.

Apr 25, 2011

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Edward Hudgins

Spring 2011 -- (Sidebar article for Steve Walton is Flying High ) Steve Walton doesn’t just build planes —he flies them too. As a commanding officer in the Blackhorse Brigade of the Virginia Defense Force (VDF), Walton spends at least one weekend a month flying surveillance missions, transporting VIPs, and training for the possibility of natural disaster or terrorist attack in the Washington, D.C. metro area. The VDF is the state guard unit of Virginia. It operates under the military laws of Virginia and provides reserves for the National Guard. “It’s a privilege to give back,” Walton said. “It’s a way for me to continue to serve my state, and my country.”

19 avril 2011

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THERE’S A CIVIL WAR RAGING IN MY TOWN. On the Public School Front, my side (call us the “Alliance for Choice”) was recently crushed by the Egalitarian Axis in the Battle of the Universal Pre-K Lottery. Before the battle, well-meaning educated, liberal urbanites were able to say they were committed to public schools, while escaping from the worst urban school blight through competitive magnet schools and the like.

Apr 14, 2011

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Fall 2005 -- Jack Criss, Ready, Aim, Right! Quail Ridge Press, 2004, 224 pages (softcover), $12.95. Jack Criss is a journalist. But his passion is business, and for well over a decade that passion has spilled over onto the pages of Mississippi publications, where he writes on business, politics, and philosophy. His book, Ready, Aim, Right!, compiles his wide-ranging editorials, commentaries, essays, and columns, revealing a man of uncommon principle, courage, and independence.

30 mars 2011

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July/August 2005 -- Steven Malanga, The New New Left: How American Politics Works Today (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 157 pages, $22.50.

30 mars 2011

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In the Age Before Cable Television, when my life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short on preprogrammed entertainment choices, I spent rainy Saturday afternoons watching old movies on the UHF channel. (If you don’t remember UHF, ask your father.) It was either sports, sports, sports, sports, or PBS, or old movies. So I went for the old movies—and quickly discovered that I wanted to be a suave Englishman who made American movies with beautiful women.

30 mars 2011

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The “Law Blog” column of the Wall Street Journal had a troubling article last week. Its headline said: “What, Precisely, is Inside Info? Legal Issue Arises in Raj Trial.” This refers, of course, to the current trial of Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the Galleon Group, a hedge-fund management firm. The article then goes on to ask: “When is a tip inside information? That is, when does information passed along truly constitute information that others don’t have?”

30 mars 2011

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