Doug Parker was CEO of a regional airline when he saw an opportunity: buy US Airways, which was bankrupt and at risk of liquidation. He pulled it off; the combined airline was called US Airways. This year, he saw a similar opportunity: buy the bankrupt American Airlines -- and create the biggest airline in the world.
If you’re used to thinking of antitrust law’s victims as huge corporations like Google and Apple, consider a case from Lubbock, Texas. The victim: the American Quarter Horse Association. The issue: who gets to decide what a quarter horse is.
A study published by an environmental organization claims the U.S. government is underestimating the number of birds killed by wind turbines. The Daily Caller apparently thinks this is a big deal .
Why would a president threaten to veto a bill that only does what he wants to do anyway?Earlier this month, President Obama announced that he would delay the enforcement of Obamacare’s employer mandate—the provision imposing a special tax on employers who don’t provide the sort of insurance the Affordable Care Act calls for. The mandate was to take effect in 2014; now it’ll take effect in 2015 instead.
July 16, 2013 -- Today's Investor's Business Daily carries a story by Ed Hudgins about the ongoing financial meltdown of the USPS. Hudgins argues for ending the U.S. Postal Service's monopoly:
Yes, riding to the rescue of the established publishers violated antitrust law, Judge Denise Cote has ruled in the federal government’s case against Apple Computer.A trial on damages has yet to be held , and the company says it will appeal.
You can’t turn your back on the FTC. While I was busy preparing for the Atlas Summit, the Federal Trade Commission found a new opportunity to make trouble for productive people. The people who’d been building Waze, a mapmaking and navigation service that draws on real-time contributions from its users, had sold it to Google for $1 billion—and the FTC told Google it wanted to examine the matter under antitrust law . This could ultimately lead to a demand that Google unwind the deal, which has already closed.
At our Atlas Summit last week , I had the chance to hang out a bit with John Stossel . Stossel wanted to know: why are liberty-lovers so worked up about the NSA spying revealed by Edward Snowden? As Stossel explains here , there are many worse things that governments do. So far, the NSA spying has probably broken up some terrorist rings. And otherwise, it hasn't harmed any American citizens as far as we know. The administration and members of Congress say the program is kept (secretly) under wraps, with independent judicial and Congressional oversight.
Economic power is the ability to buy and sell, the ability to make contracts. It's power exerted in the marketplace, in the context of trade. Political power is the power of government and power obtained through the political process, such as by getting laws passed favoring the your purposes. Both economic power and political power are instances of control over others. Social power generally is the ability to induce other people to do things you want. Each exercises control in a radically distinct way. Political power is rooted in an ability to harm others. By contrast economic power is rooted in the ability to offer others benefits.
November 2004 -- Last month, I reported on freedom around the world. Now, two reports have surfaced evaluating economic freedom in the U.S. states. The larger of the two—the U.S. Economic Freedom Index: 2004 Report—is a 183-page monograph from the Pacific Research Institute (PRI). The other—Economic Freedom of North America: 2004 Annual Report—is from the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute (in conjunction with the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis) and also includes evaluations of Canadian provinces.
The Institute for Justice , which is championing the cause of food trucks , is celebrating the demise of some proposed regulations here in D.C. as a “Big win for economic liberty!”
Presenter: David Kelley When: June 3, 2013 | 9pm -10pm Eastern | Register now Friedrich Hayek was one of the greatest advocates of liberty in the 20th century. Ayn Rand was another. Hayek won his fame as an economist , but his thought was based in philosophy. Rand won her fame as a novelist and social commentator, but developed her thought into the systematic philosophy of Objectivism.
“We never shut down,” said Vernon Hershberger. His farm was raided, and he was put on trial for operating without a license. But his buyers’ club “continued to feed our community. That’s the way it continued all along. ”And now that he’s been acquitted of doing business without a license, he’s planning to continue doing what he’s been doing—and to appeal the one charge of which he was convicted, disobeying a “holding order.”
In a speech at the National Defense University on May 23, 2013, President Obama framed his administration’s counterterrorism strategy, paying particular attention to the lethal use of unmanned drone bombers. He addressed both moral and legal interests, as well as concerns over congressional oversight of America’s drone program.
Apple Inc. is under attack by politicians for “avoiding” paying $44 billion in American corporate taxes.
May 17, 2013 -- Atlas Society CEO Aaron Day is one of many libertarian leaders to be featured at this year's Porcfest, formally known as The Free State Project's 10th Annual Porcupine Freedom Festival. Aaron will speak on "Open vs. Closed Objectivism."
May 17, 2013 -- Ed Hudgins has been interviewed about the woes of the U.S. Postal Service. The interview was pre-recorded by WNYU Radio. Click here to listen to the interview . (It is the first audio link.) WNYU is New York University's student-run radio station.
“The absurdity of its premise — that Dow could escape liability for an illegal antitrust conspiracy because plaintiffs alleged a longer conspiracy than found by the jury — convinces the court that it should not [let Dow off the hook.] ”So said U.S. District Judge John W. Lungstrum, in the only quote on the issue in this Bloomberg report, and at first read it sounds obviously right. Whatever one may think of antitrust law, surely a $1.2 billion illegal conspiracy doesn’t become legal just because the plaintiffs who sued over it were off on the dates. (The plaintiffs said the conspiracy ran from 1999 through 2003; the jury apparently put the start date in 2000.) If you’re accused of killing your wife on a Friday, you shouldn’t get off just because the jury said you did it that Saturday instead.
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May 10, 1013 — Several days ago Amanda Berry escaped from a house of horrors where she’d been held as a kidnapped sex slave since 2003, along with two other women and her daughter, who was born of one of the rapes she suffered. The details of this shocking crime disgust all decent people and the monster responsible should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
