Thomas Sowell from Creators Syndicate

The Anti-Romney Vote for 02/08/2012

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

A funny thing happened to Mitt Romney on the way to his coronation as the inevitable Republican candidate for President of the United States. Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado happened. Rick Santorum beat him in all three states on the same day — and beat him by huge margins in two of those states, as well as upsetting him in Colorado, where the Mormon vote was expected to give Romney a vi ...

Updated: Wed Feb 08, 2012

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A Defining Moment for 02/07/2012

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Governor Mitt Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor has been treated as a gaffe in much of the media, and those in the Republican establishment who have been rushing toward endorsing his coronation as the GOP's nominee for president — with 90 percent of the delegates still not yet chosen — have been trying to sweep his statement under the rug.

But Romney's stat ...

Updated: Tue Feb 07, 2012

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Getting Nowhere, Very Fast for 01/31/2012

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system.

Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people's mone ...

Updated: Tue Jan 31, 2012

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The Florida Smear Campaign for 01/30/2012

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Republican establishment is pulling out all the stops to try to keep Newt Gingrich from becoming the party's nominee for President of the United States — and some are not letting the facts get in their way.

Among the claims going out through the mass media in Florida, on the eve of that state's primary election, is that Newt Gingrich "resigned in disgrace" as Speaker ...

Updated: Mon Jan 30, 2012

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Is Anybody Serious? for 01/25/2012

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Republican candidates' circular firing squad now seems to be using machine guns. Whoever the eventual "last man standing" turns out to be, he may not be standing very tall or very steadily on his feet — and he may be a pushover for Barack Obama in the general election, thanks to fellow Republicans.

Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, this is a ...

Updated: Wed Jan 25, 2012

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South Carolina Message for 01/24/2012

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Just days before the South Carolina primary, polls showed Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich. Then came the debates and the question about Gingrich's private life, which brought a devastating response from the former Speaker of the House — and a standing ovation from the audience.

Apparently the television audience felt the same way, judging by the huge turnaround in the support for ...

Updated: Tue Jan 24, 2012

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A Brass Age? for 01/24/2012

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance. The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between a stock and a bond.

Yet there they are, mouthing off about Wall Street on television, cheered on by politicians and the media. If this is not a golden age of presumptuous ...

Updated: Tue Jan 24, 2012

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An Ignored 'Disparity' for 01/17/2012

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

With all the talk about "disparities" in innumerable contexts, there is one very important disparity that gets remarkably little attention — disparities in the ability to create wealth. People who are preoccupied, or even obsessed, with disparities in income are seldom interested much, or at all, in the disparities in the ability to create wealth, which are often the reasons for ...

Updated: Tue Jan 17, 2012

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An Ignored 'Disparity': Part III for 01/17/2012

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Anyone who has ever been in a Third World country, or even in a slum neighborhood at home, is likely to wonder why there can be such dire poverty among some people, while others are prospering.

Both politicians and intellectuals have tended to have simple answers to that question, even if these simple answers have been different in different eras.

A hundred years ago, the prevaili ...

Updated: Tue Jan 17, 2012

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An Ignored 'Disparity': Part IV for 01/17/2012

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Different histories, geography, demography and cultures have left various groups, races, nations and civilizations with radically different abilities to create wealth.

In centuries past, the majority population of various cities in Eastern Europe consisted of people from Western Europe — Germans, Jews and others — while the vast majority of the population in the surrounding c ...

Updated: Tue Jan 17, 2012

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An Ignored 'Disparity': Part II for 01/17/2012

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

One of the ways of trying to reduce the vast disparities in economic success, which are common in countries around the world, is by making higher education more widely available, even for people without the money to pay for it.

This can be both a generous investment and a wise investment for a society to make. But, depending on how it is done, it can also be a foolish and even dangerous ...

Updated: Tue Jan 17, 2012

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Kodak and the Post Office for 01/10/2012

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The news that Eastman Kodak is preparing to file for bankruptcy, after being the leading photographic company in the world for more than a hundred years, truly marks the end of an era.

The skills required to use the cameras and chemicals required by the photography of the mid-19th century were far beyond those of most people — until a man named George Eastman created a company call ...

Updated: Tue Jan 10, 2012

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Republican Voters' Choices for 12/28/2011

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

No one seems to be really happy with this year's field of Republican candidates for that party's presidential nomination — except perhaps the Democrats.

The sudden rise, and equally sudden fall, of a succession of Republican front-runners is just one sign of the dissatisfaction of the Republican voters with this field of candidates.

In this, as in many other aspects of life, ...

Updated: Wed Dec 28, 2011

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Random Thoughts for 12/27/2011

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

Talk show host Dennis Miller said, "I don't dig polo. It's like miniature golf meets the Kentucky Derby."

Nothing illustrates the superficiality of our times better than the enthusiasm for electric cars, because they are supposed to greatly reduce air pollution. But the electricity that ultimately powers these cars has to be generate ...

Updated: Tue Dec 27, 2011

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The Past and the Present for 12/20/2011

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.

What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking po ...

Updated: Tue Dec 20, 2011

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Gridlock to the Rescue? for 12/13/2011

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington gridlock may turn out to be the salvation of the Obama administration.

Not only does gridlock allow the president to blame Republicans for not solving the financial crisis that his own runaway spending created, the inability to carry out as much government intervention in the economy as when the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress means that the market can now recover ...

Updated: Tue Dec 13, 2011

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Christmas Books for 12/06/2011

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The joys of Christmas do not include coping with crowds at shopping malls or wracking your brains trying to figure out what to get as a gift for someone who already seems to have everything.

Books are a way out of both situations. You don't even have to go to a bookstore, with books so readily available on-line. As for the person who seems to have everything, newly published books are am ...

Updated: Tue Dec 06, 2011

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Gingrich and Immigration for 11/29/2011

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Now that Newt Gingrich has become the latest in a series of Republican front-runners, he is getting the kinds of scrutiny and attacks that have done in other front-runners.

One of the issues that have aroused concern among conservative Republicans is that of amnesty for illegal immigrants, especially after Gingrich said that it would not be "humane" to deport someone who has be ...

Updated: Tue Nov 29, 2011

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Lessons of History? for 11/29/2011

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

It used to be common for people to urge us to learn "the lessons of history." But history gets much less attention these days and, if there are any lessons that we are offered, they are more likely to be the lessons from current polls or the lessons of political correctness.

Even among those who still invoke the lessons of history, some read those lessons very differently from ...

Updated: Tue Nov 29, 2011

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Failure or Success? for 11/22/2011

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Many people are lamenting the failure of the Congressional "Super Committee" to come up with an agreement on ways to reduce the runaway federal deficits. But you cannot judge success or failure without knowing what the goal was.

If you think the goal was to solve the country's fiscal crisis, then obviously the Super Committee was a complete failure. But, if you think the goal w ...

Updated: Tue Nov 22, 2011

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