Free Republic

The Philadelphia Inquirer's big story Feb. 4 was about how a budget crunch at the Philadelphia School District had caused the district to lay off 91 school police officers. Over the years, there's been no discussion of what has happened to our youth that makes a school police force necessary in the first place. The Inquirer's series "Assault on Learning" (March 2011) reported that in the 2010 school year, "690 teachers were assaulted; in the last five years, 4,000 were." The newspaper reported that in Philadelphia's 268 schools, "on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were...

Let's think about the kind of mess that we're in. Federal 2010 Medicare and Medicaid expenditures totaled $800 billion. The projected annual growth of both programs is about 7 percent. Social Security expenditures are more than $700 billion a year. According to the 2009 Social Security and Medicare trustees reports, by 2030, 49 percent of federal revenues will go for Social Security and Medicare payments. The unfunded liability of both programs is already $106 trillion.But not to worry. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it's possible to sustain today's level of federal spending and even achieve a balanced budget. All...

Benefiting from a hint from an article titled "Is Harry Potter Making You Poorer?", written by my colleague Dr. John Goodman, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, I've come up with an explanation and a way to end income inequality in America, possibly around the world.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have led increasingly successful efforts to pit Americans against one another through the politics of hate and envy. Attacking CEO salaries, the president - last year during his Midwest tour - said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." Let's look at CEO salaries, but before doing so, let's look at other salary disparities between those at the bottom and those at the top. According to Forbes' Celebrity 100 list for 2010, Oprah Winfrey earned $290 million. Even if her makeup person or cameraman earned $100,000, she earned thousands...

Dr. Williams what are some of your thoughts quickly looking over the past 50 years in America? Well in terms of manufacturing, employment is way down but manufacturing output is way up… in the last couple of decades… what it means is If you just added up the dollar amount of our manufacturing as a separate nation our manufacturing would be the 4th richest nation on the face of this earth. [But then there’s] the massive moral problems associated with the decline of our nation and I think that the biggest problem among the American people is an overall disrespect...

Walter Williams‘ latest column probes the historical record of recent government attempts to “tax the rich.” Specifically, Williams looks at the impact of an attempt in 1990 to impose a 10 percent luxury tax on yachts, private airplanes, and the most expensive cars. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Back then, Congress told us that the luxury tax on boats, aircraft and jewelry would raise $31 million in revenue a year. Instead, the tax destroyed 330 jobs in jewelry manufacturing and 1,470 in the aircraft industry, in addition to the thousands destroyed in the yacht industry. Those job losses cost the government a total of...

There's little that's intelligent or informed about Time magazine editor Richard Stengel's article "One Document, Under Siege" (June 23, 2011). It contains many grossly ignorant statements about our Constitution. If I believed in conspiracies, I'd say Stengel's article is part of a leftist agenda to undermine respect for the founding values of our nation. Stengel says: "The framers were not gods and were not infallible. Yes, they gave us, and the world, a blueprint for the protection of democratic freedoms -- freedom of speech, assembly, religion -- but they also gave us the idea that a black person was three-fifths...

Have big government "poverty measures" helped or hindered Blacks? Author-columnist-professor Dr. Walter E Williams joins John to explain.

Walter Williams fans are in for a treat— and people who are not Walter Williams fans are in for a shock— when they read his latest book, "Race and Economics." It is a demolition derby on paper, as Professor Williams destroys one after another of the popular fallacies about the role of race in the American economy. I can still vividly recall the response to one of Walter's earliest writings, back in the 1970s, when he and I were working on the same research project in Washington. Walter wrote a brief article that destroyed the central theme of one...

The terms affirmative action, equal representation, preferential treatment and quotas just don't sell well. The intellectual elite and their media, government and corporate enthusiasts have come up with diversity, a seemingly benign term that's a cover for racially discriminatory policy. They call for college campuses, corporate offices and government agencies to "look like America." Part of looking like America means if blacks are 13 percent of the population, they should be 13 percent of college students and professors, corporate managers and government employees. Behind this vision of justice is the silly notion that but for the fact of discrimination, we'd...

Economic lunacy abounds, and often the most learned, including Nobel Laureates, are its primary victims. The most recent example of economic lunacy is found in a Huffington Post article titled "The Silver Lining of Japan's Quake" written by Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, who has also written articles for The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post. Mr. Gardels says, "No one -- least of all someone like myself who has experienced the existential terror of California's regular tremors and knows the big one is coming here next -- would minimize the grief,...

Whether Americans realize it or not, the last decade's path of congressional spending is unsustainable. Spending must be reined in, but what spending should be cut? The Republican majority in the House of Representatives fear being booted out of office and are understandably timid. Their rule for whom to cut appears to be: Look around to see who are the politically weak handout recipients. The problem is that those cuts won't put much of a dent in overall spending. The absolute last thing a Republican or Democrat congressmen wants to do is to cut handouts to, and thereby anger, recipients...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

It is truly disgusting for me to hear politicians, national and international talking heads and pseudo-academics praising the Middle East stirrings as democracy movements. We also hear democracy as the description of our own political system. Like the founders of our nation, I find democracy and majority rule a contemptible form of government. You say, "Whoa, Williams, you really have to explain yourself this time!"

Why is it that Egyptians do well in the U.S. but not Egypt? We could make that same observation and pose that same question about Nigerians, Cambodians, Jamaicans and others of the underdeveloped world who migrate to the U.S. Until recently, we could make the same observation about Indians in India, and the Chinese citizens of the People's Republic of China, but not Chinese citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Let's look at Egypt. According to various reports, about 40% of Egypt's 80 million people live at or below the $2-per-day poverty line set by the World Bank. Unemployment is...

I’d call this quite the intellectual challenge. At what point do you stop testing and start distributing new drugs that will help people live healthier lives? Walter Williams points out an important issue influencing the drug approval process.People are physiologically unique, that’s why some drugs may work very well for an individual while others do not. The side effects can be all over the place too. Common side effects for Lisinopril, a popular drug to treat high blood pressure, include cough, diarrhea, dizziness, headache and tiredness, but there are many other side effects that preclude the user from taking the...

The national debt is over $14 trillion, the federal budget deficit is $1.4 trillion and, depending on whose estimates are used, the unfunded liability or indebtedness of the federal government (mostly in the form of obligations for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and prescription drugs) is estimated to be between $60 and $100 trillion. Those entitlements along with others account for nearly 60 percent of federal spending. They are what Congress calls mandatory or non-discretionary spending. Then there's discretionary spending, half of which is for national defense. Each year, non-discretionary spending consumes a higher and higher percent of the federal budget....

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Immorality in government lies at the heart of our nation's problems. Deficits, debt and runaway government are merely symptoms. What's moral and immoral conduct can be complicated, but needlessly so. I keep things simple and you tell me where I go wrong. My initial assumption is that we each own ourselves. I am my private property and you are yours. If we accept the notion that people own themselves, then it's easy to discover what forms of conduct are moral and immoral. Immoral acts are those that violate self-ownership. Murder, rape, assault and slavery are immoral because those acts violate...

Immorality in government lies at the heart of our nation's problems. Deficits, debt and runaway government are merely symptoms. What's moral and immoral conduct can be complicated, but needlessly so. I keep things simple and you tell me where I go wrong. My initial assumption is that we each own ourselves. I am my private property and you are yours. If we accept the notion that people own themselves, then it's easy to discover what forms of conduct are moral and immoral. Immoral acts are those that violate self-ownership. Murder, rape, assault and slavery are immoral because those acts violate...

  Walter E. Williams is my oldest and closest friend. But I didn't know that his autobiography had just been published until a talk show host told me last week. I immediately got a copy of "Up from the Projects," started reading it before dinner and finished reading it before bedtime.It is the kind of book that you hate to put down, even though I already knew how the story would end.The first chapter, about Walter's life growing up in the Philadelphia ghetto, was especially fascinating. It brought back a whole different era in black communities— an era that...

Do federal, state and local governments have a right to intervene in our lives when it comes to choices affecting our health? Recently, San Francisco's board of supervisors voted to forbid restaurants from giving gifts with meals that contain too much fat and sugar, a measure aimed at McDonald's Happy Meals. The reasoning of these tyrants is to prevent McDonald's from using toys to lure children into liking foods the board deems non-nutritious. Fortunately, San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom, by no means a libertarian, has threatened to veto the measure saying, "Despite its good intentions, I cannot support this unwise...

One tragedy of war is that its victors write its history and often do so with bias and dishonesty. That’s true about our War of 1861, erroneously called a civil war. Civil wars, by the way, are when two or more parties attempt to take over the central government. Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington, in 1776, wanted to take over London. Both wars were wars of independence. Kevin Sieff, staff writer for The Washington Post, penned an article “Virginia 4th-grade textbook criticized over claims on black Confederate soldiers,” (Oct. 20, 2010). The...

Democrat control of the White House, House of Representatives and the Senate has produced an unprecedented level of political brazenness and contempt for the limitations placed on the federal government by the U.S. Constitution. As such, it has raised a level of constitutional interest and anger against Washington's interference in our lives that has been dormant for far too long. Part of this heightened interest and anger is seen in the strength of the tea party movement around the nation. Another is the angry reception that many congressmen receive when they return to their districts and at town hall meetings....

Daily Bell: Does the black community still support Barack Obama ? Walter Williams: Oh, yes, I think they support Barack Obama because today black Americans are a one-party people. They just support whoever is the Democrat. They supported Bill Clinton, they supported Jimmy Carter. It' unfortunate, in a two-party system, because it means that one party, namely the Democrats, will take the black vote for granted and the Republicans won't even try to compete for it. Daily Bell: How have you seen economic thinking change during your career? Walter Williams: The principles of economics don't not change any more than...

A black or white person, now dead, who lived during the civil rights struggles of the 1930s, '40s or '50s, might very well be appalled and disgusted by black behavior accepted today. Yesteryear, it was the Klan or White Citizens Council who showed up at polling places to intimidate black voters. During the 2008 elections, it was the New Black Panthers who showed up at a Philadelphia polling place to intimidate white voters and tell them, "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker." What's worse is the U.S. Department of Justice has decided to not to...

Let's think about President Obama's failed economic stimulus program. Before getting to the nitty-gritty of why stimulus packages fail, let's look at the failed stimulus program of Obama's hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, wrote in his diary: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!" Morgenthau was being a...

My March 2008 column "Is Obama Ready for America?" started out: "Some pundits ask whether America is ready for Obama. The much more important question is whether Obama is ready for America and even more important is whether black people can afford Obama." Let's look at this. In 1947, Jackie Robinson, in signing a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, broke the color bar in Major League Baseball. In 1950, three blacks broke the color bar in the National Basketball Association (NBA): Earl Lloyd (Washington Capitals), Chuck Cooper (Boston Celtics) and Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton (New York Knicks). Their highly successful performances...

My sentiments on immigration are expressed by the welcoming words of poet Emma Lazarus that grace the base of our Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Those sentiments are probably shared by most Americans and for sure by my libertarian fellow travelers, but their vision of immigration has some blind spots. This has become painfully obvious in the wake of Arizona's law that cracks down on illegal immigration. Let's look at the immigration issue step by step. Who Decides?There are close to 7 billion people on our planet. I'd like...

My sentiments on immigration are expressed by the welcoming words of poet Emma Lazarus' that grace the base of our Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Those sentiments are probably shared by most Americans and for sure by my libertarian fellow travelers, but their vision of immigration has some blind spots. This has become painfully obvious in the wake Arizona's law that cracks down on illegal immigration. Let's look at the immigration issue step by step. There are close to 7 billion people on our planet. I'd like to know...

Which allows an American Samoan worker to have a higher standard of living: being employed at $3.26 per hour or unemployed at a wage scheduled to annually increase by 50 cents until it reaches federally mandated wages at $7.25? You say, "Williams, that's a stupid question. Who would support people being unemployed at $7.25 an hour over being employed at $3.26 an hour?" That's precisely the outcome of Congress' 2007 increases in the minimum wage. Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyon, Georgia. That resulted in roughly 2,000 jobs...

According to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., research organization, nearly half of U.S. households will pay no federal income taxes for 2009. That's up from the Tax Foundation's 2006 estimate that 41% of the American population, or 121 million Americans, were completely outside the federal income tax system. These Americans pay no federal income tax either because their incomes are too low or they have higher income but credits, deductions and exemptions that relieve them of tax liability. This lack of income tax liability stands in stark contrast to the top 10% of earners, those households earning an...

Did you miss Professor Walter E. Williams's article in IBD this week? Titled Does U.S. Need To Split Along Political Lines? he revisits an old question of his, one which is a recurrent Unspun theme... how do liberty lovers and statist nannies live the lives they desire and remain united? (Article posted on FR here.) Plus+ IRS rules go global, iPods get naked, Maoists run rampant, and TSUCMU. Live at 3pmE/2pmTX/NoonP Listen to the show here. Call-in number: 347-327-9710

Here's the question asked in my September 2000 column titled "It's Time To Part Company": "If one group of people prefers government control and management of people's lives and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?" The problem that our nation faces is very much like a marriage where one partner has broken, and has no intention of keeping, the marital vows....

Ten years ago I asked the following question in a column titled "It's Time To Part Company": "If one group of people prefers government control and management of people's lives and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?" The problem that our nation faces is very much like a marriage where one partner has broken, and has no intention of keeping, the...

Different Americans have different and often intense preferences for all kinds of goods and services. Some of us have strong preferences for beer and distaste for wine while others have the opposite preference -- strong preferences for wine and distaste for beer. Some of us hate three-piece suits and love blue jeans while others love three-piece suits and hate blue jeans. When's the last time you heard of beer drinkers in conflict with wine drinkers, or three-piece suit lovers in conflict with lovers of blue jeans? It seldom if ever happens because beer and blue jean lovers get what they...

Bill Gates is the world's richest person, but what kind of power does he have over you? Can he force your kid to go to a school you do not want him to attend? Can he deny you the right to braid hair in your home for a living? It turns out that a local politician, who might deny us the right to earn a living and dictates which school our kid attends, has far greater power over our lives than any rich person. Rich people can gain power over us, but to do so, they must get permission from...

The "greatest generation" is a term sometimes used in reference to those Americans who were raised during the Great Depression, fought in World War II, worked in farms and factories and sacrificed for the war effort while maintaining the home front. Following the war, these Americans, many of whom were born between the turn of the century and 1930, went on to produce a level of wealth and prosperity heretofore unknown to mankind. There's no question that this generation made an important contribution. Let's look at what else that generation contributed that might qualify them for the generation that laid...

Politicians, businessmen and labor union spokesmen have whined about the decline in U.S. manufacturing. Before looking into what they say is the sad decline in U.S. manufacturing, let's examine what has happened in agriculture. In 1790, farmers were 90% of the U.S. labor force. By 1900, only about 41% of our labor force was employed in agriculture. By 2008, less than 3% of Americans are employed in agriculture. What would you have Congress do in the face of this precipitous loss of agricultural jobs? One thing Congress could do is outlaw all of the technological advances and machinery that have...

Conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh remained in "good, stable condition" Thursday after he was admitted to a Hawaii hospital for chest pains. Limbaugh's guest host Walter Williams told listeners the talk radio king "continues to rest very comfortably" at a Honolulu hospital, where doctors planned a complete medical exam.

Here is audio of Rush Limbaugh guest host Walter Williams today giving an update on Rush's condition. Williams said Rush had chest pains that felt like a heart attack, but "no heart attack has been confirmed." Williams said Limbaugh would be undergoing a full examination today in the hospital. . . . (AUDIO)

Detroit's (predominantly black) public schools are the worst in the nation and it takes some doing to be worse than Washington, D.C. Only 3 percent of Detroit's fourth-graders scored proficient on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, sometimes called "The Nation's Report Card." Twenty-eight percent scored basic and 69 percent below basic. "Below basic" is the NAEP category when students are unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level. It's the same story for Detroit's eighth-graders. Four percent scored proficient, 18 percent basic and 77 percent...

the devastating effects of minimum wage laws ... Today's overall teenage (16-19) unemployment rate, at 25 percent, is the highest since World War II. Black teenage unemployment, at 50 percent, is also the highest since World War II. How do you think the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton would explain the unemployment difference between black and white teens? You can bet the rent money they would say: It's racial discrimination. Let's investigate. Was racial discrimination in 1948 greater or less than racial discrimination today? In 1948, the unemployment rate for white 16-17 year olds was 10.2 percent while that for blacks...

Last year, my column "Global Warming Rope-A-Dope" (12/24/08) started out: "Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy the planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about manmade global warming have been called traitors or handmaidens of big oil." New evidence proves that climatologists and environmental policy advocates have not only fed us lies, engaged in scientific and academic fraud but committed criminal acts as well. Last month, Russian computer hackers obtained thousands of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England. CRU has the world's largest temperature...

The grand Body Snatcher project of erasing race-ethnicity-religion-culture-gender distinctions does not, of course, erase them. It merely, in the manner of a babbling baby, starts calling da-da what was previously doo-doo, as if through this onomatopaeic transfiguration shift [mother] could be turned into father. This would be a joke, were the Snatchers not in control of the West and its destiny. Because they are, real doo-doo is being packaged as Fatherland’s Wonderful Joy of Diversity, and we eat it. Literally. There have been several known cases of jihad-by-feces (hat tip Atlas Shrugs). The latest is Sahnoun Daifallah, 42, an Algerian...

Americans are harder workers, more philanthropic, individualistic, self-reliant, anti-government than people in most other countries. We've turned what was an 18th-century Third World nation into the freest and most prosperous nation in mankind's entire history. Throughout our history, the United States has been a magnet for immigrants around the world. What accounts for what some have called American exceptionalism? We Americans, as human beings, are no different from any other people, including Germans, Russians, Chinese, Africans and other people who have produced tyrannical regimes such as those of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Idi Amin. As such we are just as...

Americans are harder workers, more philanthropic, individualistic, self-reliant, anti-government than people in most other countries. We've turned what was an 18th-century Third World nation into the freest and most prosperous nation in mankind's entire history. Throughout our history, United States has been a magnet for immigrants around the world. What accounts for what some have called American exceptionalism? We Americans, as human beings, are no different from any other people, including Germans, Russians, Chinese, Africans and other people who have produced tyrannical regimes such as those of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Idi Amin. As such we are just as capable...

Michael Moore's new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story" will be released next month. I've neither seen nor read reviews of the film, except for a short piece in the London Telegraph (9/6/09) titled "Michael Moore film calls capitalism evil." Aware of Michael Moore's previous films, I know that it will be at best a misleading story about capitalism. So let's do some defensive mental preparation, not about the film but what is and what is not capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership and control over the means of production. The distribution of goods and services and...

With the massive increases in federal spending, inflation is one of the risks that await us. To protect us from the political demagoguery that will accompany that inflation, let's now decide what is and what is not inflation. One price or several prices rising is not inflation. Increases in money supply are what constitute inflation, and a general rise in prices is the symptom. As the late Nobel laureate professor Milton Friedman said, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in...