Calling yourself a libertarian today is a lot like wearing a mullet back in the nineteen eighties. It sends a clear signal: business up front, party in the back.
You know, those guys who call themselves “socially liberal but fiscally conservative”? Yeah. It’s for them. (more…)
July 31st, 2012 | Comments (185)
In the early 2000’s, the co-chairman of the Cato Institute’s Project on Social Security Privatization, José Piñera, played a key role advising and overseeing Slovakia’s mass pension privatization, which passed in 2003 under the free-market government of Mikulas Dzurinda. Today, Slovakia’s retirees are groaning under the austerity pain administered to them by the Cato Institute.
March 12th, 2012 | Comments (34)
This is for my fellow Millennial. The one who gets his or her rocks off to visions of a glorious Boomer-hegemonic extinction, like those old claymation movies of dinosaurs getting nuked by meteor-fire. This is for those of you who, like me, need a vision of that mighty Boomer Brontosaurus keelin’ over for good…
February 6th, 2012 | Comments (98)
Here is the private letter from Charles Koch to Nobel Prize economist Friedrich Hayek, godfather of today’s free-market movement. The letter was obtained by Yasha Levine from the Hayek Archives at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. It is part…
September 29th, 2011 | Comments (27)
There’s right-wing hypocrisy, and then there’s this: Charles Koch, billionaire patron of free-market libertarianism, privately championed the benefits of Social Security to Friedrich Hayek, the leading laissez-faire economist of the twentieth century. Koch even sent Hayek a government pamphlet to help him take advantage of America’s federal retirement insurance and healthcare programs.
September 29th, 2011 | Comments (31)
The three year bad joke that is the Obama administration delivered its punchline last night, and as expected, it just wasn’t very funny. So, for the last time I will tell you progressives, liberals, Democrats whatever it is you ascribe to: This president will not be reelected. Your president is d-u-n-n, dunn!
September 9th, 2011 | Comments (43)
This article by Yves Smith is cross-posted from Naked Capitalism. Washington DC appears to be readying itself for a repeat of the TARP, namely, the passage of unpopular legislation to appease the Market Gods (and transfer even more income from…
July 25th, 2011 | Comments (18)
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The US was the bulwark of The Alleged West. And even in Europe, everyone who mattered supported NATO, as far as we knew.
Looking back now, it’s our acceptance of the whole farce that seems odd. You’d think people would catch on after a few decades, but we never did.
This was first published as a Radio War Nerd subscriber newsletter on May 21, 2021. But with the total collapse of the US-backed Kabul regime, it’s even more relevant now to ask: What was the strategy? Was there ever a plan there?…
Republished from the Radio War Nerd subscriber newsletter. Subscribe to the Radio War Nerd podcast hosted by Gary Brecher & Mark Ames for podcasts, newsletters and more! It’s a full-time job, keeping track of the US/NATO campaign to start a fire somewhere on China’s borders. It’s…
Republished from the Radio War Nerd subscriber newsletter. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd co-hosted with Mark Ames for podcasts, newsletters and more! There’s a gigantic, well-organized, extremely violent fascist group with tens of thousands of active members in Germany right now. And nobody notices. You’d think all the…
There’s a very naïve theory of language at work here, roughly: “if people speak nicely, they’ll act nicely” — with the fatuous corollary, “If people mention bad things, they must like bad things.”
The simplest refutation of that is two words: Victorian Britain.
Victorian Britain carried out several of the biggest genocides in human history. It was also a high point of virtuous literature…
Republished from the Radio War Nerd subscriber newsletter. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd for podcasts, newsletters and more! The headline here is not a joke, unfortunately. It’s a question you can’t help asking if you’ve followed the war in Yemen. You probably…
We’re living through a massive artificial famine, right now. In NW Yemen, home of the Yemeni Shia who’ve fought off a Saudi-financed invasion, the “coalition” of invaders has settled on a slower, more effective strategy: artificial famine and blockade. This is how you kill off a troublesome population, not with bombs and guns alone. Hunger and disease are much better mass killers than firearms and bombs.
