Government Shows Itself Impotent on Economy
It should finally have dawned on the American people that the politicians who presume to guide the economy have no bloody idea what they’re doing. We’re long past the...
About: Sheldon Richman
Posts by Sheldon Richman
Are Americans Not Submissive Enough?
“I don’t know if America has a leadership problem; it certainly has a followership problem,” New York Times columnist David Brooks laments. “Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their...
Supreme Court’s Word Game Saves ObamaCare
Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion regarding the constitutionality of ObamaCare holds that the penalty for not complying with the mandate is both a tax and not a tax —...
How to Get Money out of Politics
Watching the television pundits fret over campaign finance is amusing, because the solution to their problem is right under their noses. They just don’t want to see it. As...
Bloomberg’s Soda Policy: The End Doesn’t Justify the Means
The debate incited by Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to outlaw supersized sodas in New York misses an important point. In the mayor’s words, “We’re not taking away anybody’s right to...
U.S. Should Steer Clear of Syria
We should be grateful that the Obama administration seems disinclined to intervene militarily in Syria. But let’s note that the administration has not kept hands off. In a variety...
Romney and Bain Capital
Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is essentially playing one card in his quest for Barack Obama’s job: his business experience taught him how economies work. But Romney’s own pitch...
JPMorgan Lesson: End Government Bank Guarantees
It’s widely believed that JPMorgan Chase’s recent $2 billion–plus loss proves we need the comprehensive banking regulation called for by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. Not only is that belief...
Obama, bin Laden, and Mitt
The partisan squabbling over the killing of Osama bin Laden is a typical election-year distraction, effectively squelching discussion of more important matters one year after the execution of the...
Barack Obama: Corporatist
Last November, President Obama stood before an audience and said government needs to be “responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special interests.” He added, “That...
Clinton’s Loose War Talk
When President Obama spoke before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee some weeks ago, he admonished those who engaged in “loose talk of war” about Iran. Apparently, his secretary...
Health Insurance Mandate: Immoral, Unnecessary
The Obama administration argued to the U.S. Supreme Court this week that people must be compelled to buy medical insurance (designed by the government) or the national medical insurance...
Defusing the Middle East Would Lower Gas Prices
Republicans see rising oil and gasoline prices as an opportunity to score political points on President Obama. To be sure, Obama is partly responsible for the rise in world...
Out of Afghanistan Now!
Memo from the people of Afghanistan to the United States: Get out! Now! The mass demonstrations in Afghanistan, punctuated by anti-American violence, carry a clear message: After more...
Obama Adm. “Brainwashes” Public on Afghanistan
In 1967, Michigan Governor George W. Romney, a potential contender for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, abandoned his earlier support for the war in Vietnam, which he had called...
No One Should Be Forced to Act against His Conscience
A question arises from the recent controversy between President Obama and the Catholic Church that aches for an answer: If Catholic institutions have a right to abstain from paying...
A Fitting Symbol of the American Empire
The image of four U.S. marines urinating on the corpses of Afghan fighters is a fitting symbol of American intervention in Central Asia and the Middle East. That picture...
Exiting Iraq
In his official remarks about the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, President Obama told an assembly of troops: The war in Iraq will soon belong to history....
Has War Against Iran Already Begun?
The U.S. government lost a spy drone over Iran. Is it part of an ongoing covert war? ...
Neocons Don’t Believe Their Own Anti-Iran Propaganda
We're being lied to about the purported Iranian nuclear threat, and the war party knows it. In ways eerily reminiscent of the 2002 buildup to the U.S. invasion of...