Posts By Author » Thomas Sowell

The Need to Explain
15 Nov 2012 12:02 am

The most successful Republican presidential candidate of the past half century– Ronald Reagan, who was elected and reelected with landslide victories– bore little resemblance to the moderate candidates that Republican conventional wisdom depicts as the key to victory, even though most of these moderate candidates have in fact gone down to defeat.
One of the biggest differences between Reagan and these latter-day losers was that Reagan paid great attention to explaining his policies and values. He was called “the great communicator,” but much more than a gift for words was involved. …

Is Demography Destiny?
14 Nov 2012 12:04 am

Some media pundits see in the growing proportion of non-white groups in the population a growing opposition to the Republican Party that will sooner or later make it virtually impossible for Republicans to win presidential elections or even to control either house of Congress. But is demography destiny?
Conventional wisdom in the Republican establishment is that what the GOP needs to do, in order to win black votes or Hispanic votes, is to craft policies specifically targeting these groups. In other words, Republicans need to become more like Democrats.
Whether in a …

Nice Losers
13 Nov 2012 12:07 am

Mitt Romney now joins the long list of the kinds of presidential candidates favored by the Republican establishment– nice, moderate losers, people with no coherently articulated vision, despite how many ad hoc talking points they may have.
The list of Republican presidential candidates like this goes back at least as far as 1948, when Thomas E. Dewey ran against President Harry Truman. Dewey spoke in lofty generalities while Truman spoke in hard-hitting specifics. Since then, there have been many re-runs of this same scenario, featuring losing Republican presidential candidates John McCain, …

Waiving Freedom
7 Nov 2012 12:09 am

Among the objections to ObamaCare, one that has not gotten as much attention as it should is the president’s power to waive the law for any company, union or other enterprise he chooses.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides for “equal protection of the laws” for all Americans. To have a law that can cost an organization millions of dollars a year either apply or not apply, depending on the whim or political interest of the President of the United States, is to make a mockery of the rule of …

Gross Misconceptions
6 Nov 2012 12:08 am

This country is at a historic crossroads, and the path we choose can determine our future far beyond the next four years. Our children and grandchildren may someday bless us or curse us for what we do this Tuesday. Against that background, it is painful to see the petty talking points and gross misconceptions that seem to dominate this year’s election campaign.
Take the question of jobs. How many times have we heard about how many jobs have been added during the Obama administration? Yet few people bother to find out …

‘Cooling Out’ the Voters
30 Oct 2012 12:07 am

Confidence men know that their victim — “the mark” as he has been called — is eventually going to realize that he has been cheated. But it makes a big difference whether he realizes it immediately, and goes to the police, or realizes it after the confidence man is long gone.
So part of the confidence racket is creating a period of uncertainty, during which the victim is not yet sure of what is happening. This delaying process has been called “cooling out the mark.”
The same principle applies in politics. When …

Libya and Lies
23 Oct 2012 12:07 am

It was a little much when President Barack Obama said that he was “offended” by the suggestion that his administration would try to deceive the public about what happened in Benghazi. What has this man not deceived the public about?
Remember his pledge to cut the deficit in half in his first term in office? This was followed by the first trillion dollar deficit ever, under any President of the United States — followed by trillion dollar deficits in every year of the Obama administration.
Remember his pledge to have a “transparent” …

Random Thoughts
16 Oct 2012 12:07 am

Random thoughts on the passing scene:
Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.
Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack Obama’s claims about “creating jobs” with one plain and inescapable fact — “there hasn’t been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office.” Whatever …

Race Cards
10 Oct 2012 12:02 am

If you are sick and tired of seeing politicians and others playing the race card, or if you are just disgusted with the grossly dishonest way racial issues in general are portrayed, then you should get a copy of Ann Coulter’s new book, “Mugged.” Its subtitle is: “Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama.”
Few things are as rare as an honest book about race. This is one of the very few, and one of the very best.
Many people will learn for the first time from Ann Coulter’s book how a …

Phony in Chief
9 Oct 2012 12:09 am

When President Barack Obama and others on the left are not busy admonishing the rest of us to be “civil” in our discussions of political issues, they are busy letting loose insults, accusations and smears against those who dare to disagree with them.
Like so many people who have been beaten in a verbal encounter, and who can think of clever things to say the next day, after it is all over, President Obama, after his clear loss in his debate with Mitt Romney, called Governor Romney a “phony.”
Innumerable facts, however, …

Capital Gains Taxes
3 Oct 2012 12:03 am

One of the many false talking points of the Obama administration is that a rich man like Warren Buffett should not be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. But anyone whose earnings come from capital gains usually pays a lower tax rate.
How are capital gains different from ordinary income?
Ordinary income is usually guaranteed. If you work a certain amount of time, you are legally entitled to the pay that you were offered when you took the job. Capital gains involve risk. They are not guaranteed. You can invest …

Cheap Politicians
2 Oct 2012 12:09 am

Now that the National Football League has apparently learned that it can be costly to hire cheap officials, perhaps the rest of us should learn the same lesson when it comes to government officials, whose bad calls can do a lot more damage.
What do we do when we want a better car, a better home or a better bottle of wine? We pay more for it. We definitely need a lot better crop of public officials. Yet we insist on paying flea market prices for people who will be spending …

Obama Versus Obama: Part IV
28 Sep 2012 12:06 am

During the same week when the American ambassador to Libya was murdered and his dead body dragged through the streets by celebrating mobs, the President of the United States found time to go on the David Letterman show to demonstrate his sense of humor and how cool he is.
But Barack Obama did not have time to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a nation repeatedly threatened with annihilation by Iranian leaders, who are working feverishly toward the creation of nuclear bombs.
This was an extraordinary thing in …

Obama Versus Obama: Part III
27 Sep 2012 12:02 am

Much puzzling behavior by Barack Obama falls into place when we go behind the image that he projects (“Obama 1″) to the factual reality of the man’s whole life and thrust (“Obama 2″).
Obama himself is well aware of the nature and importance of his image. In his own words, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” An 18th century philosopher put the matter bluntly: “When I speak, I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to …

Obama Versus Obama: Part II
26 Sep 2012 12:02 am

Nowhere is the contrast between Barack Obama, as defined by his rhetoric (“Obama 1″) and Barack Obama as defined by his actions (“Obama 2″) greater than in his foreign policy — and especially his policy toward Israel.
What if we put aside Barack Obama’s rhetoric, and instead look exclusively at his documented record over a period of decades, up to and including the present?
The first thing that is most striking about that record is the long string of his mentors and allies who were marked by hatred of the United States, …

Obama Versus Obama
25 Sep 2012 12:09 am

Many voters will be comparing Mitt Romney with Barack Obama between now and election day. But what might be even more revealing would be comparing Obama with Obama. There is a big contrast between Obama based on his rhetoric (“Obama 1″) and Obama based on his record (“Obama 2″).
For example, during the 2008 election campaign, Obama 1 spoke of “opening up and creating more transparency in government,” so that government spending plans would be posted on the Internet for days before they passed into legislation. After he was elected president, …

The Fallacy of Redistribution
20 Sep 2012 12:02 am

The recently discovered tape on which Barack Obama said back in 1998 that he believes in redistribution is not really news. He said the same thing to Joe the Plumber four years ago. But the surfacing of this tape may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to thinking about what the consequences of redistribution are.
Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess board, to carry out some grand design. …

Can Republicans Talk?
18 Sep 2012 12:09 am

The first time I saw Chris Christie on television, shortly after he became governor of New Jersey, my immediate reaction was, “My Gosh! A Talking Republican!” It was almost like seeing a talking giraffe or a talking salamander.
Technically speaking, Republicans do talk, but talking is definitely not their strong suit. Nor do they seem to have put a lot of thought into what they say or how they say it. The net result is that articulate Democrats can get away with the biggest lies, without any serious rebuttal from most …

God and Jerusalem
14 Sep 2012 12:15 am

Who would have thought that God and Jerusalem would become controversial issues at this year’s Democratic National Convention?
Previous Democratic Party platforms had mentioned God and referred to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. After both were initially missing from this year’s platform, someone apparently realized that this was likely to raise questions about Democrats that they could ill afford to have raised in an election year.
So the convention faced a vote on whether to restore God and Jerusalem to their party’s platform. Rather than risk a roll-call vote from the …

The Brass Standard
13 Sep 2012 12:02 am

Politics takes a lot of brass. And Bill Clinton is a master politician. His rousing speech at the Democrats’ convention told the delegates that Republicans “want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place.”
That is world class brass. Bill Clinton’s own administration, more than any other, promoted an unsustainable housing boom, which eventually and inevitably led to a housing bust that brought down the whole American economy.
Behind all the complex financial processes that reached to Wall Street and beyond, there is …

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