Jonathan Downey is the co-founder and CEO of Airware, a startup that develops platforms and operating systems for unmanned commercial aircraft. In this segment, he lays out an exciting future for drones well beyond military applications, as well as the prospects for US adoption of enabling regulations.
To listen to the podcast click here.
Entrepreneur, Will Galvin, Head of US Operations of Self Help Africa discusses how his unique aid business model invests in and leverages community strength to foster development across Africa.
To listen to the podcast, click here.
I’m pleased to announce that RealClear Radio Hour, brought to you by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in cooperation with RealClearPolitics, launches this weekend. The program, hosted by yours truly, will air every Saturday at 10am on Bloomberg Boston WXKS 1200 AM and 94.5 FM HD2. It can also be heard on iHeartRadio, with podcasts available from YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes, and at RealClearRadio.org. This one hour program offers listeners a fresh perspective on the political and social issues of the day through informative interviews and discussions. Modeled on the success and format of public radio, each one-hour show will feature select, in-depth guest interviews, covering everything from economics and technology to religion and world news.
Like many an engineer who got nary a whiff of a liberal education, I’ve spent the last 35 years trying to make up for it through my own reading. Charting a course through history, economics, and literature has been relatively easy. But making sense of the conflicting schools of philosophy without a roadmap has been vexing—until the right book came along to finally help put all the pieces in place.
That book, The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization by Arthur Herman, should be standard reading in every Philosophy 101 course, and on the short list of “must read” books for any educated adult. Herman lays out the competing dynamic between Plato’s mysticism and Aristotle’s empiricism, which has driven over 2,300 years of history.
For the first of these 900 years, the Schools of Athens laid the foundation of Western thinking, with Plato’s Academy becoming the model for every monastery, university, and totalitarian regime. Meanwhile, Aristotle’s legacy bequeathed to us capitalism, the scientific method, and the American Revolution.
To read the rest of the column, click here.
A short excerpt from my conversation with Andrew Wilkow on The Blaze yesterday discussing my Forbes column “2013: The Year The Progressive Narrative Collided With Reality.” Connecting the dots between Obama, Mussolini, and Plato in three minutes or less.
To view video click here.
“On-The-Job Deaths Spiking As Oil Drilling Quickly Expands” screams a supposed National Public Radio exposé on the “terrible price” we’re paying for the fracking revolution that has transformed the U.S. energy industry. “Last year, 138 workers were killed on the job — an increase of more than 100 percent since 2009.” The story blends chilling statistics, heartrending anecdotes, and stern warnings from Labor Secretary Thomas Perez calling for a national voluntary stand-down of U.S. onshore oil and gas exploration and production because, “No worker should lose their (sic) life for a paycheck.”
As anti-fossil fuel advocacy, it was a masterful piece. But was it responsible, credible journalism? Five minutes on Google provides an answer—and lays bare NPR’s practiced techniques of framing, context manipulation, and choosing which facts to report and which to ignore to advance a consistent left-liberal editorial agenda as biased as any right wing talk radio show.
To read the rest of the column click here.
When it comes to crafting winning political narratives, progressives have a natural advantage over conservatives. That’s because progressives have a free hand to project rosy visions of the future while conservatives must constantly defend against progressives’ distorted depictions of the past.
Two fundamental techniques undergird progressives’ success at narrative spinning. The first is skillful framing of the debate through investing heavily in public opinion making machinery. This disarms critics while giving lawmakers cover to vote for bills they’ve neither read nor understood. Thus framed, policies are judged only by their stated intentions, never their actual results. This allows politicians to promote new pieces of legislation named for their lofty objectives, even if the thousands of pages of vague and contradictory content deliver just the opposite.
The second is dodging all responsibility for failure. This is accomplished by blaming insufficient resources, the prior administration, the greedy 1 percent, sabotage by Republicans, or even the people’s obdurate failure to appreciate the progressive benefits conferred upon them. When the going gets tough, reality can be dismissed with a slogan. Forward!
To read the rest of the column click here.
Insurance is a complicated product. Even President Obama figured that out. Hundreds of highly trained actuaries spend thousands of hours assembling risk pools to determine premium levels, underwriting standards, and product offerings. Investment managers spend thousands more trying to match financial assets acquired from those premium payments with long term liabilities to guarantee coverage promises can be kept. Get it right and you are rewarded with a stable company with stock suitable for widows and orphans. Get it wrong and your business dies.
When it comes to health insurance, however, this finely tuned balance has now been completely destroyed, culminating years of political meddling. And for its final Christmas present of a year that will go down as the worst in insurance history, the Obama Administration unilaterally waived yet another key provision of the Affordable Care Act.
Four days before the deadline to sign up, the Department of Health and Human Services told people with cancelled plans facing Obamacare Exchange sticker shock they can now buy cheaper “catastrophic” plans after all—at least until the 2014 midterm elections. This, along with a dozen other changes voted on by exactly zero legislators, may well be the last nail in the coffin of commercial health insurance. The insurers themselves may not admit it, but they are the walking dead.
To read the rest of the column click here.
Everyone, it seems, loves asset inflation. What could be more satisfying than watching the value of your home, your stocks, and your 401(k) soar, especially after the economic beating from the mortgage meltdown? Monetary illusions that pass for prosperity buy Washington time to tackle other Big Problems, like providing affordable health care to everybody, eliminating income inequality, bringing peace to the Middle East, and saving the planet from global warming.
But woe to the powers that be if the asset bubble pops and rampant inflation follows. Paying more for gas, groceries, and rent as wages stagnate, housing prices collapse, and retirement savings erode makes voters grumpy. This is a threat to incumbent politicians—especially if they have not meanwhile solved the aforementioned big problems. They can try to shift blame to mysterious forces beyond their control, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as mainstream media loses its ability to enforce Washington orthodoxy.
To read the rest of the column click here.
The technology pendulum never stops swinging. Its rhythms create, then disrupt, then transform, delighting users while enriching innovators. When tech revolutions reach middle age innovators give way to optimizers, markets saturate, and products ossify. That is what creates the right conditions for the next cycle. Having been at this game since minicomputers vanquished punch cards, I’ve ridden enough waves to respect the rhythm.
Each cycle has its own tools. Tools have been agents of change since cavemen figured out how to chip flint. Most tools start out as cumbersome curiosities, nurtured by a motivated few. Those that provide competitive advantage proliferate, evolving into blessings. Then they become essentials, before aging into relics waiting for the next wave of innovation to wash them away.
The dominant tech innovations of our times – the PC, the Internet, and the smartphone – crawled out of separate primordial swamps powered by common semiconductor DNA. For half a century, Moore’s Law enabled spectacular growth. But as pointed out recently by Broadcom’s chairman and CTO Henry Samueli, “The Moore’s Law blowout sale is ending.”
To read the rest of the column click here.
We all hoped this guy would be different. Jorge Bergoglio’s spontaneous ruminations upon becoming Pope revealed a humble, loving heart. Too bad that in his formal writing the new Holy Father couldn’t resist biting the invisible hand that feeds a lot more poor people than the Vatican ever has.
Most of Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis’s first apostolic exhortation, is an ennobling call to the faithful. Ninety percent of its 223 pages make a learned and passionate case for why Christians should spend more time calling others to Jesus, a subject on which Pope Francis is truly an expert. His writing offers a joyful and inclusive spirituality that even this atheist can appreciate.
But when it comes to economics, the Pontiff’s expertise isn’t much to go by, judging by his ahistorical, populist attack on an economic system that has done more to alleviate poverty than a thousand Mother Theresas ever could.
To read the rest of the column click here.
By Llib Azzerf
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced its granting of conditional approval to Google’s direct neural interface for implantation in Americans. Google Implant™ remains banned in the European Union, with its approval marked by protests and controversy in the United States. U.S. regulators apparently buckled under pressure from trade negotiators worried that an “implant gap” could imperil U.S. competitiveness due the product’s fast-growing popularity in China, where it has enabled Chinese entrepreneurs, executives, and diplomats to wirelessly access and search the Internet using only their thoughts.
Google Implant is the only commercially successful product to grow out of the $3 billion Brain Activity Map Initiative (BRAIN) launched by the Obama administration a decade ago. Initially developed to help disabled individuals control their motorized wheelchairs, Google Implant is comprised of a small array of nano-electrodes implanted directly into a patient’s visual cortex and linked to an external power pack and Wi-Fi transceiver. When researchers learned they could project the World Wide Web directly onto the brain with search queries directed by sub-vocalized commands, rogue Google X researchers working out of the tech giant’s Shanghai skunkworks took the research in a new direction.
To read the rest of the column click here.
Enthralled with the movie saga of starving and oppressed young heroes rebelling against brutal government tyranny? Then what do you make of gangs of inner-city teenage boys trying to prove their macho playing a one-punch knockout game, preying on innocent victims whose government obliges all of us to house, feed, educate, and provide medical care to these barbarians within our gates?
The good news is that mainstream media is finally picking up on the story, which has been simmering for years in the alternative press. Thankfully, attempts by the New York Times and others guardians of the prevailing narrative to dismiss this as urban myth or blame it on violent videogames are gaining little traction. Shining some light on this story may help combat the trend. The bad news is that until more forceful law enforcement measures are taken, increased media attention is more likely than not to produce a wave of copycat incidents, similar to reports of flash mob looting.
Underneath lie the forbidden issues of race and class. While the mainstream media studiously avoids identifying the race of knockout game perpetrators, an overwhelming number appear to be black males, with victims chosen specifically because they are not.
To read the rest of the column click here.
To our progressive friends, it seemed like a century of advocating for government-sponsored universal health care reached fruition when the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land. But triumph turned to tragedy when Progressivism’s signature accomplishment blew up on the launch pad. Not only did this make a shambles of our wounded president’s governing philosophy, it sent the most vulnerable Democratic officeholders scurrying for cover, leaving damage control to a few befuddled party elders.
The Evil Party will get a chance to do some soul searching as soon as the baying press hounds switch their attention back to the Stupid Party, which rarely misses an opportunity to shoot itself in the foot. When that happens, expect a civil war to break out among the Democrats mirroring the conflict that’s been roiling Republicans.
To read the rest of the column, click here.
The king is dead; long live the king.
As America’s great money printer prepares to hand over the reins to a presumptive successor determined to continue down the same Keynesian path, one has to wonder: How much longer can the Federal Reserve maintain the fiction that it is “managing” the nation’s inflation and unemployment rates?
By failing to honestly measure either, while pumping up one asset bubble after another, it is only a matter of time before the “official” figures from government statistical agencies come totally unglued from the reality experienced by most Americans.
To read the rest of the column click here.
Forget the Great Leap Forward. Forget the Cultural Revolution. Forget the Little Red Book, and the 100 million souls who perished transforming one of the world’s oldest and most entrepreneurial civilizations into a communist gulag. These ghosts of China’s Marxist past are being exorcised in in a new kind of revolution—by consumers.
Derided in Communist times, the consumer remained a forgotten figure as China’s ruling elite set out to compress two centuries of economic development into a couple of decades. But as the U.S. and European economies sputter, threatening the growth of China’s export model, China’s economy is being belatedly redirected to serve to its own people.
And what better way to mark the transition than the completion of the New Century Global Centre in Chengdu, China, a shopping center/hotel/theater/water park/office complex of such colossal proportions it could swallow three Pentagons. With the most usable floor space of any building in the world, at 19 million square feet, this behemoth structure is devoted to the pursuit, the enjoyment, the recreation, and the conspicuous consumption of the mighty Yuan.
To read the rest of the column click here.
Click here for my interview with John Lester on his program Steel-on-Steel on my IMF wealth confiscation column in Forbes. I come on at the nine minute mark after his opening rant. Cheery end-of-times stuff. 🙂
Imagine you are a small town grocer whose business is not large enough for an armored car service, so you regularly deposit the day’s cash receipts in a local bank. You’re only insured for thefts up to $10,000, so you make sure to never have more on the premises. One day, without warning, the government swoops in and confiscates all the money in your bank account, accusing you of “structuring” your legal deposits to avoid triggering mandatory reporting requirements for cash transactions over $10,000. To top it all off, prosecutors can keep your money without winning a conviction, and you’re required to prove your innocence to get it back.
No, this is not a story from some banana republic kleptocracy. This happened to Terry Dehko and his daughter Sandy Thomas, who run a grocery store in Fraser, Michigan. Incidents like this are becoming more frequent and egregious, and alarm bells are starting to sound around the nation as an increasing number of innocent citizens become collateral damage in the never-ending war on drugs.
Sadly, the results aren’t surprising. Asset forfeitures proceeds line the pockets of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies—total net assets seized in fiscal year 2012 exceeded $4.2 billion, according to the Department of Justice. A more perverse incentive structure is difficult to imagine. So, more people are beginning to ask: How did we get into this mess?
To read the rest of the column click here.
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Thus answered the HAL 9000 computer in the classic Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey after internal contradictions in its software programming drove the computer mad. In a case of life imitating art, we have just seen what happens when you try to translate 11,000 pages of Obamacare regulations into software.
When humans try to implement rules and regulations rife with contradictions, errors, and omissions, they use judgment, rationalization, corruption, bargaining, and selective ignorance to resolve the gridlock. People have spent thousands of years honing these skills, learning to live under a succession of despots. But computers have not yet advanced to the point where they can divine our rulers’ intentions rather than their stated instructions, much less know what they can—and cannot—get away with in order to make the system function.
To read the rest of the column click here.
By Libb Azzerf
Today, President Obama signed Executive Order 13652, the Regulatory Agency Freedom Initiative, establishing a permanent program that would allow the White House to self-fund its regulatory agenda without Congressional budget approval or oversight. At a Rose Garden news conference, where he was flanked by the heads of all 75 federal regulatory agencies and departments representing over 275,000 federal employees, the president declared this a historic moment.
“The American people are fed up with Congress not doing its job in funding the budget, while holding a gun to our heads attempting to deny citizens the federal regulations they need and desire. Not satisfied with delaying our hard working federal employees’ pay for the 16 days they were forced to stay home during the government shutdown, Republicans are now turning their terrorist tactics to target thousands of new rules and regulations designed to help Americans live better lives. Executive Order 13652 will end the tyranny of the minority that prevents us from moving forward.”
The federal government’s squeezing of $13 billion out of J.P. Morgan for alleged crimes it committed when it purchased bankrupt Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual at the urging of panicked Treasury Department officials is just the beginning. Using the JPM settlement as a model, the Regulatory Agency Freedom Initiative will give each and every regulatory agency the power to exact both fines and property forfeitures against any target of its choice, with limits set only by the negotiation prowess of the U.S. Attorney General.
To read the rest of the column click here.
Imagine you’re a young Millennial prowling for a hookup. It looks like tonight might be your night. But when the magic moment arrives, instead of reaching into your pocket or purse for a condom you whip out a pair of cheap, disposable multi-function STD testers, part of a six pack you picked up at CVS. Reassured of each other’s status, you and your paramour get back to whatever passes for romance these days with your minds at ease.
Eat your heart out Erica Jong, the zipless age is here.
To read the rest of the column click here.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) quietly dropped a bomb in its October Fiscal Monitor Report. Titled “Taxing Times,” the report paints a dire picture for advanced economies with high debts that fail to aggressively “mobilize domestic revenue.” It goes on to build a case for drastic measures and recommends a series of escalating income and consumption tax increases culminating in the direct confiscation of assets.
Yes, you read that right. But don’t take it from me. The report itself says:
“The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a “capital levy”— a one-off tax on private wealth—as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). … The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be weighed against the risks of the alternatives, which include repudiating public debt or inflating it away. … The tax rates needed to bring down public debt to precrisis levels, moreover, are sizable: reducing debt ratios to end-2007 levels would require (for a sample of 15 euro area countries) a tax rate of about 10 percent on households with positive net wealth. (page 49)”
To read the rest of the column click here.
By Libb Azzerf
Today, President Obama, unfazed by criticism that his administration is unnecessarily inflicting pain on the American people in an effort to wrest control of federal spending away Congress, doubled down on his Barrycades program by issuing an Executive Order closing the entire Interstate Highway System.
Toll booths serving all major bridges and tunnels were also shut down blocking all traffic, despite the fact that most of these are operated by municipal authorities, on the justification that these connect to federal highways. Four hundred thousand furloughed pentagon employees were recalled and immediately deployed across the country to put police tape on anything that moves.
At the press conference announcing the Executive Order, a White House staffer was caught murmuring into an open mic “If blocking a bunch of geezers in wheelchairs from visiting the World War II Memorial is not enough to prove to the American people that nothing can function without federal permission, just wait until food riots break out!”
To read the rest of the column click here.
As Don Corleone said to Bonasera, in The Godfather’s iconic opening scene, “Some day, and that day may never come, I’ll ask a service of you.” For J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, that day has arrived. Alas, unlike a mafia don, Washington cannot be counted on to keep its word past the end of the next news cycle. Dimon and other Wall Street bankers would be wise to keep that in mind, the next time regulators come around saying, “Nice too-big-to-fail bank ya got there. Shame if sumpin’ were to happen to it.”
Long-running negotiations between J.P. Morgan Chase and the Chicago gang occupying Washington appear to be finally coming to a close. At stake is how much protection money the besieged bank will have to pay to resolve its legal and regulatory woes. An extra-judicial, extra-legislative “fine” of $11 billion is making the rounds in the press. That dwarfs prior multi-hundred million dollar payments, which turns out only served to whet Washington’s appetite.
If such a deal actually goes down, it’ll be the coup de grace to the already moribund rule of law in America. No charges. No trial. No evidence that could be evaluated by a judge or jury, much less the public. No clear indication of exactly which laws were broken and by whom. No list of fines prescribed by statute. Just fork over the cash and we’ll let you get back to business. After spending $18 billion in legal expenses since 2008, you can’t blame J. P. Morgan for seeking a deal.
To read the rest of the column, click here.
Frezza to Launch Radio Program During 2013-14 Fellowship
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 1, 2013 — The Competitive Enterprise Institute is pleased to announce that Bill Frezza is the 2013-14 recipient of the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellowship.
Frezza joined CEI in 2011 as a Fellow in Technology & Entrepreneurship. Since then, he’s been a prolific commentator on public policy and a strong public advocate for free markets and limited government. Frezza is a contributing columnist to RealClearMarkets, Forbes, Bio-IT World and The Huffington Post and a frequent guest on CNBC, Fox Business, CBN News, and The Blaze. He is no newcomer to political journalism: His earliest forays into journalism date back to the roaring 90s, when he was a regular tech policy columnist for Network Computing Magazine, Communications Week, Internet Week, and Nikkei Communications. In 2011, he was named a finalist for the Hoiles Prize for excellence in American journalism.
As an entrepreneur and 35-year veteran of the technology industry, Frezza’s journey is testament to the power of socioeconomic mobility in America. Since graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 with degrees in electrical engineering and biology, he has been a scientist, an engineer, a product manager, a salesman, a consultant, an entrepreneur, an author, a technology evangelist and a venture capitalist.
Now, as CEI’s Warren Brookes fellow, Frezza is planning his venture into broadcast journalism. CEI and Frezza are partnering with the RealClear brand to launch a new radio show which will be produced by CEI and hosted by Frezza. On “RealClear Radio Hour with Bill Frezza,” public policy veteran Frezza will engage in thoughtful dialogue with a wide range of guests, covering everything from politics to books to religion to world news in an effort to raise audience awareness and sharpen perspectives on modern issues. “RealClear Radio Hour with Bill Frezza” will be available online and on air in select cities within the next year.
To read the rest of the press release click here.
No, this is not another diatribe about the futility of many gun control laws and the geographic correlation between the level of gun crime and the hurdles law-abiding citizens have to surmount to provide for their own defense. Nor is it a rant about the media exploitation of tragedies like the recent Navy Yard shooting. It is a reflection on the home of the brave’s transformation into a nation of sheep, wolves, pigs, and sloths.
The American character, at least until recently, was unique and considered exceptional. What could be more obscene than being lectured to the contrary by a Russian despot throwing our president’s deprecating words back at him in the pages of The New York Times? Despite attempts to argue away history, ours was the only national character forged by millions of self-made strivers settling a new land under a unique formulation of self-government that strictly constrained the state in its powers, reach, and influence, leaving the people to thrive through the free exercise of their inalienable rights.
Those days are gone, our birthright progressively squandered. Yet, the Constitution’s constraints were not shredded overnight. First, it took getting the American people accustomed to a view of government as unlimited and ever-expanding, bringing the nation forward in an unstoppable march of state-directed “progress.” That task of indoctrination fell to our media, educational and cultural institutions. Judging by the evidence, they have succeeded.
To read the rest of the column click here.
As the United States faces another possible government shutdown, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he will not negotiate over the extension of the debt ceiling.
He warned Republicans would cause “economic chaos” if they demand a delay on funds for the Affordable Care Act.
“The problem is, at the moment, Republicans in Congress don’t seem focused on how to grow the economy and build the middle class,” the president said in a speech at the White House.
“Are they really willing to hurt people just to score political points?” he challenged.
Should Americans be worried that lawmakers aren’t coming to an agreement? Bill Frezza, a Boston-based venture capitalist and a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, addressed that question and more on CBN’s “Newswatch.” Click here to watch video, Bill’s comments begins at the 55 second mark.
A new book titled The Entrepreneurial State that is now making the rounds gives credit to Uncle Sam for inventing many of the technologies we enjoy today, from the Internet to smartphones. It has given fuel to proponents of government grants, subsidies, and mandates for technologies like solar cells, windmills, electric cars, algae fuel, and cellulosic ethanol. Here, they claim, is justification for continued support of money-losing businesses that one day will be commonplace and profitable, yet might never exist at all without government support.
But getting past the sound-bites, the case for expanded technology subsidies is based on several propositions that require examining.
To read the rest of the column click here.
Yesterday, President Barack Obama broke with his practice of declaring an intractable issue his top priority, before abandoning it to Congressional infighting, to double down on his sidelined initiative to make higher education more affordable. In a six-point plan he vowed to implement without legislation, the President fleshed out the details of a poll-tested policy proposal he introduced last month in a series of campaign-style speeches delivered when most voters were on vacation.
“Americans have come to regard a college degree as a right and not a privilege,” Obama told a crowd of Columbia University students, who waited for hours in searing heat for the delayed start of the speech. “Meanwhile, prospective employers have figured out that many diplomas are not worth the foolscap they are printed on. What good is a right that is too costly to access, or isn’t worth what someone else paid for it?”
To read the rest of the column click here.
To bomb, or not to bomb, that is the suggestion;
Whether ’tis nobler in the polls to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Limbaugh,
Or launch drones against a Sea of troublemakers,
And by igniting, end them: To die, to vote present
No more: and by passing the buck to Congress
We end the Heart-ache, and get back to going Forward.
To read the rest of the column click here.
In a surprise ruling, a three judge panel of the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals issued a unanimous opinion supporting the right of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to unionize in order to assure equitable access to benefits, along with an uninterrupted flow of payments should the federal government be forced to temporarily shut down due to congressional budget stalemates.
“For too long so-called Food Stamp beneficiaries have been denied access to union representation seeking to protect their rights,” said Justice Gavin Moore Freestuff. In a sharply worded rebuke to attorneys representing the National Taxpayers Union, which sought to block a ruling by the newly reconstituted National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Justice Freestuff cited recent court precedents establishing the right of home health care workers, nannies, babysitters, and dog walkers to pay compulsory dues which unions could then use to influence elections.
To read the rest of the column click here.
By Bill Frezza, remarks delivered at Dad’s wake, August 18, 2013.
Summing up my father’s life, I keep coming back to one thought. Never will you meet a man who more faithfully lived his values.
My father was a teacher of all things. His method was simple. He taught by example. At any age, when faced with an ethical dilemma, after reflection, study, or even rationalization, I find myself coming back to one simple question. What would Dad do? His character is the foundation of my conscience.
My father’s teachings are endless. Let me share a few.
My father was strong in body, in spirit, and in commitment. He never missed a single day of class from kindergarten through high school graduation, his perfect attendance award being the one honor he remembers receiving as a child.
My father never let another man down. He fulfilled every obligation he ever undertook. His word was his bond, and everyone knew it. I never heard him utter a lie, nor intentionally deceive.
My father was self-made and self-reliant. From his education to his career, from his skill with every kind of tool that could fashion wood or metal, brick or cement, my Dad engaged with the world as a man who would be its master.
My father was proud to be an engineer. In his office, on the wall next to the shop production schedule and the tool and die calendars, was a framed quote from Herbert Hoover praising the virtues of the engineer. That quote hangs on my wall today. I imagine it will one day hang on the wall of my son Brian, who carries the engineer’s spirit into the world of science.
My father relished the good things in life including art and music, travel and photography, food and wine, and friends and family. While he never cultivated the intense relationship of a best buddy, or hunt or fish or play poker with the boys, the number of people who called my Dad friend was legion.
My father never made an enemy. Not one. While he most surely came across a few people he couldn’t countenance, he solved the problem by simply avoiding them. He always insisted that violence never solved any problem. He never once hit another man in anger.
My father was loyal. His faithfulness to the important people in his life could be seen in the way he steadfastly maintained ties with his childhood friends. From the streets of Manhattan in the ethnic ghetto where they grew up through the weddings, christenings, holidays, and now wakes and funerals that mark the arc of life, my Dad could always be counted on to be there.
My father was never stingy. Though he was a child of the depression who understood the value of a dollar and the importance of saving, the generosity he expressed with his money matched his generosity of spirit.
My father loved his martinis, teaching me to mix them for him when I was 12 years old. Yet I’ve never seen him visibly drunk, nor did he ever let strong drink cause him embarrassment, nor did he ever once get behind the wheel impaired. Moderation was his byword in all things.
My father was responsible to the very end. How many elderly people do you know who put down their car keys and voluntarily announce that they are no longer fit to drive?
My father loved a good joke, including every imaginable kind of ethnic joke. Yet his humor was never mean spirited, nor designed to hurt or humiliate. I never once heard him utter a racial slur, nor did he ever treat anyone of any station with anything other than respect and kindness.
My father spoke openly of his admiration for the female figure, yet as far as I know he never kissed another woman besides my mother. And he loved my mother with every bone in his body, his visible affection overcoming his usual reserve. Dad’s unflagging support for Mom’s personal development in her career and in life created the perfect balance creating a childhood for me and my sister that today seems like a lost American dream.
My father provided a home for his widowed mother from the time he and Mom were newlyweds, letting grandma build a second life filled with the joy of her grandchildren. While Mom carried the burden of sharing a roof with her mother-in-law, Dad did his best to foster domestic tranquility.
My father took in his in-laws when they became old and infirm, taking his turn changing his father-in-law’s diapers. He and Mom took in his elderly sister when she neared the end. And responsible man that he was, as Dad faced imminent infirmity he made sure that he and Mom were well situated so that when he was gone she would be well cared for in a community of their choosing.
Only twice did I ever see my father cry. The first time was in November 1963 when president Kennedy was shot. The second was in December 2001 when my son, his grandson and namesake, was taken from us shortly before his 22nd birthday. And while I knew Dad was as torn up inside as I was, his crying ceased long before mine did. Because he knew it was his job to be the rock for me to lean on.
My father had a quiet dignity, respecting himself the way he respected others. As he faced his final days, his body ravaged with the cancer that ate his bones, he occasionally lost his good humor. But he never had one moment of self-pity. The day before he passed when the hospice nurse asked him how he was doing, he gave the same answer he gave every day. I’m fine.
My father gave me a parting gift. He waited for me before he passed, to be sure his son would be there to comfort his beloved wife when his time came. The last words I was blessed to be able to share with him as I caressed his withered brow the night before he died were the same words we said to each other every night for the past year when we finished our daily phone call. I love you.
Farewell, Pop. You did good. You did real good.
Robert C. Frezza: Aug. 27, 1923 – Aug. 16, 2013
Imagine a financial institution that the government cannot deem too big to fail, requires no deposit insurance, can never be subject to a run, needs no lender-of-last-resort support by a central bank, cannot become overleveraged, suffers no maturity mismatches between assets and liabilities, is immune to interest rate manipulation, can never subject the rest of us to systemic risk, offers quick approval of unsecured personal and business loans at market rates, and provides yield-hungry investors with a way to build individualized debt portfolios based on risk models of their own choosing.
It’s called peer-to-peer lending, the latest innovation shaking up the financial industry. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts before Washington’s out-of-control regulatory regime attempts to crush it—and what happens afterward if they do.
To read the rest of the column click here.
Our founders’ greatest fear that any pure democracy unshackled by strict limitations would inevitably destroy itself is being played out in two distinct dramas. While each has a different plot, both are headed toward the same ending.
Detroit’s bankruptcy bears witness to destruction by one-party rule, as 60 years of unchecked corruption and incompetence come to a head. Watch as the accumulated debts of a government willing to buy votes from the non-productive at the expense of the productive fall upon a dwindling populace too poor, dependent, or stupid to flee.
Washington’s terminal gridlock bears witness to destruction by dysfunctional duopoly, as two implacably hostile parties, safely ensconced in gerrymandered districts, fight over the frozen controls on a runaway train. Consumed by massive entitlement spending growing on autopilot, the only thing forestalling federal bankruptcy is unlimited money printing. This has postponed the day of reckoning by ensuring that when that day arrives, either by repudiation or inflation, it will be all the more painful.
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President Barack Obama, rebounding off his pivot from giving speeches on race relations in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict to giving speeches about the economy, surprised the White House press corps yesterday when he abruptly pivoted back to climate change, announcing his intention to give a series of speeches designed to stop the rising tides and cool the raging heat.
In what pundits described as a response to the trending media meme demonizing air conditioning as a major source of carbon pollution, the President, appearing in the White House briefing room dressed only in swim trunks, announced that for the duration of the summer, all thermostats in the White House will be set to 85 degrees.
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The largest municipal bankruptcy in American history has focused minds on one crucial question. Will Uncle Sam try to bail out the failed Motor City, much as Germany has been hopelessly bailing out Greece? Or will bond holders and public pensioners be left to strip what assets remain of a dying metropolis, whose prospects remain dim even if its massive debts are written off?
The odds don’t look good. While General Motors, Chrysler, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Bank of America, Citibank, and a laundry list of TARP recipients proved that investing in campaign dollars pays off, no bipartisan crony capitalist coalition exists to save Detroit. A dysfunctional federal government heading for its own day of reckoning is unlikely to muster the political consensus to bail out an even more dysfunctional Democratic one-party town.
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A debate is raging on the left, the right, and even in libertarian circles on the best way to escape from the Too-Big-To-Fail quagmire. These days it seems that the only people claiming we don’t have a banking problem are the ones counting their bonuses as they get ready to beat it out of town when the house of cards collapses. But despite widespread consensus of trouble ahead, efforts to define the problem often degenerate into a clash of competing narratives designed to advance partisan agendas. How can we expect to find solutions given this state of affairs?
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Detroit city officials spent the weekend defending their decision to file for bankruptcy. Last week, the metropolis became the largest U.S. city to take that step, but a state judge blocked the move.
When a city as large as Detroit fails, it doesn’t happen overnight.
Is the bankruptcy filing a good thing for Detroit? Bill Frezza, a Boston based venture capitalist and fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, talks about this and more, on CBN’s Newswatch, July 22.
Click here, to watch, Bill’s comments begin at the 2:30 mark.
Economic values do not spring from a vacuum. They are rooted in the broader moral values we rely on to navigate our lives.
Let me stipulate that I hold no brief for Protestantism – or Christianity, monotheism, or religion in general. I draw my values from reason, not faith. But history strongly suggests that Western Civilization owes its motive force, and unparalleled success, to a set of values that the German philosopher Max Weber called “the Protestant work ethic.” It was probably best personified by the American patron saint of civic virtue, Benjamin Franklin.
One need not be a practicing Protestant to espouse this ethic, or a brilliant polymath to profit from its practice. After half a century of Communist depredation, the Chinese people are lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps, practicing values that would have been quite familiar to both Weber and Franklin. Every hardworking Mexican who crawls across our border to build a better life for himself and his family embodies the Protestant work ethic.
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To listen to Stephanie Davis discuss the economy, immmigration, and Obamacare with Bill Frezza click here.
It is by now undeniable that our Constitution is being unwound at an accelerating rate. With the wave of a blog post, the President of the United States suspends the due process checks and balances prescribed by the Constitution, refusing to enforce laws he finds politically inconvenient, while enacting other laws by executive decree to energize his political base.
Revelations that the Fourth Amendment has been rendered moot by massive internal spying operations are met with the facile explanation that administrations led by both parties have carried out such violations for a long time. Few people know the real extent of the spying, as it is a state secret.
Is it any wonder that other countries scoff at American entreaties to adopt liberal democracy? How can we expect others to respect and emulate the America Way when we think so little of our own system that we carelessly discard the rule of law whenever it’s expedient?
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Our guest today, Bill Frezza, is a Fellow in Technology and Entrepreneurship at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a contributing columnist for Forbes.com, the Huffington Post, and Bio-IT World. We will focus on an examination of the monetary and fiscal policy causes of the economic calamity that is poised to strike America. This calamity, in Bill’s view, will be a massive (50%?) stock and bond market correction followed by another round of bank bailouts, hyperinflation, a breakdown of middle class entitlements, a wave of municipal bankruptcies, the collapse of many defined benefit pension plans (particularly in the underfunded public sector), followed by public disorder and political chaos similar to what we are witnessing in Greece. His view is that all boundaries between the TBTF banks, the Federal Reserve, and the US Treasury have broken down, driving the excess financialization of our economy to unsustainable levels.
To listen to the program click here.
A new report shows the sequester budget cuts did not hurt the nation after all despite President Obama’s dire warnings about a terrible impact.
The president claimed, among other things, that the Pentagon would not be able to pay for health care for service members and that 600,000 low-income families would lose government food aid.
But those predictions did not materialize. In fact, the Washington Post reports that most agencies made do.
To watch the video click here.
In the sci-fi thriller The Hunger Games, a group of young people are made to compete against each other in a fight for survival. Post-Constitutional America is approaching that scenario—but the victims seem not to have realized it yet.
The intergenerational con game whereby Baby Boomers stick the Millennial Generation with trillions in debt through our gorging on entitlements is about to face its greatest challenge. Will we be able to talk healthy young Americans into buying medical insurance that costs seven times what it would in a free market in order to subsidize our increasingly expensive health care? Or will we have to sic IRS enforcers on them for selfishly taking advantage of the law’s pre-existing condition protections to get care at someone else’s expense in case of serious illness?
It’s a tough sell, but take heart, fellow Boomers. We’ve been preparing our children for community servitude for years. Why else did we feed them a steady diet of social consciousness, while preaching that it takes a village from the day we dumped them in daycare? Now, it’s time for them to pay up.
To read the rest of the column click here.
Pretty offensive headline, isn’t it? Baselessly ascribing racist motives to voters for choosing Caucasian Rep. Ed Markey over Latino challenger Gabriel Gomez in this week’s special Senate election in Massachusetts can only be a cheap trick designed to get readers to click on the column. Everyone with half a brain knows that the election results indicate a clear voter preference for the progressive policies for which “Taxachusetts” is so often lampooned.
So what makes this sort of race baiting so easy to accept in media portrayals of limited government, anti-tax Tea Party activists? Attempts by mainstream media to pin the racist tag on Obama administration opponents are getting old by now. It may be one of the reasons why a recent Gallup poll shows that Americans’ confidence in newspapers has plunged below 25 percent, putting them near the bottom on a list of 16 societal institutions—yet still ahead of Congress’ pathetic 10 percent.
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One of Martin Luther’s indictments against the medieval Catholic Church was the selling of indulgences. If the law was not applicable to all and could be suspended to advance personal, political, or pecuniary objectives, a corrupt clergy would know no bounds.
Are we now due for a reformation of our corrupt temporal institutions?
The Constitution of the United States was constructed on four principles. First, the government would be based on the rule of law, not the whims of men. Second, the central government would be limited to strictly enumerated powers. Third, the exercise of those powers would be carefully divided across three co-equal branches. And finally, as a bulwark against tyranny, a Bill of Rights was added that specifically prohibits government from encroaching on a defined set of inalienable rights.
The Obama administration, building on the bipartisan foundation established by its predecessors and under the actions of Attorney General Eric Holder, has managed to violate all four of these principles with its PRISM surveillance program.
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The regulatory state never sleeps, relentlessly working day and night to tilt the economic playing field in favor of the politically connected. The regulations it imposes on the rest of us may or may not provide wider public benefits commensurate with their costs. But one thing is for certain: They reduce economic growth in two significant ways.
First and foremost, they inflict compliance costs on businesses. According to the most recent edition of the Ten Thousand Commandments, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) annual snapshot of the federal regulatory state, these costs amounted to some $1.8 trillion in 2012—a staggering sum that exceeds 10 percent of the total size of our barely growing economy. One way or another these costs are either passed on to consumers via higher prices, taken out of the hide of workers through lower wages, or extracted from savers and investors as a result of lower profits.
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“We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it’s easy, but when it is hard.” Barack Obama, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2009
Should anyone be surprised that the federal government has been engaged in massive and indiscriminate data gathering aimed at spying on the American people? If you actually believe that privacy is more than an antiquated slogan, try this exercise.
Imagine that you live in a country that has been overrun by an army of deputized government agents, your friends and co-workers blackmailed into becoming informants. Imagine an extrajudicial legal system in which all citizens are presumed guilty of complex administrative crimes and must prove themselves innocent upon command, with no rights against self-incrimination. Imagine dissidents thrown into prison for keeping their personal affairs private.
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I first met Mike Lazaridis, the retired co-CEO and founder of Research in Motion (RIM), in 1991 when I was a rogue marketing manager at Ericsson desperately searching for wireless email software to marry with the world’s first portable wireless data modem, which we were preparing to launch that next year. Cell phones were analog back then, with no capacity for text messaging much less a data channel. Ericsson was intent on chasing taxi dispatchers and utility service vehicles, but those of us who came of age with the PC industry knew that the liberating ingredient missing from laptop and palmtop computers was mobile data capability.
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Fractional reserve banking is unlike most other businesses. It’s not just because its product is money. It’s because banks can manufacture their product out of thin air. Traditional commercial banks essentially create money through a well understood and time honored pyramiding of loans. Depositors who understand that their deposits are thereby placed at risk choose their banks accordingly.
Under the bygone rules of free market capitalism, only one thing kept banks from creating an infinite amount of money, and that was fear of failure. Failure occurs when depositors come to believe that their bank has lent out too much manufactured money to too many dodgy borrowers and may not be able to cover depositors’ withdrawals. When this happens, depositors rush to reclaim their money while there is still some left, leading to the bank’s collapse.
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Bill Frezza 