Free Republic

Apocalypse Soon: Has Environmental Abuse Finally Gone too Far? by Brandi Neal In light of recent environmental disasters, it's time to pose a question. How many of these recent events are attributed to human involvement and how many can be written off as the earth's fury that we couldn't possibly have had any control over? After the death of environmentalist David Brower in 2000, former Congressman and Executive Director of Voice of the Environment, Dan Hamburg wrote, "David Brower challenged us to comprehend both the awesome beauty of creation and the awesome responsibility we have to preserve it. Whether we...

Profits Without Honor Profits are certainly without honor among the intelligentsia. The very word produces negative reactions, even from people who cannot give you a single reason why money carrying that label is worse than money called by other names. Many professional athletes and entertainers earn salaries higher than what the vast majority of business owners earn as profits, yet there is no moral indignation from those who are in the business of moral indignation. Some claim not to be against profits, as such, but against "obscene profits." Yet they offer no clue as to how we are to tell...

Dividends? Don't mend 'em, end 'em The high price of rewarding shareholders RALEIGH -- In the current tax-cut debate, the president and wealthy shareholders argue for the elimination of the double tax on dividends. "Double taxation is unfair," is the argument. The rest of us should look at it from the opposite angle. The corporate dividend system redistributes a massive amount of wealth from consumers and employees to these wealthy shareholders, and it costs each of us a tremendous amount of money every year. We should use our voting power to eliminate dividends entirely. This is a heretical idea, true,...