Free Republic

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc...

In 2009, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rammed through a half-trillion dollar omnibus bill without affording members the requisite time to read through it. At the time, John Boehner led the chorus of complaints against her lack of transparency. As Democrats shoved through the massive Obamacare behemoth in 2010, Pelosi famously said, “we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it.” Republicans mocked her mercilessly for that cloddish comment and made transparency the clarion call for their campaign to win back the House. They promised an open process by introducing bills with ample...

There are two sorts of stock human dramas that play out in every age of history. The first concerns people who were once rich but are now discovering they are poor. The second is their opposite; people who were once poor who suddenly realize they are rich. Years ago there were riveting accounts in a Manila newspaper about a man, whose surname was a byword for inherited wealth, pathetically resisting eviction from his ancestral home. The man — who gave his occupation as artist — sat disconsolate in the driveway of his former home, surrounded by his books, records and...

“To see what is in front of one’s nose,” George Orwell famously wrote, “needs a constant struggle.” In front of my nose as I write this is a copy of last Sunday’s New York Times. I have opened it to the business section. Below the fold is one of many Times articles on Thomas Piketty, the French economist and author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which argues that America has entered a second Gilded Age of vast inequality, inherited fortunes, and oligarchic politics, where the shape of public discourse and public policy is determined by a wealthy few. Capital...

Take a ride to a welfare neighborhood some fine morning, evenings are best avoided even in the safest such places. Don't go in expecting Detroit. Even much of Detroit doesn't look like Detroit. Newark and Oakland aren't even there yet. Detroit is what happens when the load is too big and there's no one left to carry it. Most welfare neighborhoods are still located in cities where there is someone left to pick up the tab. You'll see less charred buildings and more towering multistory housing projects. Some of these are the ugly bestial fortresses that date back to FDR's...