Unbecoming Conduct
By: Paul Craig Roberts|29 December, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: manning army prosecutor fiscus
What defines conduct unbecoming an officer? Major General Thomas Fiscus, Judge Advocate General of the Air Force, opposed the harsh interrogation techniques approved and later rescinded by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for use on Guantanamo prisoners. Subsequently, General Fiscus has been reprimanded for a dozen sexual affairs during the last decade and may face disbarment proceedings. As the affairs were…
Read more »Christmas: The Greatest Gift For All
Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became…
Read more »U.S. Invasion Of Iran Draws Closer
By: Paul Craig Roberts|13 December, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Closer . Draws . Invasion . Iran . U.S.
Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith is the neocon Likudnik who was tasked with cooking up the false “intelligence” that President Bush used to deceive the US public into supporting an illegal invasion of Iraq. With the US military now trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, Feith wants the US to attack Iran. President Bush falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of…
Read more »Bush Administration Facing Failure On Every Front
By: Paul Craig Roberts|29 November, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Every . Facing . Front . George Bush
Is the Bush administration competent? There is enough information at hand on which to base an objective opinion. On the eve of President Bush’s second term, the US economy has fewer jobs than when Bush was inaugurated four years ago. During Bush’s first term, the US economy was unable to create jobs in both export and import-competitive sectors. The formerly…
Read more »Chinese Exchange Rate Peg Threatens World Economy
By: Paul Craig Roberts|16 November, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: How does exchange rate threaten Chinese trade
China’s currency peg to the US dollar prevents correction of the US trade imbalance and imperils the US dollar’s role as reserve currency. In the post World War II period, the dollar took over the reserve currency role from the British pound, because the supremacy of US manufacturing guaranteed US trade surpluses. The British pound lost its role due to…
Read more »An Election That Will Live In Infamy
By: Paul Craig Roberts|05 November, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Election . Infamy . Live
On November 2 Americans blew their only chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of the world. The entire world is stunned by the Bush administration’s abandonment of a half century of US diplomacy in favor of misguided, unilateralist, “preemptive” naked aggression on totally false pretenses against Iraq. America’s allies are amazed at the ignorance manifested by the Bush administration.…
Read more »A Mandate For “Moral Values”—But Nothing Else
By: Paul Craig Roberts|04 November, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: paul craig roberts abortion
What was the presidential election about? In their victory speeches, Vice President Cheney and President Bush claimed a “mandate,” “historic victory,” and that “America has spoken.” A mandate for what? A victory for what? How spake America? Pundits have declared that the election was about “moral values.” Americans in the red states voted against homosexual marriage and abortion. Let’s hope that…
Read more »From First World to Third World
In the early 1980s when I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the US trade deficit was due to oil imports. Currently, the US deficit in manufactured goods alone is 3.5 times our oil imports. Our trade deficit in vehicles is nearly equal to our deficit in oil, and our deficit in clothing, ADP equipment, office machines, TV and VCRs…
Read more »Three Books On The Brownshirting Of America
By: Paul Craig Roberts|15 October, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Bush Administration . heritage foundation . september 11 attack . Weapons of Mass Destruction
James Bovard, the great libertarian champion of our freedom and civil liberties, recently shared with readers his mail from Bush supporters (Lewrockwell.com, October 12). For starters here are some of the salutations: “communist bastard,” “asshole,” “a piece of trash, scum of the earth.” It goes downhill from there. Bush’s supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful…
Read more »The Socialists Have Bought In
By: Paul Craig Roberts|14 October, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Bought . Socialists
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, have purchased a $6.4 million townhouse in Connaught Square and plan on spending another $900,000 fixing it up. The Blairs already own an $800,000 six-bedroom home in his Sedgefield constituency on which taxpayers have spent $3.6 million to turn it into a terrorist-proof fortress. According to the British press, a down…
Read more »Economics: Science or Religion?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|10 October, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: science vs religion conclusion
The US economy has ceased to create jobs in tradable goods and services. The disastrous September payroll jobs data are a repeat of the monthly trend that has held for the nearly four years of the Bush administration. Of September’s 96,000 new jobs, 73% are accounted for by two categories: government jobs and temporary help! There were only 59,000 private…
Read more »To Escape From Blunder First Acknowledge Reality
By: Paul Craig Roberts|10 October, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Blunder . Escape . First . Reality
The presidential debates are going nowhere. Why? Because both President George Bush and Senator John Kerry are encapsulated in a big lie. The lie is too big to be acknowledged. Both candidates repeat the mantra that Saddam Hussein was dangerous to America and had to be removed. Both reaffirm that Saddam’s removal remains a good thing despite a plethora of…
Read more »CBS' Forgeries—And George Bush's
Excuse me, but the story is not CBS and the George W. Bush National Guard documents. The story is: How did the US Congress, the opposition party, the news media, and the US public let the Bush administration start a war based on phony documents? If someone deceived CBS and passed off forged documents as real, at least CBS consulted…
Read more »Thinking About Jobs On Labor Day
By: Paul Craig Roberts|05 September, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Bureau of Labor Statistics . computer systems design . employment services . engineering services . world transformation
August was the thirty-fourth month of disappointing job growth. A mere 120,000 private sector payroll jobs were created in August according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Continuing the third world transformation of the US labor force established by the Bush recovery, the new payroll jobs are concentrated in domestic nontradable services. Health care and social assistance account for 42,000…
Read more »A Letter To Readers
By: Paul Craig Roberts|24 August, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Letter . Readers
Writing for the public has always been a challenging task. However, President Bush’s declaration that “you are with us or against us” has intensified readers’ tendency to see columnists in the same way. Awareness is fading that a writer could be an independent thinker not in either camp. A number of writers have made a powerful case that the invasion…
Read more »How The Right Went Wrong— Pat Buchanan's New Blockbuster
By: Paul Craig Roberts|23 August, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: wall stret journal what went wrong with blockbuster
[See also: Book Review of The Great Betrayal, by Patrick Buchanan By Peter Brimelow; That Buchanan Book (Death of the West) By
Read more »For War And The Draft, Vote Republican
By: Paul Craig Roberts|22 August, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Draft . Republican . Vote
It is not an enjoyable experience watching the Republican Party descend into the depths of propaganda and falsehood. Today’s disaffected Republicans once believed the GOP to be the party of principle. Any remaining claim to principle ended with Bush’s invasion of Iraq. No informed person believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or terrorist connections to al-Qaida and…
Read more »“One Thing Is Certain: Kerry Was There On That Boat In Viet Nam. Where Was George W. Bush?”
By: Paul Craig Roberts|22 August, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: automatic weapons . scurrilous attack . swift boat veterans . swift boat veterans for truth
Now it is out: “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” is just a political dirty trick operation financed by multimillionaire supporters of President George W. Bush. According to the August 20 New York Times, “a series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush’s chief political…
Read more »The Sins of Clinton vs. Bush
Unsure how to judge the Bush administration? Read former US Representative Bob Barr‘s book on the Clinton administration. Bob Barr is an unusual person, a prosecutor who cares about civil liberty. Barr served four terms (1995-2003) as a Republican congressman from Georgia. He was one of the more intelligent members of the House. Barr is old-fashioned in the sense that…
Read more »The Star Chamber is Back
By: Paul Craig Roberts|16 August, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Back . Chamber . Star
Are George Bush and Tony Blair building democracy in the Middle East or police states at home? There is no sign of democracy in Iraq. Bush has installed a puppet government backed up by US military force. America’s hamhanded occupation has resulted in large civilian casualties, prison tortures and a breakdown in public order. Domestic police states, however, are in…
Read more »All Quiet on the Jobs Front
US job growth practically ceased in July according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll job survey released August 6. The US economy was able to eke out only 32,000 new jobs–more than 200,000 fewer jobs than expected and terrible news for June graduates and the millions of unemployed. More bad news came from downward revisions in the two prior…
Read more »“Global Labor Arbitrage” Dismantling America
By: Paul Craig Roberts|28 July, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns
In the current economic recovery, low pay, low skill jobs account for twice the normal amount of job growth reports Stephen Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley (More Jobs, Worse Work New York Times, July 22). Mr. Roach attributes the low quality of new US jobs to globalization: “Under unrelenting pressure to cut costs, American companies are now replacing high-wage…
Read more »Today, The Present Danger Is Neoconservatism
President Bush’s neoconservatives have announced that they are relaunching the Committee on the Present Danger. The new CPD will be totally different from the original. [The Present Danger By Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl, July 20, 2004] I was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. It was a bipartisan private organization consisting largely of former presidential appointees…
Read more »Bush Can't Control U.S. Borders But Wants To Overthrow Iran Anyway
By: Paul Craig Roberts|19 July, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Bush Administration . government official . religious leadership . september 11 hijackers . world trade towers
What would you do if your army was mired down in a country turned hostile by your invasion, forced to hide behind fortified positions, and only able to make an occasional foray to kill a few women and children along with an occasional insurgent? A plethora of reports are issued revealing that the reasons you thought you had for invading…
Read more »Martha Stewart And George Bush: Punishing The Innocent, Excusing the Guilty
By: Paul Craig Roberts|16 July, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: martha stewart and george bush
Martha Stewart has been sentenced to 5 months in prison and two years of supervised release for not telling the truth about a legal stock tip. The only thing she has been found guilty of is lying about a noncrime. Mrs. Stewart was neither charged with, nor found guilty of, insider trading. Neither she nor her broker had inside information…
Read more »An “Error” Made Tony Blair Do It
By: Paul Craig Roberts|14 July, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Blair . Made . Tony
Key intelligence used to justify war with Iraq has now been shown to be unreliable, concludes Lord Butler in the British government’s report about the misinformation that caused a pointless war. Nevertheless says Lord Butler, there is no one to blame for the thousands of deaths, the massive destruction, and subsequent creation of a new generation of terrorists but mere…
Read more »Did “The Process” Make Bush Do It?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|12 July, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Did . George Bush . Make . Process"
The real purpose of a government report is to place the blame where it does the least damage to the political party in office. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s “Report on the US Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq” [PDF —23 megabytes!] carefully follows this time-honored rule. At the July 9 press conference heralding the release of the…
Read more »Role Reversal—Bush Boosts Government Power, Democrats Resist
By: Paul Craig Roberts|28 June, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: attorney client privilege . conservative republicans . constitutional rights . war against terrorism
Since 1932 Democrats have been so confident of the inherent virtue of government that they have been willing to trust any amount of power to it. The liberal agenda boiled down to the growth of government power. Republicans were the naysayers, forever quoting the Founding Fathers‘ warnings that government power meant liberty’s demise. The administration of President George W. Bush…
Read more »Bush Administration Attacks Attorney-Client Privilege—And “Rights Of Englishmen”
By: Paul Craig Roberts|22 June, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: rights as englishmen
“If the government had access to the communications between a client and his lawyer, the lawyer would be nothing but a government agent, like Soviet defense attorneys whose official role was to serve as adjuncts to the prosecution.”—Paul Craig Roberts & Lawrence M. Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions Once upon a time the US Department of Justice respected the…
Read more »Assessing the Assessments
By: Paul Craig Roberts|15 June, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Assessing . Assessments
Americans either loved Ronald Reagan or they hated him. No one was indifferent. These strong feelings can be seen in the assessments of Reagan following his death. Emotion-driven assessments have little to do with fact. Paul Krugman’s New York Times (June 11) screed against Reagan’s economic policy [An Economic Legend] is a perfect example of bile overpowering truth. According to…
Read more »The Jobs That Aren't
By: Paul Craig Roberts|14 June, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Jobs
The jobs front is like the Iraqi front. The worse the situation, the better the news. As jobs for college graduates disappear from the US economy, pundits tell us how great the jobs outlook is. The 248,000 new jobs in May looks good as an aggregate number, which is the only number the public got. Looking at the components of…
Read more »Those Jobs Numbers: More Bad News For College Graduates
By: Paul Craig Roberts|08 June, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: thomas l. friedman the silver lining of outsourc ing overseas
Deceit about jobs is taking over from deceit about the Iraq war. Lost in the hoopla about 248,000 jobs created in May is the discouraging pattern of job creation. Why didn’t the pundits touting the “good news on the jobs front” tell us that 176,000 of the jobs—or 71%—are concentrated in low-paying domestic services that cannot be outsourced? Here is…
Read more »Reagan Changed the World
By: Paul Craig Roberts|06 June, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: paul craig roberts margeret thatcher
President Ronald Reagan’s stature will grow as his achievements come to be more widely recognized. Few Americans realize that President Reagan’s economic policy won the cold war by rejuvenating capitalism. Members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, with whom I spoke in Moscow during the Soviet Union’s final months, agreed that it was President Reagan’s confidence in capitalism, not his…
Read more »Israel Intransigence Threatens U.S. with Ruin
By: Paul Craig Roberts|04 June, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Intransigence . Israel . Ruin . Threatens . U.S.
Writing in the New Republic (June 7), [Face Reality ]former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski characterizes the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq as “justified by falsehoods, pursued with unilateral arrogance, blinded by self-delusion, and stained by sadistic excesses.” [Face Reality] Brzezinski condemns Bush’s failed Iraq policy for aiding and abetting terrorism and for generating hardcore hatred of the…
Read more »Patriotism: The New Third Rail
By: Paul Craig Roberts|26 May, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Patriotism: . Rail
The dire consequences of the US invasion of Iraq go beyond a failed occupation and attendant war crimes. By making excuses for torture in public hearings, the US Senate has besmirched itself. In Senate hearings on May 19, Republican senators enabled three commanding generals of our Iraqi occupation force to explain away war crimes as procedures employed to save lives.…
Read more »Brown Myths Live In Law Schools
By: Paul Craig Roberts|21 May, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: paul craig roberts fourteenth amendment segregation
Judicial activism, to which conservatives and Republicans object, was born in a 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Yet, conservatives and Republicans who oppose judicial activism support the decision that gave it birth. Republicans and conservatives support Brown in order to demonstrate their non-racist credentials. Brown has lost whatever connection to law it might ever…
Read more »Paul Craig Roberts debates Jagdish Bhagwati in the Wall Street Journal
By: Paul Craig Roberts|17 May, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Wall Street Journal May 102004
But is it bad for the U.S. economy? Two economists debate the issue By Timothy Aeppel Wall Street Journal May 10, 2004. DOES OFFSHORE outsourcing hurt the U.S. economy by draining away jobs and investment, or does it ultimately make the U.S. stronger? Is it a cost-cutting tactic that should be encouraged, or should it be punished in some way?…
Read more »Fifty Years Of Brown: The Age Of Kritarchy
By: Paul Craig Roberts|16 May, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: kritarchy judges law
[VDARE.COM note: also Eugene Volokh's criticism of this column, as posted without links on LewRockwell.com, and Paul Craig Roberts' response.] May 17 is the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that used federal force to integrate public schools in the US. The anniversary will be widely celebrated in print. Jumping the gun by several…
Read more »Offshore Face-Off: Paul Craig Roberts vs. Jagdish Bhagwati
By: Paul Craig Roberts|10 May, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: paul craig roberts offshoring outsourcing
Moving jobs overseas can cut a company’s costs. But is it bad for the U.S. economy? Two economists debate the issue. By TIMOTHY AEPPEL Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL May 10, 2004; Page R6 Does offshore outsourcing hurt the U.S. economy by draining away jobs and investment, or does it ultimately make the U.S. stronger? Is it a cost-cutting tactic that should…
Read more »Disaster Lurks In April Jobs Numbers
By: Paul Craig Roberts|09 May, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Disaster . Jobs . Lurks . Numbers:
There is no good news in the April payroll data released last Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Disaster lurks in the jobs numbers: the US labor market is becoming Third World in character. The April jobs data show a continuation of the troubling pattern established in recent years. Despite a massive trade deficit that pours $500 billion annually…
Read more »Neoconservatives Are Anti-American
By: Paul Craig Roberts|04 May, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: Anti-American . neoconservatives
Is Bush correct when he reassures his war fans that torture is not indicative of American values? Or is the US government merely treating Iraqis the same way it treated Randy Weaver’s family at Ruby Ridge, the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, and Gordon Kahl’s family at Medina, ND? Why expect the US government to show more restraint to Iraqis…
Read more »A Prison State, If Not A Police State
By: Paul Craig Roberts|03 May, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: wenatchee graphs sex abuse witch hunt
The US has a unique distinction: It is the world’s greatest prison state. The US, “the land of the free,” has the biggest prison population in the world and the highest rate of prisoners per capita of all countries—including countries that President Bush believes need liberating by US armed forces. Even China, with one-party rule and a population that is…
Read more »Locked On Course To Wider War
The American public has been deceived and locked on a course toward conscription and a wider war. On April 20 Republican Senator Chuck Hagel acknowledged the deceit when he urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support the restoration of compulsory military service. The draft must be reinstated, the Republican Senator said, in order that the US can continue its…
Read more »Bush Backs West Bank Annexation, Risks Wider War
By: Paul Craig Roberts|18 April, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns
Intentionally or stupidly, President Bush and his neocon overlords are on track for igniting general conflagration in the Middle East. In placing America’s stamp of approval on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s annexation of the West Bank, Bush jettisoned a half century of American diplomacy and broadcast to Muslims everywhere that U.S. armed forces are Israel’s Middle Eastern legions. In…
Read more »The Iraq Imbroglio: Feeling A Draft?
By: Paul Craig Roberts|14 April, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: iraq imbroglio
Lawrence Kaplan, neo-Jacobin ideologue and shameless apologist for the carnage in Iraq, claims that Americans wouldn’t mind having 30,000 of our troops killed in Iraq if it achieves Bush’s “strategic objectives.”[Tolerating Casualties, From the Top Down, Washington Post, April 3, 2003] No one knows any longer what these objectives are unless it is to start World War III. The original…
Read more »Memoir & Critique – My Time with Karl Marx
By: Paul Craig Roberts|07 April, 2004|Categories: Scholarship Summaries|Tags: Crisis . Karl Marx . Marx . Paul Craig . Soviet . Theory
This article appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of The Independent Review My path to Karl Marx was through my work on the Soviet economy. Sovietologists had difficulty comprehending the organizational nature of the Soviet economy because they were uninformed about its Marxian aspirations. Sovietologists regarded Marx as irrelevant to an understanding of the Soviet economy. Alexander Gerschenkron, one of…
Read more »Bush War On Terror vs. Anglo-American Freedoms
The Bush administration believes that habeas corpus is a luxury that the US cannot afford in its war against terror. Habeas corpus is the legal principle that is the foundation of Anglo-American freedom. It prevents the government from picking up a person and holding him indefinitely without charge. Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were not constrained by habeas corpus. They…
Read more »Guest Commentary: The Harsh Truth About Outsourcing
By: Paul Craig Roberts|22 March, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: comments on it outsourcing
The Harsh Truth About Outsourcing was published in BUSINESSWEEK, March 2004 It’s not a mutually beneficial trade practice — it’s outright labor arbitrage Economists are blind to the loss of American industries and occupations because they believe these results reflect the beneficial workings of free trade. Whatever is being lost, they think, is being replaced by something as good or…
Read more »The Missing Case for Free Trade
By: Paul Craig Roberts|15 March, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: paul craig roberts free trade
Belatedly, pundits are beginning to notice that economic growth without job growth is not politically viable. But they still haven’t a clue about what has become of job growth. Pundits no longer confidently assert that the massive US trade deficit is good for the economy, because it puts money in foreign hands to buy US exports and create jobs for…
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Business Week Guest Commentary—The Harsh Truth About Outsourcing
By: Paul Craig Roberts|26 March, 2004|Categories: Articles & Columns|Tags: absolute advantage . beneficial trade . comparative advantage . economist david ricardo . guest commentary . offshore production . where are the jobs
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The Future Of Work Business Week, March 22, 2004 SPECIAL REPORT—WHERE ARE THE JOBS? Guest Commentary: The Harsh Truth About Outsourcing. It’s not a mutually beneficial trade practice—it’s outright labor arbitrage Economists are blind to the loss of American industries and occupations because they believe these results reflect the beneficial workings of free trade. Whatever is being lost, they think,…
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