How to Stop the Next Madoff

Washington, D.C.–“Want to stop the next Madoff? Gut the SEC,” says Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

“Part of the reason Madoff’s misdeeds went undetected is that the Securities and Exchange Commission spends most of its time doing things the government has no business doing. The only legitimate job of a securities law enforcement division is to protect investors against the specific crimes of theft, fraud, and breach of contract.

“But the SEC plays a much different role. Its mandate is to attempt to make investing ‘safe’ by controlling every aspect of financial markets, from dictating the composition of mutual fund boards to mandating public release of executive compensation numbers that shareholders want kept private to determining when executives are allowed to sell stock–‘insider trade’–instead of leaving that to the discretion of a company’s owners.

“In pretending to guarantee to investors that their investments are sound, which is impossible, the SEC encourages the kind of blind group-think that characterized the Madoff investors. And with the SEC devoting itself to a sprawling array of elaborate witch-hunts, such as the ‘insider trading’ case against Mark Cuban, what time or attention does it have for real fraud?

“The answer–as is clear from the fact that a 29-point, 17-page report on Madoff, submitted in 1999, 2001, and 2005, entitled The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud slipped through its cracks–is none.”

 

Let Airlines Decide Who Boards Their Planes

Washington, D.C.–A 29-year-old Middle Eastern man who insisted on occupying the window seat closest to the cockpit while wearing a T-shirt saying, in Arabic and English, “WE WILL NOT BE SILENT,” has been paid $240,000 to drop his discrimination lawsuit. Raed Jarrar had sued JetBlue and two federal security officers for having made him cover the T-shirt and sit in the rear of the plane, to mollify passengers who felt threatened.

“It’s an injustice when a private airline is penalized for exercising its rights as an owner,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Property owners are entitled to set standards for conduct, including dress codes, that their customers must observe when using company property. If a potential customer finds those standards unreasonable, he is free to take his business elsewhere.

“Here, JetBlue should have been legally entitled to forbid Mr. Jarrar from frightening other passengers aboard its privately owned jetliner. In deciding the matter, JetBlue had a right to consider that Mr. Jarrar’s behavioral and physical profile resembled that of terrorists who have left a trail of blood and bone across the globe, both before and after destroying the World Trade Center with hijacked airliners in 2001.

“Now, however, Mr. Jarrar is a quarter-million dollars richer because our anti-discrimination laws forbid businesses to use their own judgment in these matters.”

Obama’s Backward Economics

Washington, D.C.–“Barack Obama claims that Americans can only stave off economic disaster by trillions in government spending–which means trillions of dollars taxed or borrowed to finance government make-work programs,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
 
“Obama-nomics couldn’t be more wrong.
 
“Prosperity requires that the government drastically cut government spending. That way, as much real capital as possible will remain in private hands, and be put to productive use by entrepreneurs to create valuable goods and services to sell at home and abroad. By taxing and inflating our wealth away, Obama will simply be creating more of the crushing debt that brought about the current crisis.”
 
“You don’t put out a fire with more gasoline. And you don’t end a recession by destroying capital.”

No "Footprint," No Life

By Keith Lockitch (Washington Times, January 9, 2008)

As environmentalism continues to grow in prominence, more and more of us are trying to live a “greener” lifestyle. But the more “eco-friendly” you try to become, likely the more you find yourself confused and frustrated by the green message.

Have you tried giving up your bright and cheery incandescent light bulbs to save energy–only to learn that their gloomy-but-efficient compact fluorescent replacements contain mercury? Perhaps you’ve tried to free up space in landfills by foregoing the ease and convenience of disposable diapers–only to be criticized for the huge quantities of energy and water consumed in laundering those nasty cloth diapers. Even voicing support for renewable energy no longer seems to be green enough, as angry environmentalists protest the development of “pristine lands” for wind farms and solar power plants.
Read more

Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest Pays $24,000 in Prizes

IRVINE, CA–University of California Los Angeles undergraduate Robert Sanders, from San Jose, CA, is the winner of the Ayn Rand Institute’s annual “Atlas Shrugged” essay contest, for which he received a prize of $10,000.

Open to 12th graders and both undergraduate- and graduate-level college students, the “Atlas Shrugged” essay contest requires contestants to write on one of several topics dealing with the characters and themes in the novel. The contest is designed to promote critical thinking and writing skills. Essays are judged on both style and content.

With 1,917 contestants, 2008 was the most competitive year in the contest’s history. The previous record was 1,647 contestants in 2003.

The following students have won this year’s second and third prizes:

Second-prize winners ($2,000):

Gregory Arney, Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA
Ryan Krause, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Margaret Wray, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Third-prize winners ($1,000):

Abigail Chernick, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA
Cadmus Kyrala, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Melanie Martin, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
Ryan Menezes, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Tay Tufenkjian, George Washington University, Washington, DC

The contest also awards 20 finalists ($100) and 20 semi-finalists ($50). A complete list of winners and a copy of the first-prize essay can be read online at the Ayn Rand Institute’s website.

Bush’s Pro-Democracy Strategy Is Pro-Terrorism

Washington, D.C. – The acts of war by Hamas against Israel are precisely what people should expect from Bush’s so-called democracy strategy in the Middle East.

The administration campaigned for elections in the strongholds of various Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, groups that it should have worked to destroy. In the Palestinian territories, Bush insisted that Hamas be allowed to participate in the 2006 elections–and the jihadist group won a landslide. Thanks to that political victory, Hamas gained an unearned legitimacy for its vicious war to exterminate Israelis and Westerners. Winning power with the aid of their enemy confirmed for these Islamists that the West will abet its own destroyers.

America’s self-defense entails crushing Islamic totalitarianism–not ushering its jihadists into political office and galvanizing them to redouble their war against us.

The FCC’s Plan to Censor the Internet

Washington, D.C. – The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to auction off a portion of the airwaves for Internet use. Under the terms of the auction, the winning bidder would be forced to use a quarter of the auctioned spectrum to provide free wireless Internet service to all Americans.

“If you think free Internet access under this plan would be a good thing, think again,” said Don Watkins, a writer for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “This ‘free’ access comes at the price of giving government unprecedented control over the Internet.

“Since no ISP can compete with free, omnipresent Internet access, this plan means that virtually all online users will be herded into the government-controlled Internet. And as the history of radio and television has shown, once the government guarantees ‘free’ access to a communications medium, it will inevitably exercise control over its content–i.e., censorship.

“In fact, this plan already comes with censorship strings attached; the FCC has declared that this ‘free’ Internet must filter out pornography and other material deemed unsuitable for children. Not only will this prevent vast numbers of Americans from accessing content the government regards as inappropriate, but it will unavoidably lead to massive self-censorship by websites struggling to avoid government sanitization.

“The FCC should auction off these airwaves without preconditions–not use the prospect of ‘free’ wireless access to lure us into accepting an online censorship regime.”

Open the Borders, End the Housing Glut

Washington, D.C. – As the housing glut continues to send home prices spiraling downward, leaving millions of homeowners unable to unload houses they can’t afford, Washington is debating ways to address the oversupply of housing.

“This crisis was caused by government intervention into the economy, yet every proposal to fix the housing market involves more power for Washington,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Instead of more government distortion of markets, we should be looking for ways to get the government off our backs. That will require us to think outside the box, so here’s one–admittedly radical–suggestion to get us started: free up immigration.

“At a time when Americans are suffering from an oversupply of housing, it is tragic that the government continues to forcibly prevent millions of peaceful people around the globe from bringing their wealth, talent, and ambition to this country.

“Imagine if the number of annual immigrants increased from around 650,000 a year to, say, five million. Virtually overnight we would see money pour into the American real estate market, as millions of new businessmen and workers bought and rented homes. Not only would this eliminate the oversupply of houses, we would enjoy the broader, long-term economic benefits of welcoming legions of highly skilled and motivated individuals into the American economy.”

No Copyright Exceptions

By Thomas A. Bowden (New York Times, October 28, 2008)

Re “Copyright and Politics Don’t Mix” (column, Oct. 21):

Lawrence Lessig’s proposal for copyright reform commits the same error as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Both take for granted that lawmakers should be carving up speech into political, commercial, artistic, and other categories, and then offering different legal protection according to how society values the output.

But speech is speech, and the individual speaks by right, not permission. Just as political speech deserves full First Amendment protection, it deserves full copyright protection as well. Media outlets that profit from disseminating political statements should have ready access to procedures for enforcing their property rights against YouTube or other infringers. That’s not censorship; that’s justice.

Read more…

Protect Citizens

By David Holcberg (USA Today, October 13, 2008)

No law should place the well-being of whales above that of humans. Even if, as environmentalists allege, the use of sonar threatens the lives and health of marine mammals, no law should prevent the Navy from using this crucial military technology.

The fundamental purpose of government in a free society is the protection of the individual rights of its citizens. If the Navy judges that sonar experiments off the coast of California are “critical to the nation’s own security,” and that they might increase its ability to detect such potential military threats as hostile submarines, it should do these experiments. Our national defense and our very lives may depend on it.

This attack on our Navy’s ability to defend us from foreign threats is yet another example of environmental laws being used to sacrifice our interests for the alleged “rights” of animals. Once again, environmentalists are showing whose side they are on, and it is not humanity’s.

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