Walter E. Williams

WILLIAMS: Affordable health care

One of the campaign themes this election cycle is "affordable" health care. Shouldn't we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the "affordable" housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care? Shouldn't we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine?

October 22, 2008

WILLIAMS: Political monopoly power

The Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, are the documents most frequently referred to when trying to get a feel for the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution.

October 19, 2008

WILLIAMS: Lessons from the bailout

In my more cynical moments, I think we Americans deserve what we get from our politicians, many of whom can be generally described as nothing less than loathsome. You say, "Williams, that's a pretty heavy putdown." My question to you is how else would you describe these congressmen who are now blaming the financial mess on the failure of the free market? Starting with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, that was given more teeth during the Clinton administration, Congress started intimidating banks and other financial institutions into making loans, so-called subprime loans, to high-risk homebuyers and businesses. The carrot offered was that these high-risk loans would be purchased by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have known that this was a prescription for disaster but there was a congressional chorus of denial.

October 9, 2008

WILLIAMS: Destroying liberty

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs.

October 3, 2008

WILLIAMS: Scaring us to death

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

September 28, 2008

WILLIAMS: Stubborn ignorance

"All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."

September 21, 2008

WILLIAMS: Academic mismatch II

Last week's column demonstrated the harm, suffered by black students, that results from law school race-based admission policies. The bottom line was that black students who might have done well at lower-tier law schools were recruited to more highly competitive law schools and turned into failures. One might be tempted to place the full blame for such callousness on deans of law schools, but the true villain is the American Bar Association.

September 20, 2008

WILLIAMS: Economic myths

By taking a couple of courses in economic theory, we could immunize ourselves from nonsense spouted by politicians and pundits, but in the meantime check out Professor John R. Lott's "Freedomnomics:

August 23, 2008