The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment contains the clear language that no person should “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” For most people, things like highways, police stations, and courthouses come to mind as examples of “public
Mark Twain, in an unverified quote, once described a mine as “a hole in the ground owned by a liar.” Using that definition, a horde of liars were in Las Vegas last week to pitch their projects and bright prospects to hundreds of gold geeks who attended the Gold & Precious Metals Conference. While most mining company pitchmen and women were putting
In a recent letter to the editor published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal , police officer Ruben E. Hood makes the claim that the Nevada Public Employee Retirement System “is one of the healthiest, most financially sound retirement systems in the country.” He went on to write that because of laws keeping the pension plan from being looted, there
Could it be that Andrea Hackett will get the last laugh? Ms. Hackett, who once used to be Mr. Hackett, is the gal who formed the Las Vegas Dancer Alliance in an attempt to organize the legions of women who ply their trade at the numerous adult cabarets around town. In her former life, Hackett was a union organizer while employed at Boeing in
Howard Ruff is one of the icons of the investment newsletter business. The Ruff Times is one of the most successful newsletters of all time and his book How to Prosper during the Coming Bad Years sold almost three million copies. He is most famous for recommending the purchase of gold at $120/oz in 1975 and more importantly recommending that
It was reported last week that the M3 money supply has increased at a breathtaking 20% annual rate in the last 4 weeks, going up $155 billion. Coincidently (or not), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) held another of its semi-annual land auctions in Las Vegas. With Alan Greenspan providing the juice and animal spirits aplenty in attendance, the
“The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” is where all bad things are forgotten. In this sanitized world all things will work out fine. For investors this means that just keep putting more money in mutual funds and you’ll be rich. Bill Bonner told his audience at the Las Vegas Money Show last month that he had just titled his speech “The eternal
For most people working in private industry, the everyday life of working on a college campus would seem like some sort of alternative Kafkaesque universe. The backstabbing, betrayals, and bureaucratic baloney are so commonplace that scandal and waste are barely newsworthy items. And when it comes higher education follies, the Community College of
The government has no business stockpiling anything, including oil. But when three socialist amigos like Senators Charles Schumer of New York, Barbara Boxer of California and Harry Reid of Nevada all urged the Bush administration recently to help ease gasoline prices by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), you know what’s up.
Anyone who has spent any time on college campuses knows that most college faculty members are left-leaning and likely vote Democrat, if not Green or Socialist. So when a study recently found 91 percent of the UNLV faculty is liberal, it was not exactly earth-shattering news. Although the study’s finding — that UNLV is slightly more liberal than
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.