If you can’t get the tune out of your head, does that mean you’ll end up buying the car? Rich, corinthian leather will only take you so far. Here are some of the most memorable car commercials of the past 30 years. * Volkswagen “Little GTI” – If you were around in the mid-1980s, you probably know the song, even if you don’t know any German. Some exceptionally clever ad men took the 1960s hit single, Little GTO by Ronnie and the Daytonas – “Little GTO, you’re really looking fine; three deuces and a four-speed, and a 389 … listen … Continue reading →

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr. There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry. Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats … Continue reading →

Two weeks ago, authorities combing through disgraced former IRS executive Lois Lerner’s e-mails released a message she sent to a subordinate who had complained about a Texas Tea Party group. “Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best,” she said.  “He should [have] let the south go. We really do seem to have [two] different mind sets.”  She also insisted in 2012 that, “We [the U.S.] really need to split in two — we are so polarized that we can’t do anything constructive.” Lerner hails from Massachusetts, and her comments about Lincoln and secession sparked some debate … Continue reading →

In April it was announced that Greece was imposing a surcharge for all cash withdrawals from bank accounts to deter citizens from clearing out their accounts. So now the Greeks will have to pay one euro per 1,000 euros that they withdraw, which is one-tenth of a percent. It doesn’t seem very big, but the principle at work is extremely big because what they’re in effect doing is breaking the exchange rate between a unit of bank deposits and a unit of currency. Why would they do this? Why would they want to do this? Well, it’s one of the … Continue reading →

“Conservatives love to drop my father’s name and try to find candidates that act and think like he did.” ~ Michael Reagan Conservative Republicans who want to sucker libertarians to get their votes often describe themselves as libertarian-leaning. Conservative Republicans who want to sucker other conservatives to get their votes often refer to themselves as constitutional conservatives. But conservative Republicans who want to sucker their fellow Republicans to get their votes often call themselves Reagan Republicans. According to many Republicans, Reagan was the greatest president in their lifetime. Others consider him to be the greatest president in the twentieth century. … Continue reading →

Pans containing a non-stick coating are certainly convenient, and the popularity of them has helped them explode on the market. The chemical used for this coating is seeing new research on its level of toxicity. This research is showing that exposure on any level could prove dangerous to neural, reproductive, and immune health. Could this darling of the kitchen be one of the leading causes of ill health all over the world? The Dangers of Non-Stick Coating DuPont, a chemical engineering giant, manufactured perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) to make Teflon coating for cookware. Federal regulators linked the chemical to birth defects … Continue reading →

You may have seen this video of an attorney using a novel approach to navigate his way through a DUI roadblock. Essentially he refuses to have any personal contact with the officers by putting his papers in a plastic bag and hanging them out a mostly rolled-up car window. The officers wave him through without saying a word in what seems to be a staged event. We question if most officers would react this way. Why take the chance of escalating a traffic stop into a full-blown confrontation—with potentially tragic consequences—by literally zipping up? Your best protection is a reasoned … Continue reading →

Here’s my taxi question. If a person is law-abiding, has a driver’s license, has a car or van that has passed safety inspection, and has adequate liability insurance, is there any consumer-oriented reason he should not be able to become a taxicab owner/operator? Put another way: If you wish to hire the services of such a person, what right does a third party have to prevent that exchange? Many cities have granted monopoly power to taxi companies — the right to prevent entry by others. Sometimes this monopoly takes the form of exclusive government-granted rights to particular individuals to provide … Continue reading →

What should be done with the estimated 15 million people living in the United States without the legal right to be here? It seems most politicians and many Americans come down on one or the other extreme. Many Republicans, including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, have the idea that they can round up 15 million people and ship them back to wherever they came from. Many Democrats, on the other hand, would grant them blanket amnesty, give them citizenship, and make sure as many as possible are fully signed up to the welfare ranks. Has anyone thought for a moment … Continue reading →

Now that was fast! When I posted a piece a week ago noting that the S&P 500 had crossed the 2100 line from below for the 13th time this year, it signified that the market had been thrashing sideways since February 13th. Perhaps that was an omen, but technically speaking it was just further proof that the stock market is driven by Fed-following day traders and algos that reflexively buy the dips. But on Thursday and Friday last week, the casino gamblers got a rude awakening. Not only did they lose their lunch in a violent plunge during the last half-hour of trading two days in a … Continue reading →

No doubt Donald Trump would be a bad president, as they all are — though his observation that the Iraq war was a disaster, and that while Saddam kept terrorists under control, Iraq is now a haven for terrorism, is better than we hear from anyone else — but surely there is more to say about the Trump phenomenon. Lew Rockwell joins Tom for a freewheeling discussion! About the Guest Lew Rockwell is publisher of LewRockwell.com, and founder and chairman of the Mises Institute. Guest’s Political Blog Lew Rockwell’s Political Theatre Selected Books by the Guest Fascism vs. Capitalism Against … Continue reading →