Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson The country is currently focused on gun violence because of the recent mass shootings in stores and schools. But Rich Lowry reminds us that, “the same leftists who rightfully lament mass shootings avert their eyes from the much more common scourge of deadly gang violence.” Some recent headlines seem intended to deceive. One headline howled that “at least 54 injured, 11 killed in 7 separate mass shootings this weekend.” Such headlines leave the reader with the impression that…

Penna Dexter A Wisconsin school district has charged three eighth-grade boys with sexual harassment and has initiated a Title IX investigation associated with these charges. This type of accusation is normally tied to rape or other unwanted sexual advances. If convicted, the damage to a young man’s reputation and future can be devastating. When the boys’ parents got the call from Kiel Area School District authorities — their first notice of the charges — they were understandably terrified. To qualify…

Kerby Anderson Back in 2009, I wrote a commentary about how a record number of Americans were moving from one part of the country to another part of the county. In general, they were moving from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West. But I argued then that it wasn’t just because Americans wanted a change in climate. If you dug into the data, you would find that Americans were migrating from high tax states to low tax…

Kerby Anderson “If you don’t do what I say, I’ll take your lunch money.” You can imagine a bully saying that to a student in school. But you probably can’t imagine the federal government saying that to public schools. But that may happen. The Biden administration’s Department of Food and Nutrition Service (an agency within the USDA) announced that it will strip funding for school lunches if the school does not adopt the administration’s transgender policies. This would require trans…

Kerby Anderson Earlier this week, I talked about gun background checks and provided what I thought were some shocking statistics about the lack of prosecution of potential gun buyers who lied on a government form. Today, I would like to talk about what could be done to improve the system. But before we get to solutions, I need to explain that whatever laws Congress passes will only be a two percent solution. According to the Department of Justice, less than…

Kerby Anderson Today is Flag Day, and it’s worth taking a moment to document its history. This holiday commemorates the date when the United States approved the design for its first national flag. When the American Revolution began, the colonists weren’t fighting united under a single flag. Most regiments fought under their own flags. The Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to create a unified fighting force (the Continental Army) that would fight under the first US flag (the Continental…

Kerby Anderson Members of Congress are talking about passing legislation to expand gun background checks. That’s why I decided to study the issue in more depth. In the process, I found a one statistic that shocked me. Kevin Williamson cited an audit of the Government Accountability Office of the effectiveness of gun background checks that are performed by a licensed firearms dealer. A potential gun purchaser must fill out Form 4473 honestly and accurately. If you lie on the form,…

Penna Dexter There’s new research into the magnitude of the decline in children’s achievement that resulted from Covid-19 school closures. Thomas Kane, an economist and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, says the learning loss is “far greater than most educators and parents seem to realize.” He’s part of a team from the American Institutes for Research, Dartmouth College, Harvard, and NWEA, an educational assessment non-profit. The team is investigating how student learning was affected by the remote…

Kerby Anderson We find it difficult to clearly see inflation increasing in our world because of what could be called “the money illusion.” Steve Forbes and his co-authors talk about this in their new book on inflation. We tend to misinterpret inflation’s distorted prices by believing that they reflect “real world” values. We like to believe the value of our house is increasing each year when often the value is increasing merely because the dollar is decreasing. The dollar may…

Kerby Anderson Although prices have been going up for years and have been increasing even faster this last year, the reason for most of this price inflation is due to a declining dollar. The US was on a gold standard until 1971. The value of the dollar has been eroding each year. A new book by Steve Forbes and others on inflation provides some ways to measure our declining dollar. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the dollar’s purchasing…

Kerby Anderson A reoccurring topic on my radio program is what is called “stakeholder capitalism.” The phrase was promoted by the founder of the World Economic Forum and is used by many business leaders as well as by progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Former Senator Phil Gramm argues in a recent op-ed that “stakeholder capitalism is a war on the Enlightenment.” Proponents argue that big businesses get more than they deserve. But he reminds us that nearly…