Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2456

Bankers, Communists, and Russia

William Felix Browder is all over the news trying to play into the whole Russian/Trump affair muddling the waters. Browder founded Hermitage Capital to invest exclusively in Russian companies. Edmond Safra, the notorious banker who was the center of what was called the Money Plane, put in $25m of seed capital for Hermitage Capital and Safra’s Republic National Bank of New York controlled it. This was the Russian deal I was being asked to join. When HSBC bought Republic National, Browder embar...

The Airbnb Next Door

Free-markets and private property rights are all well and good on paper and in the abstract. However, when abstract meets reality’s road, these questions are not so easy.

The other day, a neighbor dropped by with mail mistakenly delivered to her address. After pleasantries were exchanged she asked,”Do you know about the house across the street?” The family had moved and the realtor’s sign was gone. Most of the time the house seems empty, however, one particular Sunday, our quiet cul-de-sac er...

Tech-Savvy Oldsters

Yesterday I had to go to the AT&T store to activate my phone. Why? Because since the AT&T merger with DirecTV their website has become a cluttered cesspool of junk. That speaks volumes considering their website has always been bogged down with useless information. It took multiple search engine alterations to navigate their website to find the sim card activation page. After a few attempts of trying to enter my information I finally resigned myself to trudging to their store.

The only reason...

Crooked Wasserman-Schultz in Trouble

A former IT staffer for Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was arrested at the Dulles International Airport trying to flee the country for Pakistan. Imran Awan worked for the former chairman of the DNC as well as about a dozen other Democratic lawmakers. Wasserman-Schultz fired Awan on Tuesday, despite the fact he had been under investigation for months.

Awan was arrested for bank fraud after illegally securing a loan from a federal credit union for $300,000. He wired the money to Pakistan to unkn...

Rotten to the Common Core

Literacy failures continue to compound with each generation as mis-educators focus on everything except the core problem:  The Devastation of Language and Literacy.

The vast majority of Americans no longer Hear, Speak, Spell, Read, or Write English with competency, let alone with skill. The destruction of Americans’ ability to precisely understand and use their own language is at the root of every problem that faces our nation: school failure;  dearth of general knowledge; limited horizons; s...

Home Alone

It’s as if on election night the shocked and exasperated rulers of the Imperial City ordered Donald Trump to sleep in the White House attic. Unlike Kevin McCallister’s family in the movie, however, the establishment never stopped obsessing about his bratty insolence and never intended for him to rejoin the family the next morning—or ever.

Instead, the Washington political establishment and its collaborators in the main stream media are engaged in an unabashed and unconcealed campaign to remov...

The Coup

The coup story keeps unfolding day by day.

At this time, Trump is pulling out from under by degrees but hasn’t defeated his foes yet. His followers remain loyal, and this support is growing. This is alarming to Democrats in office. Some of them, seeing the political liability, are saying to move on and away from the Russia issue. Jared Kushner’s published statement is detailed and open. Its detail is plausible and realistic, hiding nothing. The collusion angle has no legs in this instance. Th...

Porsche Is Doomed

Maybe the worst thing about this electric car business is the way it will – if it succeeds – homogenize cars, make one just like another in every meaningful way. Think about bumper cars. You pick a different body or color – but the cars are all exactly the same.

So it is with electric cars.

A motor is, after all, a motor. One spins the same as the others.

Unlike engines – which reciprocate. Pistons, up and down. Valves opening and closing. And which can be (and have been) made in an almost in...

President Trump vs. His Department of Justice

During the past two weeks, President Donald Trump has made no secret of his unhappiness at the management of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Actually, Trump seems most agitated at the growing parts of the DOJ that are not under Sessions’ management.

He is also angry that the trail of the well-known evidence of the crimes of his former opponent Hillary Clinton seems to have been vacated by the DOJ.

How is it that parts of the DOJ cannot be controlled by the atto...

The 16 Years War

Every night on American TV you can see repeating commercials to raise money for young people who’ve had limbs blown off. It might be cruel to ask the following question in the presence of these veterans, but millions of other people have been forced to pay for all of this, and they need to be protected as well.

And so, with condolences to the young people who signed up for these wars believing they were actually defending the good, we must ask this question: What was the payoff?

Some people w...