Tag Archives: bigotry

GOP Trumphemisms: “Completely Unacceptable” Means the Opposite

Posted on June 5, 2016 by William Black | 3 comments

By William K. Black

Trump’s bigotry de jour was quadrupling down on his claim that the judge hearing the fraud lawsuit against the Trumphemistically-named “Trump U” (which was not a university and involved solely Trump’s wallet rather than his “leadership”) was biased against Trump because the judge, while born here, was of Mexican descent. Trump’s free-floating bigotry is, of course, simply the norm, so the story here is the reaction of GOP leaders who have made public their support for making an open bigot our President.

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged bigotry, Donald Trump, paul ryan

The Libertarian Plea to Bring Back Jim Crow: An Oxymoron by a Regular Moron

Posted on April 8, 2015 by William Black | 4 comments

By William K. Black
Quito: April 7, 2015

My April 4, 2015 column discussed the Wall Street Journal’s express endorsement of a right of merchants to discriminate against groups they detest. I explained that the WSJ was adopting the position of Richard Epstein and quoted Epstein about the policy question he found to be a “very hard question.” That question was “voluntary” hereditary slavery – he’s in favor of it as a “right” essential to “liberty.” But he admits that he finds it “very hard” to justify the impact of the “voluntary” contract of slavery on the “externalities” – and yes, he is talking about children as commodities. I quoted the passage from Epstein’s famous defense of discrimination in his book Forbidden Grounds to show how zany the policy views are that emerge like mold spores as soon as one endorses discrimination by merchants against groups they despise as a means of increasing “liberty.”

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged bigotry, discrimination, Jim Crow laws, libertarian, Richard Epstein, WSJ

Whining about Indiana’s Retreat from Bigotry

Posted on April 6, 2015 by William Black | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Quito: April 4, 2015

I’m dealing with the temporary expiration of our subscription to the Wall Street Journal and my resultant inability to read columns behind its paywall. This caused me to search whether others had made the full text of the WSJ editorial “Liberal Intolerance, Round II” available on line. I put the first sentence of the editorial in my search engine.

“The political delirium over Indiana’s law protecting minority religious beliefs doesn’t seem to be abating, and the irony is that it may be illustrating why such statutes are necessary.”

It spit out the exact same sentence – but in what appears to be (the world’s worst) web site of U.S. News and World Report in a (maybe) news article attributed to “us,” but starting with an AP credit. The only change is that the first sentence in the WSJ has become the second sentence in the USNWR. As the third sentence in the quotation below shows, it is in some ways a personal take on a straight news story sourced to AP, but the USNWR’s web site refers to as being authored by “us.” I trust you are as confused as I am. The two pieces differ, but seem clearly to have been written by the same person about the same subject.

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged bigotry, discrimination, Indiana

Slate’s Civil War about Bigotry and Markets

Posted on April 7, 2014 by William Black | 6 comments

By William K. Black

Slate is having a healthy, but incomplete, debate about the uproar about Brendan Eich’s resignation from Mozilla. Eich donated $1000 to the successful campaign to adopt “Proposition 8” in California in 2008. Prop 8, until it was struck down, banned marriage equality for gays. William Saletan published a satirical article suggesting that everyone be “purge[d]” who contributed to Prop 8.

Other columnists, such as Mark Stern, weighed in to remind readers about the cruelty of the often homophobic TV ad campaign used by Prop 8 supporters. Stern makes the point that much of the campaign was designed to picture gays as recruiting straight children. This column (eventually) discusses why Eich stepped down, but it begins by explaining why neoclassical economists have such a terrible track record in understanding discrimination and its remedies.

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