Jack Rain's Columns
Jack Rain wants YOU.
The Reparations Question, or Where to Send My Check
"Now going along with this theory, I’m thinking if the first humanoids and homo sapiens were in Tanzania and nearby regions and then dispersed from there, then my far-off, very distant ancestors came from that region also, and somebody had to have chased my ancestors off their property and out of the area. Or do you think all my ancestors just chose colder climates for the fun of it?" Column by Jack Rain.
A Special Note to Poor, Starving College Students
"If anything should give hope to the poor child born with next to nothing, to the single parent with mounting debt and yes, to the poor college student and the starving writer, it is this paragraph by Kirzner. It means that you may be a starving writer or a poor college student or someone up to your eyeballs in unpaid bills, but you are in that predicament not because of your current place in life, but because you have not developed the alertness to pick up money that is just sitting there for the taking." An important column by Jack Rain.
"So there are no Hummers in my future. I’m not buying one, leasing one, and I will even refuse to ride in one. It is a child of the war machine. Its parent the Humvee--short for 'High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle'--is everything I don’t want this government to be: highly mobile, multipurposed with wheels." Column by Jack Rain.
The Real Problem With National Defense
"The real problem is that almost everyone thinks that the threat of nuclear attack should be dealt with by the government. In my view, government is the damned problem. The great big government public relations machine has lulled nearly the entire country into a trance. We are out here basically naked against an attack and Dick 'Oilman' Cheney is already hiding in an underground bunker. What the hell ever happened to going down with the ship?" Column by Jack Rain.
Column by Jack Rain.
What I Would Like to See in the Year 2003
Jack Rain's wish list.
Mr. Insider, the Ultimate Assassin, Doesn't Have a Clue
"You see, Safire's specialty is the hit piece. If you are a political pro and you need someone taken out, who ya gonna call? Safire." Column by Jack Rain.
A Christmas Present for the President
"So I have thought real hard about what kind of gift I could get you that would really serve all Americans. And then it finally dawned on me. With your being so busy developing these new plans and looking for those weapons of mass destruction that Saddam is apparently hiding really, really well, you don't have much time to keep track of those closest to you." Column by Jack Rain.
"Now, unfortunately, while the media is having a field day with you, there are some real dangerous characters out there by the name of Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Poindexter who do want to snoop inside my computer, raise my taxes, implement a national ID card and bomb Baghdad. They wear nice conservative suits, probably haven’t worn jammies in decades, and I only wish they would spend a lot more of their time just watching "E.T." and going to the zoo." Column by Jack Rain.
An appeal from Jack Rain.
Is the Wall Street Journal in Bed With Big Government?
"As for Spitzer, he is out there looking for more headlines. The last report is that he is interviewing officials at the nursery school. Let me close this way. Any government official that is interviewing nursery school officials to find out how you got your children into nursery school is very, very dangerous and a real punk." Column by Jack Rain.
The Evil and Wacky World of Eliot Spitzer
Jack Rain explains how government put independent investment analysts out of business.
"When you look at these numbers, you have to wonder who George W. is going to war with. Iraq or the American people? He is planning on sending between to 200,000 to 250,000 to fight in Iraq and planning on deploying around 265,000 troops in the United States." Column by the workhorse Jack Rain.
The Computers Work Well for the Bad Guys, Again
"The government plans to infiltrate everyone from religious organizations to political groups, all in the name of fighting terrorism. But since it is dubious all this new data can be processed in any intelligent fashion, all the government is really doing is building a greater superstructure so you and I can be tracked by the bad guys." Column by Jack Rain.
The left-anarchists just had a big protest in Chicago. STR's Jack Rain was there.
"...you were out there busting up penny stock scams, but the real scams, from the Social Security Ponzi scheme to the 'Saddam Hussein is about to attack us' scam, go roaring on." Jack Rain hears from the subject of one of his columns.
Jack Rain has found a businessman who can tell it like it is.
"But now when we think of the ugly word 'informant,' we must not only think of Hitler or the Soviet Union. We must think of George Bush." Column by Jack Rain.
Mainstream Media Doesn't Have a Clue
Jack Rain explains the difference between expenses and capital expenditures to The Wall Street Journal and CNBC.
"I can avoid Enron, WorldCom and a three-card monte game on the streets of New York City, but how, just how, do I avoid the scam called government?" Column by Jack Rain.
Finally, an Economist Says Something Valuable
Jack Rain uses Austrian economics to make a mint.
An Open Letter to Martha Stewart
"We know that the true benefactors of society are people like you. We know that you gained your wealth by providing goods and services to people voluntarily. People who willingly paid for the many goods and services you offered. You aren't running a Social Security scam, like the government, and forcing people into this bankrupt Ponzi scheme. People buy things from you because they like your product. People buy things you license because they trust your judgment. You don't have to force people at gunpoint to accept your officially licensed products in the way the FDA forces all suppliers and consumers to bow to its demands. No, you simply enter the marketplace, offer your services and many consumers respond." Column by Jack Rain.
Revisiting the War in Yugoslavia
And the case for Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright as war criminals. Column by Jack Rain.
"The weekend was kind of a twilight zone experience for me. Everywhere I turned from subway, to clubs to television, I experienced some reminder of the power, mystery and secretiveness that government can be." A very interesting column by Jack Rain.
How to Deal With Government Bureaucrats
Turn them into short-term freedom fighters, says Jack Rain.
Jack Rain has found a star he can root for.
FBI Computers Worked Very Efficiently for the Bad Guys
"The greater the power of government supercomputers, the greater ferocity with which they will eventually be used against us...." Column by Jack Rain.
Some of the wildest conspiracy theories about 9/11 now seem possible. Column by Jack Rain.
The First Great Book of the 21st Century
Long live the king, says Jack Rain.
Jack Rain tells us citizens what we should do when the government tells us to get ready.
It's Time to Privatize the Mails
Jack Rain on how the free market could protect us from anthrax in the mail.
Bin Laden Secret Message Decoded
Jack Rain tells us what it says.
What's Really Wrong With National ID Cards
They give the powerful even more power. Column by Jack Rain.