Edifice of Trust

As exploding pension costs cause state and local governments to cut back on services, citizens are fleeing rising crime, failing schools and increasing taxes leaving only the most vulnerable residents to shoulder the financial burden and their worsening predicament. These financial burdens have been created by public sector unions working in collusion with the politicians who gladly accept their p...

Pollsters report that American citizens are very worried about the state of our democracy in the run-up to the 2022 mid-term elections. It is true that left-wing and right-wing extremists are trying to manipulate democracy to meet their own partisan ends, but part of the problem is that many people do not understand how democracy relates to our liberty or how the Founders tried to limit democracy...

The White House recently released the Biden-Harris Economic Blueprint that lays out what the Biden administration wants to do and what it envisions for the American economy. The Blueprint is based on the premise of rewarding work and not wealth. But this is a false premise based on Marxist thinking. Work and wealth are not opposed but are complementary to each other. In this podcast, the Edifice o...

In a recent speech, President Joe Biden accused ex-President Trump and his MAGA-Republican followers of following a semi-fascist philosophy that, "threatens the very foundations of our Republic." But fascism has more in common with socialism than with the American founding principles. Fascists and socialists use the same tactics to control a country and its people. In this podcast, the Edifice of...

This podcast is an excerpt about energy policy from my 2015 book, Principled Policy. As Saudi Arabia announces a cut-back in production and Russia the shut-off of the Nord-Stream pipeline, some of the events described in my book may seem a bit dated but the underlying concept is still relevant today. Perhaps even more relevant as oil prices fluctuate and natural gas prices soar, portending a winte...

Almost everyone agrees that President Biden's plan to forgive billions and billions of dollars of student debt is a bad idea. But it not a bad idea just because it does more economic harm than good. Nor is it a bad idea because it ignores the causes of the student debt problem, does nothing to solve the problem and, therefore, virtually guarantees that the problem will continue and grow even worse...

Citizens of the United States have many civil rights, but they also have duties and responsibilities. Duties and responsibilities beyond voting and paying taxes. Citizens must be productive members of society. Many of the benefits and entitlements provided to citizens by the government discourage citizens from being productive members of society. In this podcast, the Edifice of Trust host, Victor...

Former President Donald Trump is the dominant figure in the Republican Party and aspires to be its candidate for President in the 2024 elections. To implement his plans, he is attempting to remake the Republican Party by backing candidates that are loyal to him and his agenda and ousting traditional Republicans whose loyalties lie elsewhere. But his scheme might fail because the candidates he is b...

The Inflation Reduction Act concocted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic maverick Joe Manchin is being rushed through Congress in the hopes of a quick passage before people realize what is actually in the bill and what it means in terms of reducing inflation. In this podcast, the Edifice of Trust host, Victor Bolles, looks at the underlying causes of inflation and why the Infla...

First, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador snubbed President Biden's invitation to the recent Summit of the Americas by refusing to attend unless the dictators from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were also invited. At a White House meeting the following week, he chided President Biden about US inflation saying that Americans were crossing the border to buy gasoline in Mexico. After these...

Institutions that are intended to foster professionalism and civic responsibility have been taken over in order to promote progressive ideology. Membership in institutions such as the American Bar Association has declined to only about 14% of practicing attorneys allowing a small minority to realign an esteemed 140 year old institution into a platform for progressivism. And the American Medical As...

The left is always coming up with new words or redefining the meaning of old words to make their progressive ideas more palatable to the American public. Freidrich Hayek called them weasel words. Words designed to deceive, not inform. One example of weasel words that Professor Hayek highlighted in his book, The Fatal Conceit, are the words "social justice," which are intended to sound morally supe...

Extremists on the left and right are fighting a culture war to transform America into something unrecognizable. And while they are fighting each other, they demand ideological purity or cult-like loyalty among their supporters, leaving regular Americans stranded and lost. We have seen this before, in the 1930s. And it did not turn our well. In this podcast, the Edifice of Trust host, Victor Bolles...

Financial markets are nearing capitulation, interest rates are rising, inflation is roaring, and recession is looming. The American people, along with investors, are hunkering down for a really rough patch. Everybody is adjusting their lives to cope with these new circumstances. Everybody, that is, but the Biden Administration. They insist that their progressive agenda would be on track except for...

In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith used the example of a simple pin factory to explain the benefits of the division of labor. He went on to show how this division of labor created a supply chain of economic actors making decisions in their own self-interest that supply all the economic necessities of the country. In America, progressive leftists are pushing social justice goals on US companies t...

An open letter to Senator John Cornyn regarding his efforts to build a bi-partisan consensus on gun reform amid rising concern that current gun laws provide inadequate protection to the American people and their children.

Our Politicians Are Driving Us Crazy. I do not mean this figuratively. I mean this literally. They are driving people crazy and making America a hellish place in which to live. In this podcast, the Edifice of Trust host, Victor Bolles looks at what politicians are doing that are literally making people go crazy.

Tragedy follows upon tragedy and the cause is linked to hate speech, disinformation or fake news. It is a natural instinct to want to suppress these sick ideas and hateful concepts. But these evils thrive in the darkness. Their weakness is exposure to light. Free speech carries a high price, but the lack of free speech has an unbearable cost. In this podcast, the Edifice of trust host, Victor Boll...

I am quite certain that as we get closer to the November off-year elections abortion, inflation and the war in Europe will dominate the campaign rhetoric and the issue of freedom of speech will be pushed to the sidelines (again). But as Elon Musk recently tweeted, "Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy." We are already being inundated with hackers, trolls, bots, foreign actors, fake...

A stolen draft Supreme court opinion that might overturn Roe v. Wade has set off a firestorm of tweets, op-eds and protests across the country. The Republicans and Democrats are facing off for a Battle of the Century. However, the American public has held a very durable consensus for many years that would allow abortion in the first trimester with increasing restrictions, thereafter. The political...

President Biden's poll numbers are in the tank and a lot of people are blaming record high inflation for the poor numbers. But inflation pressures began building long before he became president, only awaiting a trigger to set them off. We got multiple triggers with the Covid pandemic, Putin's invasion of Ukraine and supply chain problems. But instead of changing course to address inflationary pres...

What if the differences between central planning, social justice loving progressives and free market, liberty loving conservatives were not ideological but biological? There is mounting evidence that there may be such a link, which means that rational discussion has little chance of changing the minds of those in these two camps. In this podcast, the Edifice of Trust host, Victor Bolles, investiga...

President Biden has just released his proposed budget for 2023, projecting trillion dollar deficits and mounting public debt far into the future. The rapidly expanding welfare schemes are a far cry from the sentiments President John F. Kennedy expressed in his inaugural address. And to pay for even more entitlements of dubious value, President Biden is proposing a wealth tax on greedy billionaires...

Eight days after Hitler's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop, signed the infamous pact that bears his name along with his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, Germany invaded Poland, starting World War Two. Twenty days after Russian President Vladimir Putin issued, along with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, a Joint Statement declaring a new era of international relations,...

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine isn't going as planned. The reason may lie in the fact the invasion was planned and implemented vertically, from the mind of a single person, Vladimir Putin. The defense of the nation, although inspired by the leadership of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is being fought by everyone from grandmothers giving sunflower seeds to Russian troops (so flowers...