DWB: Driving While Black. That’s an expression some blacks use to argue that police unfairly single them out. Let’s try a new one: TWA — Teaching While Asian. Imagine you’re fifth-grade teacher Marylin Fong, an Asian, who last week got dinged with a million-dollar civil rights lawsuit. Fong teaches fifth grade at James Monroe School [...]
Confuse Robber Barons with Capitalists No More
Joseph Kellard (1998.04.08 ) Politics
A Book Review of Robert W. Folsom, Jr.’s Empire Builders During the early nineteenth century, buying land in Michigan, a cold, remote, swampy area, was widely regarded as a bad investment. James Monroe once told Thomas Jefferson that Michigan “will never contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to entitle them to membership in the confederacy.” [...]
Protection of Individual Rights is Good Government
Glenn Woiceshyn (1998.04.05 ) Politics
Good government? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Many today believe so. Who can blame them? Our political system has increasingly become a chaotic jungle driven by competing pressure groups (“special interests”) seeking special “favours” and handouts from government. Politicians are generally distrusted and despised for their broken promises, flip-flops on issues, empty rhetoric and pork-barreling. Bad [...]
Waiting for Fidel
Scott Holleran (1998.03.21 ) Politics
BOOK REVIEW: WAITING FOR FIDEL By Christopher Hunt (Houghton Mifflin, $13) The Pope’s visit to Cuba and Fidel Castro’s subsequent release of political prisoners this week are a reminder that the Communist dictator still has a grip on Cuba’s fate. Christopher Hunt’s Waiting for Fidel demonstrates that his grip is strangling its people, though it [...]
The Clinton Commission: One Does Not Stop Racism By Practicing It
Joseph Kellard (1998.03.15 ) Politics
March 15, 1998 To Ms. Winston, As an individualist, I am disturbed by racism; therefore I oppose One America in the 21st Century, President Clinton’s initiative on race. I have followed the events of this commission closely and contend that it must ultimately fail in its alleged goal to improve “the quality of American race [...]
Scientists Warn That Actions Based On Unverified Climate Models Is Premature
Fred Singer (1998.03.09 ) Environment
As delegations from more than 150 countries were busy lobbying in Kyoto two months back in December, to discuss international controls on carbon dioxide emissions to mitigate a putative future global warming, climate scientists from Europe and North America warned that there was still no scientific consensus on global warming and that action based solely [...]
Abolish The IMF
Richard M Salsman (1998.03.08 ) Politics
In the past year, foreign nations taking IMF advice on currency, tax and banking policies have suffered over $200 billion in loan losses and capital flight. The IMF has been pouring the funds of Western taxpayers into these regimes as fast as local wealth has been destroyed. The Republican Congress, which was critical of the [...]
The Anti-Tobacco Crusade: “Addiction” vs. Personal Responsibility
Joseph Kellard (1998.03.08 ) Politics
When the cigarette manufacturer Liggett Group Inc. revealed that its people lied when they’d maintained that their advertisements didn’t “target” teenagers, and that for decades they didn’t known smoking was “dangerous,” the anti-tobacco crusaders interpreted these admissions as confirmation of what they’d long suspected: all tobacco companies lie, and not just about the intent of [...]
Lessons from the Great Ice Storm: Individualism vs Collectivism
Glenn Woiceshyn (1998.03.07 ) Politics
The Great Ice Storm of 1998 caught Canadians in Quebec and neighboring provinces totally off guard. Montreal, the hardest hit, looked as if it were bombed by ice. Millions suffered days to weeks of sub-freezing temperatures without electricity and heating. At least 25 people are dead, and the damage toll of this freak storm is [...]
Global Treaty Banning Landmines is a Moral Obscenity
Glenn Woiceshyn (1998.03.06 ) Politics
Contrary to media reports, the UN-sponsored “global” treaty banning land mines signed in December of 1997 by more than 100 nations, excluding the US, Russia and China, is not about preventing innocent people from being maimed or killed by the existing 60-120 million land mines buried in 71 countries. This ban ominously and shamefully directs [...]
Microsoft is Successful Because It is Competitive
Joseph Kellard (1998.03.05 ) Politics
Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder and Chairman, had to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week because his competitors, the government, and his other foes have manipulatively vilified him. They unjustly characterize Microsoft’s dominance in computing as that which prevents others from competing against it on a “level playing field” or at all; thus it [...]
The Lewinsky Sex Allegations Against Clinton are Totally Believable
Glenn Woiceshyn (1998.03.01 ) Politics
Did U.S. President Bill Clinton have a sexual relationship with a 21-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky? Did he instruct her to lie about it under oath? That’s what the world is anxious to know. What made these allegations grab so much public attention, in the U.S. and abroad, is that they are considered believable [...]
The American Health Care System’s Deadly Virus: Socialist Controls
Joseph Kellard (1998.02.19 ) Healthcare
America’s health care system ailments, such as skyrocketing costs and restrictions on the freedom to choose a doctor, are prevalently ascribed to our mixed economy’s capitalist aspects, while their alleged remedies lie in the economy’s other aspect: statist, socialist controls. In reality, such controls cause, increase and intensify these ailments. Thanks to freedom and capitalism, [...]
Patience with Environmentalist Scare Tactics Wearing Thin
Candice Crandall (1998.02.12 ) Environment
The United States no doubt holds the prize for environmental violence, courtesy of Al Gore fan and alleged Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. But for sheer buffoonery, it’s hard to beat the eco-activists in Great Britain. In spring 1997, to cite just one example, activists opposing a second runway at Manchester Airport crisscrossed the construction area with [...]
1997 Global Temperature Review
Candice Crandall (1998.02.12 ) Politics
For the 3 million Canadians without electricity after last week’s ice storm, Israelis shoveling the foot of snow that fell on Jerusalem on Monday, and anyone else who may have been out of the loop, Tom Karl, chief climatologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), claimed last Thursday that 1997 was the warmest [...]
Individual Rights: Key To Restoring National Unity in Canada
Glenn Woiceshyn (1998.02.07 ) Politics
‘National unity crisis’ makes many Canadians immediately think of the looming threat of Quebec separation. But the crisis is broader. Many non-Quebeckers are fed up with the way the federal government is running the country. Quebec separatism is one manifestation, albeit the most serious and urgent one, of widespread national disunity. The easiest way to [...]