Amtrak: The Perpetual Failure Machine

Today I watched a bizarre spectacle. Attending a hearing of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, I bore witness as, one-by-one, five United States senators of both political parties made the case for subsidizing perpetual failure. I saw them...

Venezuela: A New Junket for Jimmy Carter

Former President Carter, who often found good things to say about some of the world’s worst dictators, may not be the best person to sniff out the truth. His own willingness to excuse leftist governments that try to guarantee citizens economic privileges in place of political rights may also blind him to the wreckage that populism has left in this oil-rich but poverty-stricken nation.

Making Gray Davis Accountable

California’s Governor Gray Davis is in hot water over his acceptance of $25,000 from Oracle Corporation following the state’s no-bid $95 million dollar e-government deal with the company. And while the governor probably wishes he had never heard of...

How Government Bureaucrats Helped Sink WorldCom

WorldCom has rallied as much as 53% in the two weeks since it was ignominiously ejected from the S&P 500 Index on May 14. Low-priced securities of distressed companies are often subject to such large moves in percentage terms. But WorldCom’s rally following...

The Post-Colonialist Famine

Today, more than a million people in Zimbabwe are starving, and up to three million face the imminent prospect of starvation. This has not yet excited much attention in the West. Zimbabwe, after all, is far away from the centers of American interest; all of our top...

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