In this modern scientific age, we no longer believe in magic words that can transform a prince into a frog, or vice versa. But there are still magic words that can cause incredible transformations. For example, there are words that can transform the most big-spending...
The 90th birthday of Ronald Reagan may be an appropriate time to reassess the role of his presidency in the history of the 20th century. Some presidents simply happen to be in office when historic events occur, but other presidents make history themselves -- like...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Merit is its own reward, but it's also nice to get a pay raise. The first big Washington scandal of the 20th century was the Teapot Dome scandal of 1921, which led three members of the Harding administration to commit suicide....
Mathematicians use the term "rational numbers" for numbers that can form a ratio. By this definition, there is a lot of irratioUality in California, where many people seem incapable of forming a ratio or proportion between different things. California's electricity...
W.E.B. DUBOIS once said that the problem of the 20th century world was going to be the problem of the color line. Like many ringing predictions, it missed the mark by a wide margin. The biggest atrocity of [last] century against any people -- the Holocaust -- involved...
One of the reasons for the confusion surrounding so many economic issues -- such as the current electricity crisis in California -- is an underlying confusion about what economics itself is all about. To many people, economics is about money. But economies and...
Californians are not only seeing rolling blackouts, they are seeing chickens coming home to roost. They are learning the most elementary facts the hard way. Fact number one: You cannot go on obstructing the building of electric power generating plants for years on end...
With so much controversy swirling around the nomination of former Senator John Ashcroft to be attorney general, we need to look beyond the rhetoric and the spin to the actual history of Ashcroft -- and of his critics. When John Ashcroft was in the Senate, he voted to...
It is perhaps fitting that Bill Clinton has been spending the last days of his presidency out on the road, in the manner of old washed-up entertainers who make endless "farewell" appearances, trying to cling to the fading limelight as long as possible. He is going out...
The biggest question about anti-trust law is whether there really is any such thing. There are anti-trust theories and anti-trust rhetoric, as well as judicial pronouncements on anti-trust. But there is very little that could be called law in the full sense of rules...
As an economist, whenever I hear the word "shortage" I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually "price control." So it was no great surprise to discover, after the electric power shortage in California made headlines, that there were price controls...
A woman I know was born with three kidneys--and in poverty. Meanwhile, there was undoubtedly some wealthy person who was desperate for a kidney. Both could obviously have been made much better off by the transfer of one kidney at a suitably high price. However, such a...
YOU MAY NEVER HAVE HEARD of the University of Phoenix, but it has more students than Harvard, Yale or Notre Dame ---- combined. There is a reason you probably have not heard of the University of Phoenix. It represents a new development in higher education and one that...
No sooner do we elect a new president than we start telling him what to do. People in the media are full of advice, perhaps more so this year than usual. Because of the closeness of both the presidential and congressional elections, much media advice seems to be that...
After Bill Clinton, Al Gore and various Congressional Democrats had pointed the finger of suspicion at Big Oil as the cause of astronomical gasoline prices in the Midwest, the Washington Times obtained a copy of a memorandum from within the Clinton administration...
The passing of a once-great business is often a time for nostalgia and regret, so the announced closing down of Montgomery Ward has provoked much media comment along these lines. But both the rise and the fall of Montgomery Ward illustrates the dynamic adjustments of...
The privations and sufferings of the poor have long been central themes in the vision of the political left. That is what attracted many of us to the left in our youth. But the actual consequences of the agenda of the left on the poor -- and on others -- is what...
Even those of us who have been complaining for years about the bias and shallowness of the media should admit that we never expected the media to be quite so grossly biased or so unbelievably shallow as they have been about the outcome of the recent presidential...
Now that the election is over, can we talk sense? "Campaign finance reform" is a great political issue for an election year, but it makes no sense otherwise. What is a campaign supposed to do -- and how will campaign finance reform affect how well it does it? A...
Elections are supposed to be decided by voters on election day, not by judges later on. But once state and local courts inject themselves into post-election controversies, without any legal justification, the only institution that can get rid of their interference is...
If the Supreme Court of the United States had not stepped in to stop the endless re-re-recounts in Florida, George W. Bush might have won a presidential election more times than Franklin D. Roosevelt -- and all in one year. What has been even worse than all the legal...
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