Q: You condemn Gore Vidal for claiming that Timothy McVeigh has a sense of justice. You’re wrong. However unfortunate his target due to his ignorance of the presence of the day care center, remember that the Department of Justice and the FBI’s HRT did know...
POLITICS
The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men. – AYN RAND
Fuel Cells: The Future of Energy?
Part 2 of 2 By Tom Koppel Ph.D. and Jay Reynolds There are six major types of fuel cells with potential for a variety of commercial applications. The first to be fired into space was the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell, which was developed by GE and performed...
The Poverty Pimp’s Poem
MY FELLOW-ECONOMIST WALTER WILLIAMS has for years kept track of how much money it would take to lift every American man, woman and child in poverty above the official poverty level. That sum has consistently been some fraction of the money actually spent in...
Self Confidence for Children
Q : My wife and I want to teach our four-year-old son to have self-confidence. How can we teach him? A: This is too vast a subject to appropriately answer in a short column. I can, however, give you some general principles. Here they are: Make sure you are confident...
Small Business Owners Speak Out
A new national survey, sponsored by the National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU) and co-sponsored by the Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC), National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, reveals considerable support among small...
SAT Spat Overlooks Real Admissions Barrier
In proposing to drop the SAT I from the University of California’s admissions process, UC President Richard Atkinson implied it is the SAT that blocks most black and Hispanic students from entering the UC system. But even if the SAT I were dropped tomorrow, the...
Fuel Cells: The Future of Energy?
In response to the critical need for a cleaner energy technology, invention kicked into high gear. Fuel cells generate energy with little or no harmful emissions. Drastic cost reductions have made them contenders to deliver stationary and portable energy for a...
California’s Crisis Means ANWR Should Be Opened
The Golden State is losing some of its luster, as energy prices soar, shortages become more acute, rolling blackouts disrupt lives and businesses, and utility companies confront bankruptcy. Meanwhile, many California residents cheered ex-President Bill Clinton’s...
Shelve the Rebates and Bring on the Tax Cuts
In an effort to jumpstart our flagging economy, the Federal Reserve has just lowered interest rates yet again. Good idea. But now some in Congress think they can go the Fed one better and stimulate the economy by delivering the $100 billion they’ve set aside for...
The False Promise of Renewable Energy
A cacophony of calumny has greeted suggestions that America begin drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Outer Continental Shelf, and other public lands, in search of oil and natural gas, to ease our spreading energy crisis and help rein in...
California: Paradise Lost
Like that of many Third World countries, California’s electrical grid can now fail with little notice. Rolling blackouts leave households in the dark, university classes canceled, and families without essential appliances. The most elemental responsibility of a...
News Flash to Broadband Service Providers: Internet Service is a Utility, Not a Game of Magic 8 Ball
I am a subscriber to the Angry Charter Users list server. This list server is intended for users in a different geographical area than my own, but I follow the postings because it helps me understand the extent to which my service problems are local, regional, or...
Scholars Overturn Case for Thomas Jefferson’s Relationship with Slave Sally Hemings
In April 2001, a “blue ribbon” commission of highly accomplished and nationally recognized scholars reported its findings after a year-long investigation of the evidence for a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his house slave, Sally Hemings....
Power at Any Price
Last month, in a response to President Bush’s energy plan, Governor Gray Davis declared that the state of California is “in war with energy companies.” By attacking the producers of energy, he has demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the...
Regulating the Regulators
President Bush has ordered all federal agencies, before they issue any kind of regulations, to consider their impact on energy supplies, and to expedite permits so that energy projects don’t get “snarled in bureaucratic tangles as local governments or...
‘Price Gouging’ is not the Reason for Rising Energy Prices
To many critics of President Bush’s energy plan, the cause of today’s energy problems, particularly rising gasoline prices, is something called “price gouging.” And what is that? “We know that big oil has played a role in the price spikes...
The American Dream: Why Environmentalists Attack the SUV
The SUV is under attack. Greens say they use too much gas, threaten air quality and contribute pell-mell to the desecration of the environment. So why would anyone build these horrible engines of death? They build them because SUVs have advantages in safety, cargo...
Nations United Against Rights
On Friday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with congressional leaders to assuage their anger at America’s ejection from the UN’s Human Rights Commission. The meeting seems to have been a success; it looks as if Republicans in Congress will give up their...
Orchestrating Energy Disaster
One needn’t be a rocket scientist to create California’s energy problems. According to the California Energy Commission, from 1996 to 1999 electricity demand, stimulated by a booming economy, grew by 12 percent while supply grew by less than 2 percent....
Basic Economics
Dr. Thomas Sowell has just released his latest treasure — it’s title is “Basic Economics.” Reading through the book reminded me of a 30-plus-year-old conversation I had with Professor Armen Alchian, one of my tenacious mentors during my...
Anti-Intellectualism Runs Rampant in U.S. Education
Diane Ravitch research professor at New York University and holds the Brown Chair in Education Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and is author of the book Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms . Clowes: What prompted you to write Left...
The Executor’s Song: Part 6, Closing the Estate and Other “Stuff”
Author’s Note: This is the sixth and final part of a series of personal finance columns on the subject of being the executor of an estate. These columns are based on my own personal experiences in this regard. Individuals should consult a professional advisor...
Fire in the “Frankenforest”
A jihad against some of America’s best and brightest researchers continues unabated. Arsonists struck again in the Pacific Northwest this week, gutting a University of Washington horticultural lab in Seattle and burning down property at a poplar tree nursery in...
Moody Markets, or Manipulated Markets?
One of the things we often hear about the stock market is that it is an anticipatory animal, meaning that bear markets begin when the economy is good but people fear that things will get worse in the future, and that conversely, bull markets begin when the economy is...
The California Energy Crisis: Once Again Capitalism Takes The Fall For Statism
Politicians and pundits claim that the free market has had its chance and failed, calling for a government takeover of the electric utilities and power plants as the solution. The tragic irony is that California’s energy nightmare would have been absolutely...
Jim Jeffords’ Defection and the High Cost of Politics
In the years ahead, more violent criminals may be walking the street, some taking the lives of law-abiding citizens, because someone in the White House couldn’t keep his big mouth shut about how they were going to retaliate against Republican Senator Jim...
Patriotism and Pearl Harbor
The hallowed waters that surround the sunken U.S.S. Arizona murmur gently like eternal witnesses to history. There lie 1,102 American crewmen who lost their lives during the Dec. 7, 1941, air raid on Pearl Harbor. Above the ship, like a floating tombstone, rests a...
America’s Descent Into Servitude II
The Texas Legislature is currently considering a bill that will mandate “volunteer” work for all college and university students in the state. The result of this bill will be to introduce “volunteerism” as a component of college education. The...
W. Wimps Out on Guns
The “Million” Mom March fell about 999,800 bodies short this year. Rosie O’Donnell, a leading anti-gun loudmouth who emceed last year’s march and later sought armed security guards for her own children, was a no-show at the pathetically...
Senator Jim Jeffords and the Power of the Turncoats
Suddenly we find ourselves back in the nightmare world of the pregnant chad. And everything was going so well, too. Whatever you may think of the policies of George W. Bush’s new administration, at least it was clanking along pretty well and the political...
Urgent Virus Threat – NOT!
For the third time in two days, I’ve received an e-mail from some well intentioned idiot warning me of an extremely destructive computer virus for which there is no cure. In each case, it took me about a minute to go to the Symantec web site and learn that the...
The Right to Inhale
On May 14th, the US Supreme Court reached a verdict on the case of U.S. v. Oakland Cannabis Cooperative. By unanimous decision the Court ruled that manufacturers and distributors of marijuana cannot claim the medical needs of their customers as defense against federal...
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