Both political parties seem determined that the federal government should create a "stimulus package" of things designed to cushion a downturn in the economy. That alone should be enough to make us remember that "the devil is always in the details," because things...
Historian Joseph J. Ellis has recently published a piece in the Los Angeles Times ('The better angels' side with Obama, 19 January 2008) which seeks to defend Democratic candidate Barack Obama (Senator from Illinois) from critics of his message to independents and...
Last December, President Bush signed an energy bill that will ban the sale of Edison's incandescent bulb, starting with the 100-watt bulb in 2012 and ending with the 40-watt bulb by 2014. You say, "Hey, Williams, what's wrong with saving energy, reducing our carbon...
It was front-page news on the January 14th issue of the San Francisco Chronicle that blacks by the tens of thousands have left the San Francisco Bay area since the 1990 census. Since my book Applied Economics analyzed this situation a few years ago, it was nice to see...
A peculiar spectacle in Hollywood and New York, and everywhere else TV shows and motion pictures are being made, is before us. The writers are on strike. At stake? Contracts with TV and motion picture producers over royalties from DVD and other "new" media, which has...
Was the Civil War was unnecessary and Lincoln “did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic.”?
This 40th anniversary of the turbulent year 1968 is already starting to spawn nostalgic accounts of that year. We can look for more during this year in articles, books, and TV specials, featuring aging 1960s radicals seeking to relive their youth.
If you were sick and needed a kidney transplant, you would soon find out that there is a waiting line--and that there are 70,000 people ahead of you, 4,000 of whom will die within a year. If you couldn't find a willing and compatible donor among your friends and...
It was not that long ago that the big political question was how Rudolph Giuliani would do against Hillary Clinton in the November election. The Iowa caucus votes have made that question sound like ancient history, if not science fiction. The results of the Iowa...
The Lincoln Review, a Washington-based black think tank, published an article titled "What Does the Future Hold for Historically Black Colleges?" in its September/October 2007 edition. It recalled the experiences of Bill Maxwell, a St. Petersburg Times columnist and...
Among the interesting people encountered by my wife and me, during some recent vacation travel, were a small group of adolescent boys from a Navajo reservation. They were being led on a bicycle tour by a couple of white men, one of whom was apparently their teacher on...
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has, we're told, upended Washington's foreign policy. "Our foreign policy has relied on her presence as a stabilizing force. . . . Without her, we will have to regroup," explained Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) in the Washington Post....
If you're like I am, you've heard scores of media reports about the 2006 Duke University rape case, in which three white lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black stripper at a wild party at the home of one of the team members. These guys, convicted by...
Shoeless Joe Jackson was the only man to bat .382 in his last season in the major leagues. After that he was banned for life for his role in the "black sox scandal," the deliberate throwing of the 1919 World Series. It was to Jackson that a youngster was supposed to...
Last May, firefighters at a Baltimore, Md., fire station came under scrutiny for displaying a deer with an afro wig, gold tooth, gold chain and a cigarette hanging from its mouth. Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, went ballistic,...
People for whom indignation is a way of life -- and there seem to be an increasing number of such people -- repeatedly have outbursts of outrage whenever the police fire a lot of shots at some criminal. People who have never fired a gun in their lives, and have never...
One of the great scandals of our age is the fact that America spends more on food than any other nation. Many political leaders are now calling for urgent reform to bring spending on food under control. Even worse, while the result of this uncontrolled spending...
Listening to people like Lou Dobbs, John Edwards and Mike Huckabee lamenting the plight of America's middle class and poor, you'd have to conclude that things are going to hell in a handbasket. According to them, there's wage stagnation, while the rich are getting...
When talking about health insurance, "mandatory" is an increasingly popular term among politicians of both major parties, including presidential candidates. What do they really mean by it? Put simply, being uninsured would no longer be a misfortune or a choice, but a...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Since electricity is generated mostly by burning coal, has anyone calculated how much pollution is created by electric cars, even though none of that pollution comes out of their tailpipes? You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you...
An increasingly popular argument in favor of socialized medicine goes like this: "If universal health care works for the elderly under Medicare, then why not for the rest of us?" If that's true, then the Democratic nominee for President should definitely work this one...
Few reports about the Islamist threat are more alarming than the situation right now in Pakistan--a nuclear-armed country that Washington hails as a "major non-NATO ally." Having supported Musharraf's regime, Washington is now scrambling--pressing Musharraf to share...
Stanford, Yale, and Princeton are all in the process of considering whether to increase the number of students they admit. Meanwhile, Professor Richard Vedder of Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, says...
Some people complain about bitter partisan politics. I welcome it. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena the greater the conflict. Let's look at it by way of a few examples: I like the Lexus LS 460. I also like Dell computers. Many other...
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