Should municipalities be allowed to build and operate broadband networks in competition with private companies? States around the country are considering laws making it difficult for cities to do so. Informed, honest debate over municipal broadband is rare. Advocates...
POLITICS
Are CEOs Overpaid?
In the wake of the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals, the purveyors of envy have found another opportunity to preach about what they consider the evils of high CEO salaries, retirements and bonuses. After all, according to them, evil must be afoot when a corporate...
President Bush’s Prescription Drug Benefit Program
The prescription drug benefit is a monster that should be killed before it is hatched.
Iraqis Should Look To American Founding Fathers When Writing Their Constitution
On December 15, 1791, 213 years ago, the American Bill of Rights was ratified. Thus ended a long and difficult process by which the American people first liberated themselves from tyranny and then established the first government in history founded on individual...
“60 Minutes” Wacky Piece on Black/White Adoptions
“60 Minutes” strikes again. Earlier this month, the program broadcast a segment on international, “transracial” (black/white) adoptions involving American-born babies. It turns out, according to “60 Minutes,” a growing number of...
Healthcare To Die For in Britain?
In “Die in Britain , survive in U.S. ,” the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine, James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain’ s universal healthcare system. Among women with breast cancer, for example,...
Social Security Deceit
President Bush’s call to allow Americans to take a portion of the money they pay as Social Security taxes to set up private retirement accounts has to be a good idea. Why? The more of what a person earns that’s in his pocket and under his control, the...
Random Thoughts February 2005
Random thoughts on the passing scene: How many other species’ members kill each other to the same extent as human beings? How can you be an “insurgent” in someone else’s country? Yet despite the fact that the wave of terrorism in Iraq is led by...
Who’s Really to Blame for High Gasoline Prices?
Gas prices are on the rise again. While no one has begun to complain yet (at least not too loudly), gas prices are still higher than they need to be. Many think oil companies are to blame for high gas prices. In fact, in May 2004 a poll showed that 77% of Californians...
Social Security Reform: The Capitalism Alternative
The end of Social Security and its diversion of funds into government consumption—the return to private, individual saving and provision for the future—will mean a great increase in saving and the accumulation of capital, because the savings of individuals will be invested, not squandered.
Drug Safety vs. the FDA
As studies continue to be released that explore the cardiovascular risks of Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, and other pharmaceuticals, the FDA has come under widespread criticism for failing to protect the public from “unsafe” drugs. The lesson commonly drawn...
Tainted Media
The recent resignation of CNN’s news director, Eason Jordan, after his outrageous remarks about our military at an international forum were reported on the Internet, is only the latest in a series of media scandals, of which Dan Rather’s forged documents...
Bush’s Budget: The Welfare State Lives
Get ready for the interest groups and beneficiaries to squeal, scream, cry and ultimately demean. The issue? Why, President George W. Bush’s “lean” 2006 budget. Americans want their welfare state. The president’s budget, excluding defense,...
Thwarting America’s Energy Needs
Editor’s Note: This editorial was originally attributed to Tom DeWeese. The actual author is Alan Caruba. Well of course you want the entire shoreline of the East and West Coast to be filled with windmills producing insignificant amounts of energy. Nothing...
Dishwasher Economics
With TV cameras in tow, Channel 11 stopped at our restaurant last Tuesday to ask the afternoon kitchen crew how it felt about the new $52 occupation tax. Not surprisingly, no one liked it. Also not surprisingly, not much of the half-hour of filming ended up on TV,...
Do Corporations Have Social Responsibility?
On Jan. 20, 2005, J.P. Morgan Chase announced that it had completed research to determine whether it had any links to slavery. Its website (www2.bankone.com/presents/home/) announced: “Today, we are reporting that this research found that between 1831 and 1865...
Letter to the Editors: February 2005
Who is against human values? Dear Dr. Lewis, I am doing a paper on the topic of “What does a soul or center, if we have one, have to do with human values? I am taking the position of having a soul to be important and as a need in today’s society. I will...
Professor Ward Churchill, The First Amendment and Free Speech on Campus
Because the comments he made shortly after September 11 have come to light, obscene comments in which he vilifies the World Trade Center victims as “little Eichmanns” and lauds their killers as “humanitarians,” Professor Ward Churchill has...
“Academic Freedom”
Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado seems to be enjoying his 15 minutes of infamy for his childish rants against people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Others of course resent his cheap shots at the dead, and some are trying to get him fired....
The Kind of “Freedom” Religion Brings
It appears increasingly likely that the U.S. backed government in Iraq will lose by a landslide, in favor of–surprise, surprise–Muslim fundamentalists. There will be official public statements from the U.S. government in coming days and weeks that the U.S....
Social Security: Saving Failure
It’s wrong to force people to pay into a coercive retirement system, run by the government at a poor return rate, when they could be making better and more profitable decisions on their own.
Filtering Out The Best
Having lost the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of the governorships and state legislatures, the Democrats are in an ugly and desperate mood, lashing out without regard to how their words and actions will affect this country’s position...
Not Yours To Give
Charity to man’s fellow man is praiseworthy, and Americans are the most generous people on Earth. According to a quote by American philanthropist Daniel Rose in “An Exceptional Nation,” an article in Philanthropy magazine (November/December 2004),...
Social Security: A Great Moral Failure
In his State of the Union Address, President Bush said that many options were “on the table” to deal with Social Security’s problems, and that he “will listen to anyone who has a good idea to offer.” But there is one idea he will not...
Bury the Chains: How The West Ended Slavery
To me the most staggering thing about the long history of slavery — which encompassed the entire world and every race in it — is that nowhere before the 18th century was there any serious question raised about whether slavery was right or wrong. In the...
Bedroom Economics in Germany
Now that unemployment in Germany has hit 11.4 percent, it was perhaps inevitable that some politicians there would come up with various quick-fix “solutions” to the huge drain of unemployment compensation on the government’s budget. A young waitress...
Rewarding the MVPs of the Business World
As millions of Americans watch the New England Patriots take on the Philadelphia Eagles, every minute of the game will be scrutinized, with slow-motion replays and a torrent of statistics. But, amid the cheers and groans, don’t expect to hear complaints from...
The New Right
The evidence of the past two decades is unimpeachable: the political right in America no longer stands for individual rights, limited government and capitalism. The “rightists” now advocate expanding the welfare state, increasing government intrusion into...
Anti-Intellectualism Among the Academic Elite
Dr. Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, has been excoriated for suggesting that innate differences between men and women might be one of the reasons fewer women succeed in the higher reaches of science and math. Adding insult to injury, he also...
Bush’s Betrayal of America: The Iraqi Elections
President Bush claims that holding elections on January 30 will bring Iraq a step closer to freedom, an outcome allegedly vital to America’s security. But the Iraqi election will bring neither freedom to Iraq nor security to America. Consider the beliefs of the...
Ayn Rand: Hero
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand is the author of the famous novels “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged.” Ayn Rand is, to me, more than merely the author of those great books. She is the one who gave me the...
Free Elections in Iraq: Victory and Defeat
The defeatists have been defeated. Remember all the political outcries that the Iraqi elections should be postponed because it would be impossible to hold elections with terrorism rampant throughout the country? Fortunately, most Iraqis do not see the American media,...
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