The horrific suicide bombing in December of a U.S. mess tent near Mosul and the assassination on Jan. 10 of the deputy chief of Baghdad police–the second Iraqi official murdered in five days–are further indications that the war in Iraq is worsening. Things...
POLITICS
End Social Security
Throughout the nation, a fierce debate rages over Social Security. One side, led by President Bush, says the system is in crisis and must be saved via “partial privatization.” The other side says the system is basically sound and can be saved with a little...
AFCM Interviews HSA Bank President Kirk Hoewisch
The year was 1901 and someone in Howards Grove, Wisconsin, observed that the first automobile to appear in town was driven by a man from nearby Sheboygan. A century later, the town is making its mark on another new vehicle–which has the potential to...
Rational Disagreement
My assistant sorts the incoming mail into various categories, such as “critical mail,” “fan mail,” etc. But the so-called critical mail is seldom critical. It may be bombastic or vituperative or full of pop psychology, but it seldom presents a...
“Transition Costs” of Partially Privatizing Social Security
There’s a lot of discussion in the media about the “transition costs” of partially privatizing Social Security. These “transition costs” are estimated to be $1 trillion to $2 trillion. The specter of this amount of expenditure...
The Race Card — 2005
The Democratic Party continues to play the race card for political gain. The Reverend Jesse Jackson steamed into Ohio, the so-called battleground state that went for Bush, claiming that Ohioans’ votes failed to count. “The playing field is uneven,”...
New Year For Choosing a Health Plan
For many workers, the new year initiates a process called open enrollment–when many employees designate a health plan through their employer–that’s as comprehensible as the tax code. During the annual cattle call, employees are pummeled with...
Greedy or Ignorant
“The Dog and His Bone” is one of Aesop’s many instructive fables. It’s about a dog carrying a bone in his mouth. As he was crossing a footbridge over a stream and happened to glance into the water, he saw his own reflection. Thinking it was...
Soccer Moms Could Teach Indian Ocean Nations Something About Communication
It has been said that lack of communication lies at the bottom of most human problems. This is certainly true of what will likely become [one of] the largest human tragedies in recorded history, the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. The U.S. Geological Survey and its 120...
U.S. Government Should Not Help Tsunami Victims (Updated)
As the death toll mounts in the areas hit by Sunday’s tsunami in southern Asia, private organizations and individuals are scrambling to send out money and goods to help the victims. Such help may be entirely proper, especially considering that most of those...
Susan Sontag: Not So Judicious
Writer Susan Sontag, one of America ‘s most “celebrated” intellectuals, died a few days after Christmas of leukemia. She was 71. “In my view,” she once explained, “the only intelligence worth defending is critical, dialectical,...
America The Stingy
“It is beyond me . . . why are we so stingy, really,” said U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, after the tsunami in southern Asia. ” . . . Christmastime should remind many Western countries at least, [of] how rich we...
A Wave of Criticism
The catastrophic tsunami wave that has devastated so much of southern Asia has even killed more than a hundred people on the east coast of Africa, more than 4,000 miles away. Two questions: First, what country has done the most to help the victims of this natural...
A Half-Century-Old Attack on Ayn Rand Reminds Us of the Dark Side of Conservatism
TIA Daily frequently links to articles posted at National Review Online, the online companion to National Review, the prominent conservative magazine. I link to it because NRO publishes works by many good authors with important things to say (e.g., Victor Davis Hanson...
Faith and Force: America’s War on Terrorism is Undercut by the Bush Administrations’s Injection of Religion into Politics
America’s war on terrorism is being undercut–by the administration’s efforts to inject religion into politics. Our enemy in that war is the ideology of Islamic totalitarianism–an ideology which holds that one’s life is to be lived...
Get Ready for Another Strong Year
So what’s not to love about 2004? I admit that it wasn’t easy going, but at this writing it looks like the S&P 500 is going to close out the year at better than three-year highs, with something like an 11% total return. The Russell 2000 Index of...
Property Rites: Part 2
When I was house-hunting, one of the things that struck me about the house that I eventually settled on was the fact that there were no curtains or shades on the bathroom window in the back. The reason was that there was no one living on the steep hillside in back,...
Options, Schmoptions
Well, it finally happened. The Financial Accounting Standards Board — the group that determines so-called “generally accepted accounting principles” for financial reporting — has ruled that companies must report the costs of stock options on...
Property Rites
Two centuries ago, British Prime Minister William Pitt said that the poorest man in the country was so secure in his little cottage that the King of England and his men “dare not cross the threshold” without his permission. That is what property rights are...
Free Lunch “Safety”: Part II
The government will allow you to risk your life for the sake of recreation by sky-diving, mountain climbing or any number of other dangerous activities. But it will not allow you to risk your life for the sake of avoiding arthritis pain by taking Vioxx. There is no...
Free Lunch “Safety”
In the midst of all the alarms being sounded about the health risks from taking Vioxx and Celebrex, there is a story about National Football League players using less padding than in the past. What is the connection? The NFL players know that padding gives some...
The Joseph Goebbels Award
Events of this past year have shown the need for a special award in journalism for those who think that the purpose of reporting news is to cause the public to adopt the political views of those who do the reporting. Therefore this column announces the first annual...
Children Having Children: A “Badge of Honor”?
A few years ago, I visited a friend living in Cleveland ‘s inner city. As we sat on my friend’s porch, not one, but two teenage girls — visibly pregnant — walked by. My friend cheerfully called out their names. They smiled and waved back as...
A Huge Election in Iraq
The election coming up in Iraq may turn out, in the long view of history, to be even more important than our own recent election. Both elections represent a country at a crossroads, with a choice of very different paths to take — for many years to come —...
“Academic Freedom” vs. Accountability
In The New York Sun’s editorial of December 10, 2004, you correctly note that universities like Columbia will take no action against professors whose outrageous positions are deemed a matter of “scholarly belief” [“The Bollinger...
National Sales Tax?
Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) has authored H.R. 25 “To promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the...
Green Bigots International
First they destroyed the gasoline station, so that you have to drive miles out of your way to get gas. Then they destroyed a parking lot. Now they want to destroy a dam and a reservoir that supplies more than 2 million people with water. No, these are not al-Qaeda...
The Scott Peterson Murder Trial: Law or Soap Opera?
The Scott Peterson murder trial is more than a single criminal case. It is a painful reflection on the media, on the law, and on where our society has gone. The 24/7 coverage of this case, which seems to have been going on forever, has been inescapable for anyone who...
Letters to the Editor: December 2004
December 15, 2004 The Real World of Child Placement Dear Editor, Thomas Sowell argues the case against the return (or reunification) of abused/neglected children to their parents (see The “Family Re-Unfication” Gamble: Angelo Marinda All Over Again?). As a...
Open and Accountable
On Capitol Hill next month it’ll be out with the old and in with the new, as the 109th Congress takes the oath of office. Of course, neither house will look much different. More than 95 percent of incumbents who ran this year were re-elected. Still, the...
Kofi Annan and the United Nations
Kofi Annan is in deep trouble. The aura of invincibility that has surrounded Annan in his six-year tenure as United Nations secretary general has been shattered, and it is increasingly likely that he will go in the next six to 12 months. The man who undeservedly won...
Ownership Has Its Privileges
If you’re reading this column, you’re probably an investor in the stock market. That makes you a member of the approximately 60% of American households that own stocks, either directly or indirectly. That also makes you part of what President Bush likes to...
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