The State Tells Us Where We Can and Cannot Eat by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002 An Amish farm has come under attack from the paternalistic welfare state in Pennsylvania. According to a story in the New York Times, many Amish families are offering hungry tourists a home-cooked meal in return for a donation. This has put both the State Bureau of Food Safety as well as the ...
Bush’s Opium Boom by James Bovard April 1, 2002 Last year saw what is probably the single biggest one-year increase in opium production in world history. Since the Bush administration toppled the Taliban regime, opium production in Afghanistan has increased from 185 tons in 2001 to 3,700 tons in 2002 — an increase of twentyfold. Afghanistan has historically produced more than two-thirds of the world opium supply and ...
Why Congress Investigates Enron by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002 Members of Congress are certainly licking their chops over the Enron affair. Now why would that be? Could it be that they cannot resist investigating a company that apparently lied to the public, misrepresented its financial situation, kept lousy records, engaged in conflicts of interest, and acted covertly? Wait, that sounds ...
Bush Betrays Free Enterprise by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2002 There’s no longer any excuse for thinking that President Bush is a champion of free-enterprise capitalism. The week of March 4 sealed the question. He began the week by imposing tariffs up to 30 percent on imported steel. True, he didn’t give the industry and the steelworkers all that they wanted. He ...
Anthrax Antics from Uncle Sam by James Bovard April 1, 2002 SINCE THE TERRORIST ATTACKS last September 11, public opinion polls show a sharp decrease in cynicism about government and politicians. Yet, if one has been paying attention since then, it is difficult not to conclude that there is still, occasionally at least, a sliver of evidence that could foment cynical tendencies. In his state of the Union address on January ...
World War I and the Suppression of Dissent, Part 1 by Wendy McElroy April 1, 2002 Part 1 | Part 2 THE YEARS SURROUNDING Americas involvement in World War I were a watershed for how the United States treated foreigners within its borders during wartime. Immigrants had flooded the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, almost a third of ...
Book Review: Against the Dead Hand by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2002 Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism by Brink Lindsey (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002); 336 pages; $29.95. THE WORLD IS BECOMING increasingly smaller. Commodities, capital, and people move around the world with far greater ease than at any time since before the First World War. Market-oriented reforms have been the watchword for economic policy for ...
Real Campaign-Finance Reform by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2002 Congress has recently engaged in another flurry of activity over ampaign-finance reform. Yet, congressmen never ask a fundamental question: Why shouldn’t people be free to do whatever they want with their own money, including donating whatever amounts they want to political candidates? The usual answer that congressmen give is: “That type of system would make us crooked and corrupt ...
Thank Goodness for the Bill of Rights! by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2002 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s recent admission that a U.S. raid in Afghanistan mistakenly killed 16 innocent people suggests how grateful Americans should be that their ancestors insisted on the inclusion of a Bill of Rights as a condition of adopting the U.S. Constitution. While the U.S. raiders were convinced that the victims of the ...
Did the Framers Forget the Bill of Rights? by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2002 AFTER THE CONSTITUTION WAS RATIFIED in 1788, the states adopted the first 10 amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights. Given the importance of the provisions in those amendments, an obvious question arises: Why didn’t the Framers of the Constitution include those provisions in the original Constitution, thereby obviating the need to amend the document so soon ...
Classical Liberalism in the 21st Century: Freedom of Trade, Part 1 by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2002 Part 1 | Part 2 BEFORE THE 19TH CENTURY, governments in the major European countries and their colonial empires around the world took it for granted that they had both the right and responsibility to control and direct the economic activities of their subjects. Indeed, the lands and peoples in these countries were considered to be the property of ...
Are We Safer? by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2002 Wasn’t the bombing of Afghanistan supposed to make Americans safer and more secure? A just-released Gallup Poll might raise some doubts as to whether that goal is being achieved. Gallup conducted face-to-face interviews with 10,000 people from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, Lebanon, Kuwait, Morocco, and Jordan. Fifty-three percent of those interviewed expressed an ...