The Drug War Is Doomed by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2001 The announcement that we have a new drug czar (a nice term for a government official in America, no?) reminded me of a recent appearance on CNN of the previous drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, Republican of Georgia. They were discussing the need to be tough ...
Bad Tax Bill by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2001 We’ve been had. By a Bush. Again. The tax cut is a joke. After all the blather about how the surplus belongs to us, not the government, the resulting tax-cut bill is minuscule, ultra-gradual, and now scheduled to expire in 10 years! Republican and Democrat members of Congress, ...
Wrong Way to Go by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2001 We’ve been had. By a Bush. Again. The tax cut is a joke. After all the blather about how the surplus belongs to us, not the government, the resulting tax-cut bill is minuscule, ultra-gradual, and now scheduled to expire in 10 years! Republican and Democrat members of Congress, ...
The Colombia Quagmire, Part 1 by Doug Bandow July 1, 2001 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 “THIS IS NOT VIETNAM,” declared Vietnam-era draft evader Bill Clinton on his arrival in Colombia last year. Alas, while the continents may be different, the conflicts offer eerily similar potential as quagmires for the United States. “This is always how it starts,” warns writer Patrick Symmes. But there’s still time ...
What Is Golf? by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2001 So now the courts are writing the rules for professional sports. What’s next? Will they soon tell us that sometimes two of a kind beats a full house? On May 29 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the PGA Tour has to let Casey Martin ride in a golf ...
Should Tipping Be Voluntary? by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2001 If New Deal legislation had been enacted in the 1930s requiring people to tip waiters 15 percent of the total amount of their restaurant bill, we might have been subjected to the following debate today: Repeal Advocate: Don’t you think we ought to repeal the tipping law and let ...
Book Review: The Making of Modern Economics by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2001 The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers by Mark Skousen (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001); 485 pages; $25. IN THE EARLY DECADES OF THE 19TH CENTURY, Thomas Carlyle was the first one to call economics “the dismal science.” He considered the study of the market economy “dismal” because it emphasized individualism and freedom of association ...
Drug-War Killings in Peru by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2001 IN APRIL, two more innocent people were killed in the U.S government’s 30-year war on drugs. This time, the victims were a 35-year-old missionary named Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old baby, Charity, who were flying in a small Cessna from Brazil to Peru with Bowers’s husband, another of their children, and the pilot. After a CIA plane issued an alert ...
John Stuart Mill and the Three Dangers to Liberty by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2001 JOHN STUART MILL’S 1859 ESSAY “On Liberty” is one of the most enduring and powerful defenses of individual freedom ever penned. Both advocates and enemies of personal freedom have challenged either the premises or the logic in Mill’s argument. They have pointed out inconsistencies or incompleteness in his reasoning. But the ...
Don’t Fund Religious Groups by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2001 President Bush just doesn’t get it. He may say, repeatedly, that the surplus belongs to the people and push for a modest tax cut, but if he really believed his own words, he wouldn’t be proposing to spend the taxpayers’ money on social-welfare activities performed by religious organizations. Mr. ...
Save Immigrants: Tear Down Our Wall by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2001 On the heels of his recent regret for the drug-war deaths in Peru of a missionary and her baby, President Bush has now expressed condolences for the deaths of 14 Mexican citizens on the Arizona desert. The men died of thirst and exposure after crossing into the United ...
Free Markets Aren’t Conservative by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2001 One of the great myths of the Industrial Age is that businessmen generally like free markets. That myth has deep implications and consequences. For example, someone who buys into it will tend to believe that proposals to deregulate markets are simply favors for special interests and inimical to the interests ...