Daily Articles

Avoid Phony Public Service

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2001

The dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Joseph S. Nye Jr., laments that while in 1980 three-quarters of the graduates took government jobs, just one-third does so these days. That’s a good trend. But not good enough. Here’s hoping the number drops further. Many people will ask, who could ...

Sink the Sugar Boondoggle

by James Bovard September 1, 2001

The federal government has gone into the sugar-mountain business. The Agriculture Department (USDA) is paying more than a million dollars a month now to store piles of surplus sugar. USDA spent almost half a billion dollars on the sugar program last year — and federal generosity promises to make the sugar ...

The Colombia Quagmire, Part 3

by Doug Bandow September 1, 2001

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 IN SEPTEMBER BRAZIL INITIATED Operation Cobra, with some 12,000 personnel, to improve border security. “The whole world was talking about the Colombia Plan,” explained Mauro Sposito, head of the federal police effort: “We had to do something.” Local officials also worry about an influx of refugees. Brazil is concerned not only ...

Book Review: In Defense of Free Capital Markets

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2001

In Defense of Free Capital Markets: The Case against a New International Financial Architecture by David F. DeRosa (Princeton, N.J.: Bloomberg Press, 2001); 230 pages; $27.95. IN THE 1930s, during the high watermark of aggressive economic nationalism in Europe, one of the most effective political weapons of regulation used by governments was control over the buying and selling of currencies on ...

The Most Dangerous Substance of All

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2001

For all our preoccupation with ridding society of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, little thought is given to the most dangerous mind-altering substance of all: ink. Do you doubters need proof? Take Rachel Carson’s famous book, Silent Spring. In 1963 Carson wrote a book claiming that the insecticide DDT was damaging ...

Some Reflections on the Right to Bear Arms

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2001

For millions of Americans the Second Amendment and its right for the individual to bear arms appears irrelevant and practically anachronistic. It seems a throwback to those earlier days of the Wild West, when many men, far from the law and order provided by the town sheriff and circuit judge, ...

The Sham of Political Compromise

by Sheldon Richman August 2, 2001

Writing on the New York Times op-ed page recently, new Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle called for “a spirit of principled compromise.” The top Democrat presumably means compromise with the Republicans. He’s in luck. Compromise with the Senate Republicans is entirely possible — because they hold the same reactionary principles ...

Reexamining the “Good War”

by Richard M. Ebeling August 2, 2001

The Second World War is considered America’s “good war” of the 20th century. The First World War is considered the tragic war. President Woodrow Wilson intended the war to “make the world safe for democracy,” but instead it generated the rise of communism, fascism, and Nazism. The Korean War cost the ...

Liberty and the Constitution

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2001

ONE OF THE MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS in the United States is that people’s rights come from the Constitution. Without the Constitution, it is believed, people wouldn’t have such rights as freedom of expression and religion. People should be grateful to the Founding Fathers, it is said, for establishing the vehicle by which people could have such rights as life, ...

What O’Reilly Doesnt Know

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2001

Bill OReilly, populist star of the Fox News Channels OReilly Factor may be the hottest television property around, but he doesnt know beans about how markets work. The other night he charged the oil companies with conspiring to keep gasoline prices high. He quoted a 1995 Chevron memo stating that refining ...

Israel M. Kirzner and the Austrian Theory of Competition and Entrepreneurship

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2001

WITH THE END OF THE 2001 SPRING SEMESTER, one of the leading Austrian economists in the world, Dr. Israel M. Kirzner, has decided to retire from formal academic life at the age of 71. Over a scholarly career that has spanned more than 40 years, Kirzner has enriched our understanding of the theory of the competitive process, the role ...

Does the Truth Not Matter?

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2001

Thank you, Philip Morris. The tobacco company has reminded us that today “the truth” doesn’t mean that which corresponds to reality. It means “that which furthers a political agenda.” Philip Morris recently had a study done for the Czech Republic to answer the oft-made charge that smokers impose financial burdens on nonsmokers. Conducted by Arthur ...