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Recent Cato Op-eds

This list consists of Cato op-eds within the last 60 days.

• July 2, 2009, "Fuel Standards Are Killing GM," Alan Reynolds, The Wall Street Journal.

  General Motors can survive bankruptcy far more easily than it can survive President Barack Obama's ambitious fuel economy standards, which mandate that all new new vehicles average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. The actual Corporate Average Fuel ...

• July 2, 2009, "More Tax Oppression," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Why did a bare majority (219-212) of the members of the U.S. Congress vote for the largest tax increase in American history this past Friday, under the claim it was a vote to save the climate? Before you answer the question, consider the ...

• July 1, 2009, "A Rare Influence in the Lives of Others," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Mary Lou Forbes was one of those rare people who changed many lives for the better. She had the courage to challenge prevailing opinion by running columns written by knowledgeable economic, political, scientific and social dissidents to provoke ...

• July 1, 2009, "The Dangers of a "Public Plan"," Michael D. Tanner, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

  In the editorial "Socialized ignorance" (June 22), the Post-Dispatch took critics of President Barack Obama's health care reform plan, including the Cato Institute, to task for calling it "socialized medicine." It is true that President Obama, ...

• July 1, 2009, "The China Card," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  North Korea appears to have moved from intermittent to constant provocation. The only nation with real influence in Pyongyang is China. South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak visited Washington two weeks ago but a solution is no closer. American ...

• June 30, 2009, "Obama's Statist Ambitions," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  "I am a firm believer in the power of the free market," President Obama told the Wall Street Journal recently. The "irony" surrounding his public image as a collectivist, the president insisted, was that "I actually would like to see a relatively ...

• June 30, 2009, "Turning Fat People into Social Outcasts," Patrick Basham and John Luik, Spiked (Online).

  A new report chastising fat celebs as a bad influence is part of a worrying campaign to "denormalize" chubbiness. Fat celebrities are the latest victims of the UK public health establishment's attempt to socially engineer our cultural and ...

• June 29, 2009, "The Consequences of the Culture of Death," Doug Bandow, American Spectator (Online).

  The culture of death continues to claim victims, this time abortionist George Tiller. The tragedy of his murder is compounded by the obvious contradiction of someone killing him in the name of life. Perhaps it should not surprise that ...

• June 29, 2009, "Private Contractors Still Lack Adequate Oversight," David Isenberg, DefenseNews.com.

  The grim, continuing story of just how bad oversight and accountability are in the world of private military contracting received its latest confirmation June 10, when the congressionally mandated U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting released its ...

• June 25, 2009, "Tax Credits, Not Vouchers, Are Keeping School Choice a Viable Option," Adam B. Schaeffer, Culpeper Star-Exponent.

  Many school choice supporters are discouraged after having suffered a series of setbacks on the voucher front, ranging from the loss of Utah's nascent voucher program last year to the recent death sentence handed to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship ...

• June 25, 2009, "Who Are We as Americans?," Nat Hentoff, Zanesville Times Recorder.

  President Obama, in his May 21 speech at the National Archives Museum in Washington said that "we can defeat Al Qaeda ...if we stay true to who we are...anchored in our timeless ideals." A much more somber note, however, was in a warning by retiring ...

• June 25, 2009, "NATO Gains Weight," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  Vice President Joe Biden is heading to Georgia and Ukraine next month. His trip will continue a foreign policy which has taken on the trappings of junior-high school: an endless search for new allies. More "friends" are believed to be better, ...

• June 24, 2009, "Health Care Reform: Questions for the President," Michael F. Cannon, ABC News.com.

  Health care reform is on life support," says Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee. And he's a Democrat. President Obama has spent months building momentum for health care reform. But when the Congressional Budget Office put the price tag near $2 ...

• June 24, 2009, "Omens of a Downward Spiral," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Victoria Station — look around this 150-year-old rail station and you can see the rise and fall, and rise and now again decline of the British nation. Victoria Station is just a few blocks from Buckingham Palace and was for many decades the ...

• June 24, 2009, "The Non-Debate over Non-Reform," Arnold Kling, National Review (Online).

  As the discussion of health-care policy unfolds, what we are seeing is a non-debate over non-reform. The Democratic proposals promise to entrench the status quo, which does not fit with the principles of personal responsibility and fails to allocate ...

• June 24, 2009, "Cap-and-Trade-War," Patrick J. Michaels and Sallie James, National Review (Online).

  Despite indications that much of President Obama's agenda is meeting intra-party skepticism all over Capitol Hill, there is one policy nexus where congressional leaders are still doggedly determined to move the country left: energy and the ...

• June 23, 2009, "Smoke Gets in the Government's Eyes," Patrick Basham and John Luik, Spiked (Online).

  Tobacco displays do not lead young people to light up, so why on earth are UK officials banning them? Professor James Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, has devoted a decade to understanding what makes young people engage in risky ...

• June 23, 2009, "Staying in Afghanistan Is the Wrong Strategy," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  There were echoes of Bush-style "deciderism" in President Obama's peremptory announcement of an Afghanistan troop "surge" in February. Likewise, it was hard to miss the Iraq parallels in last week's House vote for "emergency" funding to continue ...

• June 23, 2009, "Book Review: Money, Markets and Sovereignty," Doug Bandow, Washington Times.

  Money, Markets and Sovereignty by Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds Yale University Press, 288 pages The era of laissez-faire ...

• June 23, 2009, "Ethanol Standards: Why Federal Policy Is Crazy," Harry de Gorter and David R. Just, Cato.org.

  Farm state Democrats are threatening to vote against climate change legislation unless the EPA excludes emissions generated by the indirect changes in land-use that follow from ethanol subsidies in their calculation of a "sustainability standard." ...

• June 22, 2009, "The Volatile Dollar," Steve H. Hanke, Globe Asia.

  The course of the us dollar over the past few years has been anything but smooth. From November 2002 until mid-July 2008, the greenback lost 37% of its value against the euro. This period of dollar weakness began when Ben S. Bernanke, then a ...

• June 22, 2009, "No, Really, It's Not Government-Run!," Michael D. Tanner, TownHall.com.

  Faced with rising opposition to a so-called "public option" in health care reform, some Democrats are floating the idea of establishing health insurance "co-operatives" as an alternative. Republicans like Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Charles ...

• June 21, 2009, "Geldof Humanitarian Gig," Marian L. Tupy and Michela Wrong, Washington Times.

  Despite a global recession, most the Group of Eight major industrial countries appear to be on track to fulfill their 2005 Gleneagles Summit commitments to increase development aid to Africa. Africa, however, would surely be better off if rich ...

• June 20, 2009, "Eliminating California State Licensing Boards Would Save Funds, Aid Consumers," Shirley Svorny, Daily News of Los Angeles.

  In rejecting Proposition 1A (both at the ballot box and in polls taken of the broader electorate), California residents rejected higher taxes needed to support bloated state spending. It's time to cut back. I suggest that state licensing of ...

• June 19, 2009, "Krugman's Liquidity Claptrap," Alan Reynolds, Forbes.

  The laureate gets his history wrong. In his June 15 column, "Stay the Course," Paul Krugman suggests it is simply foolish to worry that the government could possibly borrow too much, or that the Federal Reserve might buy ("monetize") too much ...

• June 19, 2009, "Thank God Obama Favors the "Old" Mideast," Leon T. Hadar, Lebanon Daily Star.

  In July 2006, then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice traveled to Lebanon in an effort to bring an end to the war raging there between Israel and Hizbollah. At the time, she tried to market to reporters in Washington a somewhat odd spin on the ...

• June 18, 2009, "Government Grinds the Gears," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  If you knew that baseball teams with winning records tended to be more profitable for their owners than those with losing records — and if you learned that the Baltimore Orioles had just been purchased by the major league umpire's union, would ...

• June 18, 2009, "A Fake Financial Fix," Mark A. Calabria, New York Post.

  The Obama administration yesterday presented a misguided, ill-informed remake of our financial regulatory system that will make crises more likely and more costly. Our financial system, particularly our mortgage system, is broken — but the ...

• June 18, 2009, "High Speed Spending," Randal O'Toole, Gainesville Sun.

  Would you pay $1,000 so that someone – probably not you – can ride high-speed trains 58 miles a year? That's what the Obama Administration's high-speed rail plan is going to cost every federal income taxpayer in the country. One ...

• June 17, 2009, "Intensive Obamacare," Michael D. Tanner, National Review (Online).

  Lately, Democratic lawmakers have been showing symptoms of an acute case of health-care-reform fever. National Review Online's Kathryn Lopez asked health-care expert Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and ...

• June 17, 2009, "Is Obama's 'Prolonged Detention' American?," Nat Hentoff, Aspen Daily News.

  Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once warned: "Throughout the world today there are men, women and children interned indefinitely, awaiting trials which may never come or which may be a mockery of the word, because their governments believe ...

• June 16, 2009, "A Tattered Umbrella," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  South Korea's foreign minister reports that Washington plans to guarantee his nation's defense against a nuclear-armed North Korea in writing. The promise reportedly will be formalized when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visits the United ...

• June 16, 2009, "The "Militia Panic" of 2009," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  It didn't take long for liberals to politicize the recent murders ofan abortion doctor and a Holocaust Museum guard. The day after the museum shooting, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos fame praised April's controversial Department of Homeland ...

• June 15, 2009, "The US Embargo of Cuba Is a Failure," Daniel Griswold, Guardian (Online).

  Obama should lift the embargo. Allowing more travel and farm exports to Cuba will be good for democracy and the economy After nearly 50 years, America's cold war embargo against Cuba appears to be thawing at last. Earlier this spring, the Obama ...

• June 15, 2009, "The Big Joke," Doug Bandow, American Spectator (Online).

  The United Nations and human rights do not belong in the same sentence. Last Wednesday the UN Human Rights Council praised Cuba's human rights achievements. The Council was far more concerned about the U.S. embargo against Cuba than the Cuban ...

• June 15, 2009, "The Spending Threat," Chris Edwards, New York Post.

  Rising unemployment, stagnant wages, falling housing prices ... The US economy has overcome such crises time and again in the past. But President Obama and his allies in Congress are gearing up to wallop families and businesses with an array of new ...

• June 15, 2009, "Keep Steering Clear of National Standards," Neal McCluskey, Spartanburg Herald Journal.

  Touting national standards is the cool thing to do in education right now, and with almost all of the nation's governors recently joining an effort to draft common standards, the fad has taken a much-publicized step toward legitimacy. But just as he ...

• June 12, 2009, "Book Review: Wired for War," David Isenberg, Asia Times.

  Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by P W Singer The Penguin Press, 2009, ISBN-10: 1594201986, 512 ...

• June 11, 2009, "Paying for Obamacare," Michael D. Tanner, TownHall.com.

  Much of the discussion to date about health care reform has understandably focused on the contents of the reform plan itself. But with the plan expected to cost $1-1.5 trillion over the first ten years, an equally important question is how the ...

• June 11, 2009, "Nuclear Realities," Ted Galen Carpenter, National Interest (Online).

  Recent events suggest that the U.S.-led strategy for dealing with the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea is not only likely to fail, but the mere attempt may also produce an especially bad outcome. President Obama's response to North ...

• June 11, 2009, "O'Reilly Being Found 'Guilty by Snippet'," Nat Hentoff, Courier-Express.

  Following the cold-blooded murder of late-term abortionist Dr. George Tiller, Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star, like many other outraged commentators, declared that anyone who had, in the past, criticized Tiller's practice thereby became "an ...

• June 10, 2009, "Unions As Safe in Colombia As in D.C.," Daniel Griswold, Investor's Business Daily.

  As President Obama seeks to boost the U.S. economy and build stronger ties with our friends abroad, he could advance both goals at once by urging Congress to pass the pending trade agreement with our South American neighbor Colombia. The U.S. and ...

• June 10, 2009, "The Dauphin of Detroit," Will Wilkinson, The Week.

  As its power expands, the government bureaucracy increasingly resembles an aristocracy. How else to explain the enormous power invested in Brian Deese, the unknown, unelected, 31-year-old White House aide in command of General Motors? "Brian ...

• June 10, 2009, "Insuring Bankruptcy," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  If you were in debt, would you be more or less likely to increase your liabilities if you knew someone else would pay them off? Many children can quickly figure out the answer to this question, but it seems to be a real stumper for members of the ...

• June 9, 2009, "How Not to Reform Health Care," Michael D. Tanner, National Review (Online).

  Massachusetts is widely touted as a model for health-care reform. It isn't. As the national debate over health-care reform begins, many in Congress are looking to Massachusetts as a model for what that reform might look like. Indeed, from ...

• June 9, 2009, "Sotomayor: A Presidential Power Skeptic?," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  Most sane Americans are sick of identity politics. More's the pity, then, that race and gender will likely take center stage in the coming Supreme Court fight. If so, Sonia Sotomayor can hardly cry victim: She's fed the fire by repeatedly suggesting ...

• June 9, 2009, "Eurocrats' Comeuppance," Doug Bandow, American Spectator (Online).

  Europe has voted. More accurately, the people of Europe have voted. The results suggest that Czech President Vaclav Klaus was right when he argued earlier this year that "There is no European demos — and no European nation." Four days of ...

• June 9, 2009, "Five Questions for Sotomayor," Ilya Shapiro, Christian Science Monitor.

  GOP senators should probe her views on key Supreme Court decisions. Whether the Republicans will muster strong opposition to the president's Supreme Court pick is beside the point. The minority on the Senate Judiciary Committee has ...

• June 9, 2009, "Obama Speech Connects to the Founders' Foreign Policy," Christopher Preble, RealClearPolitics.com.

  Predictably, the reaction to President Obama's Cairo speech has diverged along partisan lines. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt declared that the speech conveyed "extraordinary weakness on the part of the United States." "It will indeed be a ...

• June 8, 2009, "Reform Must Empower the Consumers," Michael D. Tanner, Roll Call.

  As Congress moves forward with proposals for reforming the U.S. health care system, it is possible to draw some important lessons from the experience of other countries. First, universal health insurance does not mean universal access to health ...

• June 5, 2009, "Immaturity in Power," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  A sign of immaturity - most often found in children and certain politicians - is being in denial or even unaware of the consequences of one's actions. The global political class has always suffered from an excess of immaturity, but every generation ...

• June 5, 2009, "Mr. President, Here Is Common Ground on Abortion!," Nat Hentoff, Zanesville Times Recorder.

  President Obama has reneged on an increasing number of his pledges on taking office - from guaranteeing a transparent, accountable administration to ending CIA "renditions" of suspects to foreign nations known for torture. Now, however, he has a ...

• June 5, 2009, "CEObama," Daniel J. Ikenson, Los Angeles Times.

  This article is the third of a three part series. Part I | Part II | Part III The Obama administration's pre-packaged bankruptcy plan for ...

• June 4, 2009, "VATs Mean Big Government," Daniel J. Mitchell, The Wall Street Journal.

  There is growing interest in Washington in a new national consumption tax, otherwise known as a value-added tax or VAT. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.), for example, recently told the Washington Post that "a VAT" has "got to ...

• June 4, 2009, "Automakers That Can't Compete Deserve to Disappear," Daniel J. Ikenson, Los Angeles Times.

  This article is the second of a three part series. Part I | Part II | Part III I abhor paternalistic industrial policy, in which decisions about who makes how ...

• June 3, 2009, "What Was the Point of Bailing out GM?," Daniel J. Ikenson, Los Angeles Times.

  This article is the first of a three part series. Part I | Part II | Part III General Motors should have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last fall, ...

• June 3, 2009, "Keep FDA Away from Tobacco," Patrick Basham, Orange County Register.

  Handing tobacco regulation over to the FDA, as Congress is poised to do, is an epic public health mistake. It is tantamount to giving the keys of the regulatory store to the nation's largest cigarette manufacturer, Philip Morris. The legislation ...

• June 2, 2009, "Voters Are the Cause of America's Fiscal Mess," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  There's plenty of blame to go around for the fiscal mess we're in. By ramming through a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, President George W. Bush launched the biggest expansion of entitlements in four decades. President Obama has added ...

• June 2, 2009, "Reputation Reversal," Doug Bandow, American Spectator (Online).

  The world's largest democracy has voted, with 417 million Indians choosing a new parliament. The most important victors may be Christians and other religious minorities in India. The Congress Party led a weak coalition government and was ...

• June 1, 2009, "Choices or Echoes?," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  After spending eight years implementing spendthrift domestic policies and destabilizing foreign policies, the Republican Party finds itself on the outside looking in. GOP leaders are seeking to refashion their domestic agenda. But they have yet to ...

• June 1, 2009, "Socialism, US-Style," James A. Dorn, South China Morning Post.

  Near the end of his term in office US president George W. Bush said: "I'm abandoning free-market principles to save the free-market system." But he had already significantly increased the size and scope of the federal government. His last act was to ...

• June 1, 2009, "Obama's Interfaith Dialogue: Let's Talk Persecution," Doug Bandow, Lebanon Daily Star.

  President Barack Obama plans to call for an improved dialogue with Islam in his upcoming speech in Egypt. All faiths would benefit from greater understanding. Yet no conversation will be complete if it does not address Islam's ubiquitous persecution ...

• May 31, 2009, "Is Universal Coverage Comparatively Effective?," Michael F. Cannon, KaiserHealthNews.org.

  As congressional Democrats prepare to deliver on President Barack Obama's goal of "expanding coverage to all Americans,"(.pdf) an important question remains unanswered: is universal ...

• May 29, 2009, "D.C. Should Create Its Own School Voucher Program," Andrew J. Coulson, DC Examiner.

  Thousands rallied in DC earlier this month to save a federal program that helps low-income families afford private schooling. On the same day, President Obama signaled that he opposes school vouchers, but will seek funding so that students already ...

• May 29, 2009, "Britain's New Revolution," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Imagine reading a news report that "U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi resigned this morning, and it is expected that more than half of the members of Congress will either resign, choose not to run again or be defeated in next year's ...

• May 29, 2009, "Which Side Is Bluffing in N Korean Standoff?," Ted Galen Carpenter, South China Morning Post.

  North Korea's nuclear test on Monday immediately produced a storm of denunciations from the United States and other countries. President Barack Obama stated that the US would seek new economic sanctions from the UN Security Council, and warned ...

• May 29, 2009, "The 'Unseen' Deserve Empathy, Too," John Hasnas, The Wall Street Journal.

  While announcing Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to the Supreme Court, President Barack Obama praised her as a judge who combined a mastery of the law with "a common touch, a sense of compassion, and an understanding of how the world works and how ...

• May 28, 2009, "Beyond Tea Parties -- A New Way for Taxpayers to Fight Back," Jim Powell, Fox News (Online).

  In the more than 100 days since President Obama took office, citizens around the country are doing more to resist the administration's plan for a massive expansion of government. Tea parties and ballot initiatives are among the best-known ...

• May 28, 2009, "An Obama I Can't Believe In, Yet," Nat Hentoff, Zanesville Times Recorder.

  President Obama's Notre Dame speech on abortion was applauded by the mainstream media, quoting his call for more "open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words." But except for the pro-life, and some conservative forums, there was no mention of Obama's ...

• May 28, 2009, "Is Aid Working?," Marian L. Tupy, Financial Times.

  Dambisa Moyo's book Dead Aid has reignited the simmering war of words about the effects of foreign aid on Africa. Her contribution is welcome, for scant evidence in favour of increasing aid notwithstanding, western governments seem determined to ...

• May 27, 2009, "Sotomayor Pick Not Based on Merit," Ilya Shapiro, CNN.com.

  In picking Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama has confirmed that identity politics matter to him more than merit. While Judge Sotomayor exemplifies the American Dream, she would not have even been on the short list if she were not Hispanic. She is ...

• May 27, 2009, "Forgetting Pyongyang," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  Nothing seems to upset North Korea more than being ignored. Hence Pyongyang's second nuclear test, punctuated by the separate firing of several short-range missiles. Although the nuclear test reinforces the North's irresponsible reputation, the ...

• May 26, 2009, "Recession and Recovery," Alan Reynolds, Forbes.

  In 1931—before he was befuddled by Keynesian economics—John Maynard Keynes explained that "The fall in prices relative to costs, together with the psychological effect of high taxation has destroyed the necessary incentive to ...

• May 26, 2009, "Time to Downsize the Imperial Vice-Presidency," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  A new book by Newsweek's Richard Wolffe reports that President Obama is dismayed by "his vice president's indiscipline." Who can blame him? At the height of the Swine Flu panic, our excitable veep fanned the fear on NBC's Today Show, squeaking ...

• May 26, 2009, "Nostalgianomics," Brink Lindsey, Reason.

  "The America I grew up in was a relatively equal middle-class society. Over the past generation, however, the country has returned to Gilded Age levels of inequality." So sighs Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economist and New York ...

• May 24, 2009, "Social Conventions, Online and Offline," Timothy B. Lee, The New York Times.

  People are used to dividing the world into broadcast media (television, newspapers) and point-to-point communication (the telephone, face-to-face communication). Because the Web has many aspects of broadcast media, people often talk about the ...

• May 22, 2009, "Europe's Worsening Crisis," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Bratislava, Slovakia — This pleasant city on the Danube River is considered part of eastern Europe, although it is only as about as far from Vienna as Washington is from Baltimore (about 35 miles) and is, in fact, near the geographical center ...

• May 22, 2009, "When Currencies Falter," Steve H. Hanke, Forbes.

  Want to know where the real action will be over the coming months? Forget stocks, think foreign exchange. There are tectonic moves afoot in the currency markets these days. During the past year the Polish zloty has fallen by 23% against the ...

• May 21, 2009, "The New World Order (Part III)," Christopher Preble, Globalist.

  The United States' global military presence is unmatched. As Washington debates the extent of future U.S. engagement in the world, Christopher A. Preble offers insights into the benefits and drawbacks of the possible approaches in the last of three ...

• May 21, 2009, "The Obamacare to Come," Michael D. Tanner, National Review (Online).

  Dems' health-care plans do not provide the reform most Americans seek. Drip by painful drip, the details of the Democratic health-care-reform plan have been leaking out. And from what we can see so far, it looks like bad news for American ...

• May 21, 2009, "Talking Health Care Reform," Michael D. Tanner, Arizona Republic.

  1. What, if anything, is wrong with President Barack Obama's proposal for a "public option" being made available to purchasers of health insurance? Regardless of how it is structured or administered, such a plan would have an inherent ...

• May 20, 2009, "A Market Solution to Secure Banks' Future," William Poole, Financial Times.

  How long will the US economy live with a banking system in which some institutions are too big to fail ? Not long, we should all hope, because large banks today, under federal protection, can raise short-term funds more cheaply than their smaller ...

• May 20, 2009, "The Rise of Collectivist Conservatives," Will Wilkinson, The Week.

  Today's Republican Party is a comedy of incompetence and strife. Yet beneath the hijinks lurks a struggle to define the proper relationship of the individual to society and to the state. If we don't dig too deep, the fight for the soul of the ...

• May 20, 2009, "Does Military Power Keep Us Safe? (Part II)," Christopher Preble, Globalist.

  In the second installment of a three-part series from The Power Problem, the Cato Institute's Christopher A. Preble explains how a smaller military could keep the United ...

• May 20, 2009, "All Cost, No Benefit," Jerry Taylor, USA Today.

  The Obama administration's plan to require new passenger vehicles sold in 2016 to get an average of 39 miles per gallon or better (30 mpg or more for SUVs, pickups and minivans) is likely to be all cost and no benefit. If the proposed fuel ...

• May 20, 2009, "Proliferated Nonsense," Ted Galen Carpenter, National Interest (Online).

  It's been a really bad springtime for arms-control activists who want to see a nuclear-free world. First, when the UN Security Council criticized North Korea's test of a long-range ballistic missile in early April, Pyongyang used that ...

• May 20, 2009, "President Reagan's Torture Advice to President Obama," Nat Hentoff, Metro West Daily News.

  President Obama is strongly disinclined to support an independent investigation of possible criminal violations of U.S. laws and international treaties by the highest levels of the Bush-Cheney administration. He also has no personal interest in ...

• May 20, 2009, "A High-Speed Rail Mirage," Randal O'Toole, USA Today.

  At first glance, President Obama's enthusiasm for building a high-speed rail network linking major cities seems like a wise move. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that the plan would cost taxpayers billions of dollars and do little to ...

• May 20, 2009, "China's Cards," Steve H. Hanke, Globe Asia.

  The international economy has been in the grip of the steepest decline in industrial production and trade since World War II. In my March 2009 column ("A Commodity-Price Snapback?"), I outlined an optimistic snapback scenario. This was based, ...

• May 20, 2009, "A School Where Each Student Is Well-Known," Nat Hentoff, Durant Daily Democrat.

  I've been reporting on education for almost 50 years. Around the country, I've seen some schools that work, but now I am able to show how one principal has ensured that truly no student is left behind in his New York public high school. I'm indebted ...

• May 19, 2009, "India Votes For Continuity, Not Radical Change," Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, Forbes.

  India's ruling coalition, led by the Congress Party, surged to an unexpected victory in last week's elections. It no longer needs the Left Front (four Marxist parties) for survival, and so can go ahead with economic reforms earlier vetoed by the ...

• May 19, 2009, "Interfaith Dialogue: The Great Unmentionable," Doug Bandow, American Spectator.

  President Barack Obama has called for an improved dialogue with Islam and is planning a major speech in Egypt. He is not alone in his efforts to reach out. Pope Benedict recently visited Jordan, where he acknowledged "the burden of our common ...

• May 19, 2009, "Bad Proposition," Michael New, National Review (Online).

  California needs serious fiscal reform. Prop 1A is not it. Proposition 1A is the most important ballot measure that Californians will vote on when they go to the polls today. Though it has been touted as a way to impose limits on appropriations ...

• May 19, 2009, "Dick Cheney Is Becoming Obama's Enabler," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  Dick Cheney's "Shut Up and Listen" tour continued last week on CBS's Face the Nation. There, the former veep reiterated his favorite theme: Obama is putting America at risk by "taking down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation ...

• May 19, 2009, "Will Credit Card Legislation Curtail Consumer Credit?," Mark A. Calabria, The Wall Street Journal (Online).

  The most basic function of all financial transactions is to allow households to more closely align their lifetime flows of consumption and income. While the most important mismatch between desired consumption and income happens over the life-cycle ...

• May 18, 2009, "U.S. Defense and the Four Percent Smokescreen," Christopher Preble, Globalist.

  With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States continues to spend more than any other country in the world on its military. The Cato Institute's Cristopher A. Preble takes a close look at Washington's reasoning behind its enormous defense ...

• May 17, 2009, "Great Right North," Chris Edwards and Jason Clemens and Niels Veldhuis, Washington Post.

  Reports last week that the recession is draining Social Security and Medicare funds were just one more reminder that the United States needs to fix its finances. For inspiration, why not look to Canada? Long derided by American conservatives as ...

• May 17, 2009, "Handling America's Homeless Families," Doug Bandow, Washington Times.

  With the economy in apparent freefall, human needs, including homelessness, have grown. Our starting point should be moral, not political. During the dramatic biblical parable of the sheep and goats, Jesus asserts our moral responsibility rather ...

• May 15, 2009, "The Best Solution Is to Do Nothing," Thomas A. Firey, Baltimore Sun.

  Some argue that Maryland government should intervene further in state horse racing, perhaps by providing regular subsidies, buying tracks and controlling races. I suggest an alternative: Do nothing. I say this not because I don't value the ...

• May 15, 2009, "The Road to Jerusalem Does Not Lead through Tehran," Leon T. Hadar, Foreign Affairs.

  As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington for a meeting with President Barack Obama, U.S. policymakers are being urged to place the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the back burner and spend their time and energy addressing the ...

• May 14, 2009, "US, Pakistan Need to Bridge Afghan Divide," Malou Innocent, South China Morning Post.

  US President Barack Obama recently met the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan to discuss their full commitment to fighting terrorists in their region. Media coverage of the three-way talks cast the president's efforts in a favourable light, ...

• May 14, 2009, "Genuine Change Won't Come this Way," Neal McCluskey, EducationNews.org.

  If you "genuinely" intend to fix a problem you probably want to know its true causes, right? Not so Vice President Joe Biden, or at least his Middle Class Task Force, which recently released a report on college affordability that essentially ignored ...

• May 14, 2009, "Private Education and Development: A Missed Connection? (Part III)," James Tooley, Globalist.

  Despite documented successes of private school in slums, The Beautiful Tree author James Tooley found that many international organizations as well as the Indian ...

• May 13, 2009, "Schools in the Slums of Hyderabad (Part II)," James Tooley, Globalist.

  Slum-dwellers in India often do not have the means to gain a good education — but private sector pioneers in the city of Hyderabad are working to change that. In the second excerpt from James Tooley's book, ...

• May 13, 2009, "Nobody Likes Paying Too Much," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Tax crackdown could deepen our economic woes Other things being equal, would you start a new business in a higher- or lower-tax jurisdiction, and would you prefer to live and invest in a higher- or lower-tax locale? This is not a tough question ...

• May 13, 2009, "Placebo - Why the Democrats' Proposals Will Not Work," Michael F. Cannon, National Review.

  The key congressional committees have yet to introduce the legislation that will carry Democrats' hopes for "universal coverage" — i.e., a government guarantee that all Americans will have health insurance, if not access to actual medical ...

• May 13, 2009, "'Thought Crimes' Bill Advances," Nat Hentoff, RealClearPolitics.com.

  Why is the press remaining mostly silent about the so-called "hate crimes law" that passed in the House on April 29? The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed in a 249-175 vote (17 Republicans joined with 231 Democrats). These ...

• May 12, 2009, "A Layman for the Supreme Court?," Roger Pilon, National Review (Online).

  Appointing a non-lawyer would be innovative but wrong. As if his populist streak needed further encouragement, President Obama is being urged by some in Washington's political class to look beyond the usual sources when he fills Justice David ...

• May 12, 2009, "How Barack Obama Killed an American Pastime," Gene Healy, DC Examiner.

  A lot of folks are upset over comedienne Wanda Sykes's attack on Rush Limbaugh at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner. She called Rush a "traitor," and said "I hope his kidneys fail." Limbaugh aside, though, there were deeper problems with ...

• May 12, 2009, "How Banks Slipped the Fed's Noose," Alan Reynolds, New York Post.

  The government's stress tests for banks were similar to medical stress tests in one respect — it's a great relief that they're done. Financial stocks rallied when the stress tests ended, which shows that those tests worsened the problem ...

• May 12, 2009, "The Beautiful Tree (Part I)," James Tooley, Globalist.

  Private education might be considered a privilege for the wealthy, but in India it is often considered necessary in the face of an inconsistent public education system. In the first of a series of excerpts from James Tooley's ...

• May 11, 2009, "Bears Shouldn't Do Math," Alan Reynolds, Forbes.

  Since the stock market's March 9 low, the S&P 500 rose from 676.53 to 929.93 and the Dow Jones industrials jumped from 6,547 to 8,574 by May 8 — gains of 37.5% and 31%, respectively. Such stunning gains encouraged bears to dust off the same ...

• May 11, 2009, "Health Care Reform? Maybe Next Year," Michael F. Cannon, NPR.org.

  Did comprehensive health care reform just get a big boost? The health care industry says it's willing to trim $2 trillion off the nation's health care bill over the next 10 years. Could 2009 be the year we finally reform health care? Don't count ...

• May 11, 2009, "Jack Kemp -- A Dissenting View," Jerry Taylor, National Review (Online).

  I know I'll probably catch hell for saying this, but no matter how nice a fellow Jack Kemp was, no matter how genuine his care for the poor might have been, no matter how compelling a political figure he was, and no matter how inspiring he was to a ...

• May 11, 2009, "Klaus Encounters," Doug Bandow, American Spectator.

  The Czech Senate ratified the Lisbon Treaty last Wednesday. Only the Irish people and Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who must sign the document for it to take effect, stand between the European Union and political consolidation. But both remain ...

• May 11, 2009, "Obama Must Move beyond Pseudo-Events," Leon T. Hadar, Lebanon Daily Star.

  Pundits in Washington and elsewhere have yet to outline US President Barack Obama's Grand Strategy, or to provide an account of an Obama Doctrine of foreign policy akin to the more dramatic changes he has made in American economic policy. All they ...

• May 11, 2009, "Cancer and the Government," Michael D. Tanner, Cato.org.

  The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network announced recently that it will spend $3 million over the next several months not on urging Americans to stop smoking or get mammograms, but on campaigning for a government takeover of the U.S. ...

• May 10, 2009, "Obama's Compromise on D.C.'s School Vouchers Program," Andrew J. Coulson, Washington Post.

  President Obama's decision isn't much of a compromise. NEA President Dennis Van Roekel wrote to congressional Democrats demanding that they kill the D.C. voucher program, and they complied. Obama has merely tried to alter the manner of destruction ...

• May 8, 2009, "Meltdown Was Perfect Stress Test For Market-Based Pension Reform," William Shipman, Investor's Business Daily.

  We learned a few lessons in 2008. First, markets can decline dramatically everywhere, and all at the same time. Not just stocks, but bonds, commodities, real estate, you name it. Second, a leveraged economy is an ugly thing when the music ...

• May 8, 2009, "Washington Is Hooked on Subsidy Programs," Chris Edwards, Washington Examiner.

  Most people know that federal spending and budget deficits are soaring. But an equally troubling trend is that the government is funding a growing array of activities that used to be left to state governments, businesses, charities, and individuals. ...

• May 7, 2009, "Deposit Insurance Undermines Bank Stability," Mark A. Calabria, RealClearMarkets.com.

  Provisions in both Senate and House bills extending the temporary coverage cap of $250,000 for deposit insurance until 2015 could be as damaging as the now defeated "cram-down" provision in the proposed changes in the bankruptcy code. Extending ...

• May 7, 2009, "Rangoon's Renaissance," Doug Bandow, National Interest (Online).

  A year ago, Cyclone Nargis wrecked Burma. About one hundred forty thousand people are thought to have died, with another 2.2 million people displaced or otherwise affected. The storm destroyed homes, killed livestock, salted rice paddies, sank ...

• May 6, 2009, "Hike Trade With Korea, Check China," Doug Bandow, Detroit News.

  The People's Republic of China is ever more confident, challenging U.S. naval ships in the South China Sea and the U.S. dollar in international forums. China has displaced America as the No. 1 trading partner with leading East Asian states. How ...

• May 6, 2009, "Belts Yet to Tighten," Jeffrey A. Miron, Boston Herald.

  As Massachusetts tries to close its fiscal deficit, most discussion focuses on higher taxes. No one likes this approach, but many assume expenditure cuts would be too harmful. In fact, state spending is excessive. Rather than raising taxes, ...

• May 6, 2009, "Political Stock Picks," Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

  Did you want to own shares of stock in Chrysler LLC, General Motors Corp., American International Group Inc., Citibank and other major corporations? Well, if you did, you could have purchased them through any stockbroker. But if you chose not to ...

• May 6, 2009, "A Tax Attack on America's Top Companies," Jim Powell, National Review (Online).

  In the name of tax reform, Pres. Barack Obama has announced $190 billion of tax hikes on many of the biggest U.S. employers. By reducing after-tax profits, these tax hikes could hammer stock prices that reflect investor expectations of future ...

• May 6, 2009, "Politics Plays Role in Bailout Mania," Will Wilkinson, Marketplace.

  "I don't want to run the auto companies, and I don't want to run banks," President Obama said last week during a prime-time press conference on the fate of Detroit. He may not want to, but the Obama administration is effectively running auto ...

• May 6, 2009, "In Defense Of Tax Havens," Daniel J. Mitchell, Forbes.

  Unlike almost all of their foreign competitors, American companies face a tax penalty when they compete for market share around the world. But this penalty is not imposed by protectionist foreign governments. Instead, this discriminatory tax--known ...

• May 6, 2009, "Socking Stocks," Jim Powell, New York Post.

  Just as the economy begins showing glimmers of a turnaround, here comes President Obama with a "tax-reform" effort that's sure to sock the stock prices and after-tax profits of many of the biggest US employers. Obama's $190 billion business-tax ...

• May 6, 2009, "N. Korea Requires Realism and Restraint," Doug Bandow, IBDEditorials.com.

  North Korea demonstrates the limits of President Obama's more accommodating diplomacy. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea engages in perpetual brinkmanship. Last winter the tortuous negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program crashed ...