Interventionism

I was one of only two non-socialists who managed to gain an invitation to Hillary Clinton's "White House Conference on Child Care."

Having failed to nationalize health care at the beginning of its first term, the Clinton administration seeks to nationalize children in its second. With little opposition from Republicans, the administration has proposed spending tens of billions of dollars on subsidized day care, mostly through federal grants to state day-care bureaucracies.

For years I received the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes mailing and just tossed it. No way would I waste my time for what amounts to a minuscule chance to win a bundle of dough. Sure, some folks win, but they are extremely few. The gimmicks were too obvious. ("When you win, do you want a red, green, or white Jaguar?")

Over the past ten years, the budget of the National Institutes of Health has doubled, and the government medical research outfit is demanding even more dramatic increases in the future. Scientists on the government dole gush about the possibilities for new discoveries—and last year's budget of $13.6 billion wasn't enough to bring them about.

Ludwig von Mises's defense of the free market against its rivals extended far beyond the proof of the impossibility of socialist calculation for which he is best known. 

The World Trade Organization has a fantastic but undeserved reputation in international circles as the world's premier institution of free trade. Despite all of the WTO's pretensions to greatness, this glorified trade-management bureaucracy exists only to promote the interests of well-heeled trade lobbyists and political power brokers.

The Dole Foundation is a project of the United Cerebral Palsy Association (operating budget: $540 million). Fully 80 percent of the UCPA's funding comes straight from the taxpayer's wallet. Voluntary contributions are only 11 percent, less than the percentage the UCPA spends on pro-welfare political lobbying. The Doles do not fund the Dole Foundation. Taxpayers do. No wonder he doesn't talk about it much.

Jeff Madrick, an economic journalist of statist bent, shows us the mind of a true leftist at work.

Congress proved it: not even childbirth is off limits to federal mandates. Forty-eight hours will heretofore be the minimum hospital stay for new mothers, Congress said, double the time insurance companies used to cover. Who could disagree with such tender loving care, courtesy of D.C.?

Remember how, when you were a kid, the drawstrings on your jacket were constantly catching on the seesaw or the swing? How sometimes a passing car would snag the drawstrings of a friends hood, garroting him before your eyes? Neither do I. But someone at the Consumer Product Safety Commission must, because drawstrings are on their way out.